He was ashamed to wear his old broken shoes to call on grand folks, but he was too proud and too honest, after all, to wear these borrowed ones.
So he stepped along now with an occasional uneasy glance at his feet, but with independence in his heart.

Jerome walked straight down the road to Squire Eben Merritt's.

The cut across the fields would have been much shorter, for the road made a great curve for nearly half a mile, but the boy felt that the dignified highway was the only route for him, bent on such errands, in his best clothes..