Sentence:  [...] her low-heeled shoes had flat fringed <WSD>tongues</WSD> to them—the kind of shoes you expected to see on a golf-course, or a Scottish highland, somewhere expensively hearty like that. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  In a shoe, the flap of material that goes between the laces and the foot ("so called because it resembles a tongue in the mouth").