All the children gathered round the stall to look, for never had they seen such a number of boots and shoes together before. There were big ones and little ones, blue, green, red, yellow, violet, every colour—some with bows and rosettes, others quite plain. And all had their prices marked on them; and oh! how cheap they were! The boots and shoes Ralph made cost three times as much.
After a time the old man began to sing:—
“Come, buy! come, buy!
Shoes for all.
Who’ll try? who’ll try?”“Red shoes and blue shoes,
Black shoes and white shoes,
Thick shoes and thin shoes,
Strong shoes and light shoes.”
But the villagers all passed on, and only laughed as they looked back at the stall, and said, “We don’t want him here. We have Ralph to make our boots and shoes, and he does quite well for us.” So no customers came to the old man that day, and when night came he quietly packed up his wares and took his stall to pieces, and went his way. But the first thing next morning there he was again putting up his stall and covering it with boots and shoes. Every day for many weeks he came and sat by the roadside, in exactly the same spot, singing the same rhyme, and still no one went near him to buy his goods, and the children grew so used to him that they no longer stopped to stare at him.
But one day a young girl named Lisbeth, the daughter of the baker, came near the stall, and looked at a pair of red shoes, with pretty buckles, and the old man looked at her, but did not say a word. Then she turned away, but she felt the money in her pocket as she walked, and she looked back at the shoes, and the old man nodded and chuckled to himself as he watched her. Next morning she came again, but this time she took up the shoes in her hand, and examined them well; she turned them about a little, and then she put them down and walked away as before; but in the evening she came back, and took them up again, and this time she did not lay them down, but took out her money, and paid the old man for them, and then ran away, hiding the shoes under her apron, for she was rather afraid of being laughed at for having bought shoes of the old man. At once she took them to her greatest friend, who was a girl named Alys. “Look at these pretty pink shoes,” she said. “I have just bought them of the old man at the stall, and they only cost five silver pennies. See how pretty they are!” Alys looked at them and said, “It is true they are very pretty, but I don’t think they will wear well; however, as they are so very cheap, that does not much matter. I wonder if he has another pair just like them, that I could buy.”
So Lisbeth and Alys went back to the stall, and Alys bought a pair of shoes just like Lisbeth’s; and then they both went to show them to the other young girls in the village, and one by one each said she would have a pair for herself, till there was not a girl who was not wearing the old man’s shoes. Then the women began. If they were so cheap, they said, why should they not buy them too? They were not bound to buy only Ralph’s goods. So after a time all the women had bought boots for themselves, and shoes for their little ones, from the old man, and then they began to persuade their husbands to go and buy of him also. At first all the men refused, saying that Ralph had made their boots all his life, and it was unfair to give him up now; but the women went on persuading, and one by one the men consented; till at last there was no one in the village, except Ralph and his son, little Siegfrid, who was not wearing the old man’s boots and shoes. At first Ralph only laughed, and said that they would soon come back to his little shop when they found what the old man’s boots were worth, for no one could sell good things at such a price. But the boots wore out, and still all the people went back again to the old man’s stall for more, though they knew that they would not last for long.
Then Ralph looked very grave, and began to say to everyone that if they did not change, and return to buy his boots and shoes, as before, he would have to leave the village and go elsewhere, where his goods would find customers, for he could not live there if he sold nothing.
But strange to say, just at this time, though the spring was well advanced, there was one night a bitter black frost, and in the morning the farmers found that all the young green corn was nipped and killed. Such a thing had never been known to happen before, and much it frightened the people, for what would they do if they had no corn with which to make their bread?
Then
