One Small Yellow Sock

The Saturday market was packed with baskets, stacked up to the awning.

Poppy walked beside Dad with her hand in his coat pocket. She had a job to do. Her baby sister, Wren, was five days old, and Poppy wanted to buy her a present. Wren cried a lot, and her toes were always cold. So Poppy wanted tiny yellow socks.

The woman at the wool stall was busy tying up string. "Yellow socks?" she said. "I have one." She held it up. It was as small as a plum.

"Where is the other one?" asked Poppy.

"Gone off somewhere. One is not a pair."

Poppy tipped the basket and looked under the table. She found a button, a lost mitten, and a rubber duck that went squeak! But she did not find the other sock.

"Dad, one is not a pair," she said.

"Shall we take it anyway?" said Dad.

Poppy nodded slowly. They paid, and they went home.

Wren was in Mum's lap, red in the face and crying. Her feet kicked, bare and pink, like two small peas in pods.

Poppy slid the yellow sock onto one foot. It fitted well. The other foot was still bare, and Wren cried on. "One is not a pair," Poppy whispered.

Then she looked down at her own feet. She wore her stripy red socks, the long ones. Poppy pulled one off and tugged it over Wren's other foot. It went right up past her knee, and the end flopped about like an elephant's trunk.

Wren stopped crying. She kicked. The stripy sock went flop, flop, flop. Then Wren made a gurgle, a bubbly little gurgle, like water going down the bath.

"Look, Mum," said Poppy. "Now she has two."

Wren kicked again. Flop, flop, gurgle. Poppy wiggled her one bare foot on the cool floor, and Mum laughed.