Farmer Boy (Little House 3)

It was almost time for Royal and Eliza Jane and Alice to go to the Academy, and they had no shoes. And still the cobbler didn’t come.

Mother’s shears went snickety-snick through the web of beautiful sheep’s-gray cloth she had woven. She cut and fitted and basted and sewed, and she made Royal a handsome new suit, with a greatcoat to match. She made him a cap with flaps that buttoned, like boughten caps.

For Eliza Jane she made a new dress of wine-colored cloth, and she made Alice a new dress of indigo blue. The girls were ripping their old dresses and bonnets, sponging and pressing them and sewing them together again the other side out, to look like new.

In the evenings Mother’s knitting-needles flashed and clicked, making new stockings for them all. She knitted so fast that the needles got hot from rubbing together. But they could not have new shoes unless the cobbler came in time.

He didn’t come. The girl’s skirts hid their old shoes, but Royal had to go to the Academy in his fine suit, with last year’s boots that were slit all around and showed his white socks through. It couldn’t be helped.

The last morning came. Father and Almanzo did the chores. Every window in the house blazed with candle-light, and Almanzo missed Royal in the barn.

Royal and the girls were all dressed up at breakfast. No one ate much. Father went to hitch up, and Almanzo lugged the carpet-bags downstairs. He wished Alice wasn’t going away.

The sleigh-bells came jingling to the door, and Mother laughed and wiped her eyes with her apron. They all went out to the sleigh. The horses pawed and shook jingles from the bells. Alice tucked the lap robe over her bulging skirts, and Father let the horses go. The sleigh slid by and turned into the road. Alice’s black-veiled face looked back and she called:

“Good-by! Good-by!”

Almanzo did not like that day much. Everything seemed large and still and empty. He ate dinner all alone with Father and Mother. Chore-time was earlier because Royal was gone. Almanzo hated to go into the house and not see Alice. He even missed Eliza Jane.

After he went to bed he lay awake and wondered what they were doing, five long miles away.

Next morning the cobbler came! Mother went to the door and said to him:

“Well, this is a pretty time to be coming, I must say! Three weeks late, and my children as good as barefoot!”

But the cobbler was so good-natured that she couldn’t be angry long. It wasn’t his fault; he had been kept three weeks at one house, making shoes for a wedding.

The cobbler was a fat, jolly man. His cheeks and his stomach shook when he chuckled. He set up his cobbler’s bench in the dining-room by the window, and opened his box of tools. Already he had Mother laughing at his jokes. Father brought last year’s tanned hides, and he and the cobbler discussed them all morning.

Dinner-time was gay. The cobbler told all the news, he praised Mother’s cooking, and he told jokes till Father roared and Mother wiped her eyes. Then the cobbler asked Father what he should make first, and Father answered: “I guess you better begin with boots for Almanzo.”

Almanzo could hardly believe it. He had wanted boots for so long. He had thought he must wear moccasins until his feet stopped growing so fast.

“You’ll spoil the boy, James,” Mother said, but Father answered:

“He’s big enough now to wear boots.”

Almanzo could hardly wait for the cobbler to begin.

First the cobbler looked at all the wood in the woodshed. He wanted a piece of maple, perfectly seasoned, and with a straight, fine grain.

When he found it, he took his small saw, and he sawed off two thin slabs. One was exactly an inch thick; the other was a half inch thick. He measured, and sawed their corners square.

He took the slabs to his cobbler’s bench, and sat down, and opened his box of tools. It was divided into little compartments, and every kind of cobbler’s tool was neatly laid in them.

The cobbler laid the thicker slab of maplewood on the bench before him. He took a long, sharp knife and cut the whole top of the slab into tiny ridges. T

hen he turned it around and cut ridges the other way, making tiny, pointed peaks.

He laid the edge of a thin, straight knife in the groove between two ridges, and gently tapped it with a hammer. A thin strip of wood split off, notched all along one side. He moved the knife, and tapped it, till all the wood was in strips. Then holding a strip by one end, he struck his knife in the notches, and every time he struck, a shoe-peg split off. Every peg was an inch long, an eighth of an inch square, and pointed at the end.

The thinner piece of maple he made into pegs, too, and those pegs were half an inch long.

Now the cobbler was ready to measure Almanzo for his boots.

Almanzo took off his moccasins and his socks, and stood on a piece of paper while the cobbler carefully drew around his feet with his big pencil. Then the cobbler measured his feet in every direction, and wrote down the figures.

He did not need Almanzo any more now, so Almanzo helped Father husk corn. He had a little husking-peg, like Father’s big one. He buckled the strap around his right mitten, and the wooden peg stood up like a second thumb, between his thumb and fingers.