But the old woman did not
complain at this; her time was too much taken up with the babies for
her to miss the grass and the flowers.
It cost so much money to clothe them that she decided to dress them
all alike, so that they looked like the children of a regular orphan
asylum. And it cost so much to feed them that she was obliged to give
them the plainest food; so there was bread-and-milk for breakfast and
milk-and-bread for dinner and bread-and-broth for supper. But it was a
good and wholesome diet, and the children thrived and grew fat upon
it.
One day a stranger came along the road, and when he saw the old
woman's house he began to laugh.
"What are you laughing at, sir?" asked the grandmother, who was
sitting upon her doorsteps engaged in mending sixteen pairs of
stockings.
"At your house," the stranger replied; "it looks for all the world
like a big shoe!"
"A shoe!" she said, in surprise.
"Why, yes. The chimneys are shoe-straps, and the steps are the heel,
and all those additions make the foot of the shoe."
"Never mind," said the woman; "it may be a shoe, but it is full of
babies, and that makes it differ from most other shoes."
But the Stranger went on to the village and told all he met that he
had seen an old woman who lived in a shoe; and soon people came from
all parts of the country to look at the queer house, and they usually
went away laughing.
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