When Timothy’s mother heard how he had been in the marsh, she decided to send him at once to a real boys’ school, as he was quite beyond dame’s management. So he went to live with Dr. Dixon Airey, who kept a school on the moors, assisted by one Usher, a gentleman who had very long legs and used very long words, and who wore common spectacles of very high power on work days, and green ones on Sundays and holidays.

And Timothy’s shoes went with him.

On the whole he liked being at school. He liked the boys, he did not hate Dr. Airey much, and he would have felt kindly towards the Usher but for certain exasperating circumstances. The Usher was accustomed to illustrate his lessons by examples from familiar objects, and as he naturally had not much imagination left after years of grinding at the rudiments of everything with a succession of lazy little boys, he took the first familiar objects that came to hand, and his examples were apt to be tame. Now though Timothy’s shoes were well-known in his native village, they created quite a sensation in Dr. Dixon Airey’s establishment, and the Usher brought them into his familiar examples till Timothy was nearly frantic. Thus: “If Timothy’s shoes cost 8s. 7d. without the copper tips, &c.” or, illustrating the genitive case, “Timothy’s shoes, or the shoes of Timothy,” or again: “The shoes. Of the shoes. To or for the shoes. The shoes. O shoes! By, with, or from the shoes.”

“I’ll run away by, with, or from the shoes shortly,” groaned Timothy, “see if I don’t. I can’t stand it any longer.”

“I wouldn’t mind it, if I were you,” returned Bramble minor. “They all do it. Look at the fellow who wrote the Latin Grammar! He looks around the schoolroom, and the first thing that catches his eyes goes down for the first declension, forma, a form. They’re all alike.”

But when the fruit season came round, and boys now and then smuggled cherries into school, which were forfeited by the Usher, he sometimes used these for illustrations instead of the shoes, thus (in the arithmetic class): “Two hundred and fifty-four cherries added to one thousand six hundred and seventy-five will make——?”

“A very big pie!” cried Tim on one of these occasions. He had been sitting half asleep in the sunshine, his mind running on the coming enjoyments of the fruit season, cooked and uncooked; the Usher had appealed to him unexpectedly, and the answer was out of his lips before he could recollect himself. Of course he was sent to the bottom of the class; and the worst of going down in class for Timothy was that his shoes were never content to rest there. They pinched his poor feet till he shuffled them off in despair, and then they pattered back to his proper place where they stayed till, for very shame, Tim was obliged to work back to them: and if he kept down in his class for two or three days, for so long he had to sit in his socks, for the shoes always took the place that Tim ought to have filled.

But, after all, it was pleasant enough at that school upon the moors, from the time when the cat heather came out upon the hills to the last of the blackberries; and even in winter, when the northern snow lay deep, and the big dam was “safe” for skaters, and there was a slide from the Doctor’s gate to the village post-office—one steep descent of a quarter of a mile on the causeway, and as smooth as the glass mountain climbed by the princes in the fairy tale. Then Saturday was a half-holiday, and the boys were allowed to ramble off on long country walks, and if they had been particularly good they were allowed to take out Nardy.

This was the Doctor’s big dog, a noble fellow of St. Bernard breed. The Doctor called him Bernardus, but the boys called him Nardy.

Sometimes, too, the Usher would take one or two boys for a treat to the neighboring town, and when the Usher went out holidaying, he always wore the green spectacles, through which he never saw anything amiss, and indeed (it was whispered) saw very little at all.

Altogether Timothy would have been happy but for the shoes. They did him good service in many ways, it is true. When Timothy first came the little boys groaned under the tyranny of a certain big bully of whom all were afraid. One day when he was maltreating Bramble minor in a shameful and most unjust fashion, Timothy rushed at him and with the copper tips of his unerring shoes he kicked him so severely that the big bully did not get over it for a week, and no one feared him any more. Then in races, and all games of swift and skilful chase, Timothy’s shoes won him high renown. But they made him uncomfortable whenever he went wrong, and left him no peace till he went right, and he grumbled loudly against them.

“There is a right way and a wrong way in all sublunary affairs,” said the Usher. “Hereafter, young gentleman, you will appreciate your singular felicity in being incapable of taking the wrong course without feeling uncomfortable.”

“What’s the use of his talking like that?” said Timothy, kicking the bench before him with his “copper tips.” “I don’t want to go the wrong way, I only want to go my own way, that’s all.” And night and day he beat his brains for a good plan to rid himself of the fairy shoes.