The Red Shoes
A poor girl who has gone barefoot all her life is taken in by an old lady and, on the day of her confirmation, wears into church a pair of red shoes she has no business wearing. She thinks about them through the service, puts them on again for communion, and at the door an old soldier with a red beard taps their soles and tells them to hold fast. Andersen's harshest tale, and the one his biographers trace to his shoemaker father.
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- 42% · 9 shared