Explore "Shadows on the Rock" by Willa Cather on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was the afternoon of All Saints' Day, and Jacques had come up the hill through a driving sleet storm to put on his new shoes for the first time. When he had carefully laced them, he stood up in them and, looking from one to the other of his friends, smiled a glad, surprised, soft smile. He was certainly not a handsome child, but he had one beauty,--his baby teeth. When his pale lips parted, his teeth showed like two rows of pearls, really; even, regular, all the same size, lustrous like those pearls that have just a faint shimmer of lilac. The hard crusts, which were his fare for the most part, kept them polished like veritable jewels. Cécile only hoped that when his second teeth came in, they would not be narrow and pointed, of the squirrel kind, like his mother's.
When M. Auclair asked Jacques if the shoes were comfortable, he looked up wonderingly and said: "Mais, oui, monsieur," as if they could not possibly be otherwise.