The Little Match Girl
It was really, really cold. Snow fell from the , and it was getting very dark because it was evening – the last evening of the year. In this freezing cold and darkness, a poor little girl along the street. She didn't have a hat on her head and her feet were bare, without any shoes. She started with some on, but they were too big – much bigger than her feet. As she hurried across the street, she lost one of the slippers because of two carriages that passed by very fast.
One slipper was gone, and a kid the other one and ran away with it. He thought it would make a good cradle for his own children someday. So the little girl continued walking with her small bare feet, which turned red and blue from the cold. She carried some matches in an old apron, and she held a bunch of them in her hand. Nobody bought anything from her the whole day, and no one gave her any at all.
(Adapted from ‘The Little Match Girl’, Hans Christian Andersen, 1845)
