At this point Mrs. Biggs appeared, throwing up both hands at what she saw, and exclaiming, “Wall, if I won’t give up!  Satin slips for a spraint laig.  Yes, I’ll give up!”

She looked at Howard, who did not reply, but turned his head to hide his laugh from Eloise, while Mrs. Biggs went on, “I don’t see how she can ever get her feet into ’em.  I can’t mine, and I don’t b’lieve she can.  Better send ’em back;” and she looked at Eloise, who, if she was proud of any part of her person, was proud of her feet.

Flushing hotly she said, “They are not suitable for me, of course, but I think I could get one on my well foot.”

“I know you could; try it,” Jack said.

Stooping forward Eloise removed her boot, although the effort brought a horrible twinge to her lame ankle and made her feel faint for a moment.

“Put it on for me, please,” she said to Mrs. Biggs, who, mistaking the right-hand slipper for the left, began tugging at it.

“I told you so,” she said.  “Your foot is twice as big.”

“Try this one,” Jack suggested, “or let me;” and he fitted the slipper at once to the little foot, while Mrs. Biggs exclaimed, “Wall, I vum, it does fit to a T!  If anything, it’s too big.”

In spite of her pain and embarrassment there was a look of exultation in Eloise’s eyes, as they met those of Jack, who was nearly as pleased as herself.

“You will keep them and wear them some time,” he said; and when Eloise declined, saying they would be of no use to her, Howard, who had been watching this Cinderella play with a good deal of interest, and wishing he had been the prince to fit the slipper instead of Jack, said to Eloise, “I think it better for you to keep them.  Miss Amy will not like to have them returned, and if they were, she’d give them to some one else, or very likely send them to the Rummage Sale we are to have in town.”

“That’s so,” Mrs. Biggs chimed in.  “There is to be a rummage sale, and Ruby Ann has spoke for Tim’s old clothes and mine, especially our shoes.  Keep ’em by all means.”

Eloise was beginning to feel faint again, and tired with all this talk and excitement, and painfully conscious that Howard’s eyes were dancing with laughter at the sight of her feet,—­one swollen to three times its natural size and pushed into Mrs. Biggs’s old felt shoe, and the other in Miss Amy’s white satin slipper.

“Oh, I wish you would take it off!” she gasped, feeling unequal to leaning forward again, and closing her eyes wearily.

She meant Mrs. Biggs, but Jack forestalled that good woman, and in an instant had the slipper off and the boot on, doing both so gently that she was not hurt at all.

“Thanks!” Eloise said, drawing her well foot under the spotted calico, and wishing the young men would go.