don't these little shoes will pinch your feet terribly."

But Timothy did not mind. It was a bright, sunny morning in May and,
if he had loitered on the way when the cold March winds blew up his
jacket sleeves and made him shiver, and when the snow lay in great
drifts by the roadside, how could he help wishing to linger now when
every bush held a bird and every bank a flower?

Once or twice Timothy stopped to pick spring flowers, but the shoes
pinched his feet and he ran on again. At last he reached the bank
overlooking the swamp and, gazing down, he saw great clumps of
cowslips, with their dark green leaves and crowns of beautiful yellow
flowers.

Then Timothy forgot all about school, forgot what his mother had said,
forgot the shoes and their pinches and thought only of the cowslips.
Oh, he must have some!

In a moment away went his satchel on the grass and away went the
flowers he had picked and he began scrambling down the bank toward the
swamp as fast as he could go. But the little shoes, they meant to go
another way. They meant to go to school and they pinched Timothy's
feet and pulled and twitched at his ankles, trying to make him turn
about and go in the right way, until he thought his feet would be
wrenched off. Timothy was very determined, the harder the little shoes
pinched the more he was bound to have the bright yellow flowers; so, in
spite of the pain, he kept on going down toward the swamp.

When at last this little boy reached the foot of the bank and came to
the edge of the swamp he found that the cowslips were all out of reach.