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 shoes. For the next few days the family could talk of nothing else but these shoes and of their hopes for the future. Hans prayed to God to fulfil his father's wishes. At last the shoes were finished and were gazed upon with admiration by Hans and his mother. Off went the cobbler with the shoes wrapped up in his apron—while his little family waited in impatience and anxiety at home. When the cobbler returned his face was quite pale and they saw something dreadful had happened. He told them the squire's wife had not even tried on the shoes. She had just looked at them, and said the silk was spoiled and that she would not require him as shoemaker. The cobbler then and there took out his knife and cut the poor shoes in pieces. So all their hopes were dashed to the ground; their rosy hopes of a life in the country with a cow and a garden faded like a dream, and they wept.

Hans Andersen as a child had no boy friends, and he hardly did any lessons, but he was very far from being bored, because he had such a lively imagination and could always invent games and stories for himself. His father would make him toys, pictures that changed their shapes when pulled with a string, and a mill which made the miller dance when it went round, and peepshows of funny rag dolls. What he liked best was making dolls' clothes. In the little garden he would sit for hours near the one gooseberry-bush. This, with the help of a broomstick and his