Once upon a time, there was a poor child who had no one to depend on. His mother
died when he was very young, and his father remarried. Later, his father also passed
away, leaving him to live with his stepmother. But his stepmother was both stingy and
malicious, and she never wanted to see him have any good things happen.
This child thus endured countless hardships. Day after day, he herded livestock in the
vast and boundless forest, with only a piece of dry bread for breakfast and a bowl of
thin porridge for dinner when he returned home at night. His stepmother's stinginess
even reached the point where she was unwilling to give him even a sip of water. He
had to walk deep into the forest to quench his thirst at a clear spring.
One summer morning, his stepmother went out without leaving him a piece of bread.
The boy had to go out to graze the livestock on an empty stomach, and he couldn't
find anything to eat in the vast forest. When it was almost time for lunch, he was so
hungry that he even cried. After a while, he wiped away his tears and came to a green
hillside. During the hottest part of the day, he often rested there.
The grass under the shade of the trees is often dewy, providing a refreshing coolness.
However, today, the grass had been trodden by someone, leaving no dew on it and the
ground quite dry. The shepherd boy found this odd. A trace of suspicion couldn't help
but arise in his mind: who on earth had ventured into this serene spot?
While he was sitting there pondering, he suddenly noticed something glittering in the
sunlight near him. He stood up and walked over to see what it was. That's when he
realized it was a pair of small shoes made of shiny glass. He immediately became
happy again and spent the entire day playing with the pair of small glass shoes.
When the sun set into the forest in the evening, he drove the livestock back to the
