Rainwater shimmered across the cold cobblestone street as a young girl knelt in the mud, trembling.<\/p>\n
A shattered glass milk bottle lay beside her.<\/p>\n
White milk slipped through cracks in the stone.<\/p>\n
Dirt covered her small hands and face while tears mixed with rain across her cheeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ruined it\u2026\u201d she cried between heavy sobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy baby brother is so hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n
The busy old European street moved around her without slowing.<\/p>\n
People in elegant coats and fine dresses walked past.<\/p>\n
Umbrellas lifted.<\/p>\n
Footsteps echoed.<\/p>\n
Nobody stopped.<\/p>\n
Nobody looked twice.<\/p>\n
The little girl hugged herself tightly against the cold.<\/p>\n
Staring helplessly at the spilled milk.<\/p>\n
Then\u2014<\/p>\n
through the moving crowd\u2014<\/p>\n
a well-dressed woman suddenly stopped.<\/p>\n
Without hesitation\u2014<\/p>\n
she hurried over.<\/p>\n
And knelt beside the girl.<\/p>\n
Gentle hands carefully reached for muddy fingers.<\/p>\n
\u201cShhh\u2026 look at me,\u201d the woman said softly.<\/p>\n
The little girl looked up.<\/p>\n
Eyes red from crying.<\/p>\n
Hands shaking.<\/p>\n
Without another word\u2014<\/p>\n
the woman placed two fresh bottles of milk into her lap.<\/p>\n
Then\u2014<\/p>\n
a large warm loaf of bread.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s okay,\u201d she whispered kindly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have enough for both of you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The little girl froze.<\/p>\n
For one second\u2014<\/p>\n
she couldn\u2019t speak.<\/p>\n
Then tears came harder than before.<\/p>\n
Only different this time.<\/p>\n
Relief.<\/p>\n
Hope.<\/p>\n
The woman gently pulled her into a warm embrace.<\/p>\n
The girl held the bread tightly against her chest.<\/p>\n
Burying her face into the woman\u2019s shoulder.<\/p>\n
And suddenly\u2014<\/p>\n
the cold lonely street didn\u2019t feel quite so cruel anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rainwater shimmered across the cold cobblestone street as a young girl knelt in the mud, trembling. A shattered glass milk bottle lay beside her. White milk slipped through cracks in the stone. Dirt covered her small hands and face while tears mixed with rain across her cheeks. \u201cI ruined it\u2026\u201d she cried between heavy sobs. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}