The Red and Gold Shoe
The Red and Gold Shoe part 1/7
"Cock-a-doodle-doo ! Cock-a-doodle-doo !" You'd think there ought to be a pleasanter way to wake up than by having the red cock Lalu split his sides crowing from under his reed basket in the middle of the floor of Amma's hut. And immediately the two foolish hens under their crate in a corner begin to fidget and cluck and knock on the wooden slats to be let out.
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"Cock-a-doodle-doo !" and "Cluck! cluck! cluck!" This is the way a day begins for eight-year-old Lata where she sleeps on a tin trunk. Old Amma gropes from her string cot for the bamboo pole she keeps handy, and she waves it about as if she would drive back the dawn, for, oh! she is tired and aged and would so like to sleep a little longer.
" Whack ! whack ! whack !" She wallops the basket under which the cock crows. That ought to keep the red devil quiet. May a plague take him! May it wither his flesh and drain his bones dry! May it lock his joints and choke him-he and his cock-a-doodle-doo ! He would bring the roof down on a tired old woman's head, would he? "Whack!"
