The Dipsy Dream House and The Fleeting Fame of Benjamin Sprockett Read online

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  Benjie Tries On a Pair of Blue Shoes

  Soon Benjie is so fat he stops turning somersaults in the ring and sits in a special box while people point and marvel, open-mouthed, at his fatness.

  During the day, while the circus stays in town, he goes to school. And at school he meets Donald, who wears bright blue shoes.

  “Those shoes should be in a circus,” thinks Benjie. The blue shoes glow, as though lit from within. They never look tired or bored with being worn all day.

  Benjie looks at his own shoes. They are brown and very bored with worn down heels and cracks at the toes. They are not the shoes he wears in his special box. Those are red with extra long toes that turn up. But even they are growing old and their toes beginning to droop.

  “If only I could wear Donald’s,” thinks Benjie. “People would come from miles around just to see them being so blue.”

  He decides to have a quiet word with the shoes when Donald takes them off for games, persuading them perhaps to run away and join the circus, if only to sit and glow silently on his feet while he is on display.

  He waits until Donald has run out to games in his plimsolls, then bends down and whispers to the blue shoes, winking in the shoe rack, “Shoes, would you like to join the circus?”

  The shoes seem alarmed and flicker very fast.

  “Does that mean yes?” asks Benjie. The blue shoes begin to dim. So Benjie adds, “I’ll teach you tricks - like how to tie and untie your laces in three seconds and how to dance on the tips of your toes in time to the band.”

  But the shoes suddenly look tired and not in the least interested.

  “All right then. I’ll take you anyway!” says Benjie and, grabbing the blue shoes, crams them into his shoe bag. The shoes groan and fidget. But Benjie swings them triumphantly to and fro, until they grow dizzy and beg to be let out.

  Benjie does not go to games. He runs out of the playground and back to the Big Top. But at the entrance to the field, he falls over - FLOP - into the mud. As he picks himself up, he sees why. The soles of his old brown shoes are hanging off because they are so unhappy. The shoe bag lies nearby in the mud and the blue shoes are about to wriggle out.

  “Oh no you don’t!” cries Benjie and, angrily pulling off his brown ones, he flings them into the ditch, where they sink with a gurgle of dismay. Then he tries pulling on the blue shoes. But they are much too small for his feet and squeal with pain as he pushes in his toes.

  “Bother!” says Benjie, frowning. So, with his feet half in and half out of the blue shoes, he shuffles to the Big Top.

  He sits in his special box, hoping people will not notice the shoes do not fit. But they grow even smaller as they shrink their leather into a deep frown. And they do not glow at all.

  Meanwhile, Benjie’s old brown shoes have crawled very slowly out of the wet ditch; big tears oozing from the holes where the laces go. Wearily, they set off towards the Big Top. But their loose soles and laces get tangled in the long grass and it is dark by the time they reach Benjie, sitting gloomily in his special box.

  He looks more cheerful when he sees them. He pulls his swollen feet out of the blue shoes, puts them back in the shoe bag and, seeing how sad his brown ones look, puts them on instead of the red performing pair, that are pouting bad-temperedly in a corner.

  “I’ll take you back to Donald tomorrow,” says Benjie to the blue shoes. “I don’t think you are any good for the circus after all.”

  They breathe a deep sigh of relief in the dark and dusty shoe bag and Benjie begins to look happily fat again for the people passing by.