One day the Usher invited Timothy to walk to the town with him. It was a holiday. The Usher wore his green spectacles; Tim had a few shillings of pocket-money, and plums were in season. Altogether the fun promised to be good.

Timothy and the Usher had so much moor breeze and heather scents every day, that they quite enjoyed the heavier air of the valley and the smell and smoke of town life. Just as they entered the first street a dirty little boy, in rags and with bare feet, ran beside them, and as he ran he talked. And it was all about his own trouble and poverty, and hunger and bare feet, and he spoke very fast, with a kind of whine.

“I feel quite ashamed, Timothy,” said the Usher (who worked hard for twelve hours a day, and supported a blind mother and two sisters),—“I feel quite ashamed to be out holidaying when a fellow-creature is barefooted and in want.” And as he spoke the Usher gave a sixpence to the dirty little boy (who never worked at all, and was supported by kind people out walking). And when the dirty little boy had got the sixpence, he bit it with his teeth and rang it on the stones, and then danced catherine-wheels on the pavement till somebody else came by. But the Usher did not see this through his green spectacles.

And Timothy thought, “My shoes would fit that barefooted boy.”

After they had enjoyed themselves very much for some time, the Usher had to pay a business visit in the town, and he left Timothy to amuse himself alone for a while. And Timothy walked about, and at last he stopped in front of a bootmaker’s shop, and in the window he saw a charming little pair of boots just his own size. And when he turned away from the window, he saw something coming very fast along the pavement like the three legs on an Isle of Man halfpenny, and when it stood still it was the barefooted boy.

Then Timothy went into the shop, and bought the boots, and this took all his money to the last farthing.

And when he came out of the shop the dirty little boy was still there.

“Come here, my poor boy,” said Tim, speaking like a young gentleman out of ‘Sanford and Merton.’ “You look very poor, and your feet must be very cold.”

The dirty boy whined afresh, and said his feet were so bad he could hardly walk. They were frost-bitten, sun-blistered, sore, and rheumatic; and he expected shortly to become a cripple like his parents and five brothers, all from going barefoot. And Timothy stooped down and took off the little old leather shoes.

“I will give you these shoes, boy,” said he, “on one condition. You must promise not to lose them, nor to give them away.”

“Catch me!” cried the dirty boy, as he took the shoes. And his voice seemed quite changed, and he put one of his dirty fingers by the side of his nose.

“I could easily catch you if I wished,” said Tim. (For slang was not allowed in Dr. Dixon Airey’s establishment, and he did not understand the remark.)

“Well, you are green!” said the dirty boy, putting on the shoes.

“It’s no business of yours what color I am,” said Tim, angrily. “You’re black, and that’s your own fault for not washing yourself. And if you’re saucy or ungrateful, I’ll kick you—at least, I’ll try,” he added, for he remembered that he no longer wore the fairy shoes, and could not be sure of kicking or catching anybody now.

“Walker!” cried the dirty boy. But he did not walk, he ran, down the street as fast as he could go, and Timothy was parted from his shoes.

He gave a sigh, just one sigh, and then he put on the new boots, and went to meet the Usher.

The Usher was at the door of a pastrycook’s shop, and he took Tim in, and they had veal-pies and ginger-wine; and the Usher paid the bill. And all this time he beamed affably through his green spectacles, and never looked at Timothy’s feet.

Then they went out into the street, where there was an interesting smell of smoke, and humanity, and meat, and groceries, and drapery, and drugs, quite different to the moor air, and the rattling and bustling were most stimulating. And Tim and the Usher looked in at all the shop-windows gratis, and choose the things they would have bought if they had had the money. At last the Usher went into a shop and bought for Tim a kite which he had admired; and Tim would have given everything he possessed to have been able to buy some small keep-sake for the Usher, but he could not, for he had spent all his pocket-money on the new boots.

When they reached the bottom of the street, the Usher said, “Suppose we go up the other side and look at the shops there.” And when they were half way up the other side, they found a small crowd round the window of a print-seller, for a new picture was being exhibited in the window. And outside the crowd was the dirty boy, but Tim and the Usher did not see him. And they squeezed in through the crowd and saw the picture. It was a historical subject with a lot of figures, and they were all dressed so like people on the stage of a theatre that Tim thought it was a scene out of Shakespeare. But the Usher explained that it was the signing of the Magna Charta, or the Foundation Stone of our National Liberties, and he gave quite a nice little lecture about it, and the crowd said, “Hear, hear!” But as everybody wanted to look at King John at the same moment when the Usher called him “treacherous brother and base tyrant,” there was a good deal of pushing, and Tim and he had to stand arm-in-arm to keep together at all. And thus it was that when the dirty boy from behind put his hand in the Usher’s waistcoat pocket, and took out the silver watch that had belonged to his late father, the Usher thought it was Tim’s arm that seemed to press his side, and Tim thought it was the Usher’s arm that he felt. But just as the dirty boy had secured the watch the shoes gave him such a terrible twinge, that he started in spite of himself. And in his start he jerked the Usher’s waistcoat, and in one moment the Usher forgot what he was saying about our national liberties, and recalled (as with a lightning flash) the connection between crowds and our national pickpockets. And when he clapped his hand to his waistcoat—his watch was gone!

“My watch has been stolen!” cried the Usher, and, as he turned round, the dirty boy fled, and Tim, the Usher, and the crowd ran after him crying, “Stop thief!” and every one they met turned round and ran with them, and at the top of the street they caught a policeman, and were nearly as glad as if they had caught the thief.

Now if the dirty boy had still been barefoot no one could ever have stopped him. But the wrenching and jerking of the shoes made running most difficult, and just as he was turning a corner they gave one violent twist that turned him right round, and he ran straight into the policeman’s arms.

Then the policeman whipped out the watch as neatly as if he had been a pickpocket himself, and gave it back to the Usher. And the dirty boy yelled, and bit the policeman’s hand, and butted him in the chest with his head, and kicked his shins; but the policeman never lost his temper, and only held the dirty boy fast by the collar of his jacket, and shook him slightly. When the policeman shook him, the dirty boy shook himself violently, and went on shaking in the most ludicrous way, pretending that it was the policeman’s doing, and he did it so cleverly that Tim could not help laughing. And then the dirty boy danced, and shook himself faster and faster, as a conjuror shakes his chains of iron rings. And as he shook, he shook the shoes off his feet, and drew his arms in, and ducked his head, and, as the policeman was telling the Usher about a pickpocket he had caught the day before yesterday, the dirty boy gave one wriggle, dived, and leaving his jacket in the policeman’s hand, fled a way like the wind on his bare feet.

The policeman looked seriously annoyed; but the Usher said he was very glad, as he shouldn’t like to prosecute anybody, and had never been in a police-court in his life. And he gave the policeman a shilling for his trouble, and the policeman said the court “wouldn’t be no novelty to him,”—meaning to the dirty boy.

And when the crowd had dispersed, Timothy told the Usher about the boots, and said he was very sorry; and the Usher accepted his apologies, and said, “Humanum est errare, my dear boy, as Dr. Kerchever Arnold truly remarks in one of the exercises.” Then Timothy went to the bootmaker, who agreed to take back the boots “for a consideration.” And with what was left of his money, Tim bought some things for himself and for Bramble minor and for the Usher.

And the shoes took him very comfortably home.