FullReads

A long while she sat there. Suddenly, between two heavy sobs she looked up, her eyes attracted by a strange blue glow on the far side of the hearth: and there stood the queerest lady, who must have entered somehow without knocking.

Her powdered hair was dressed a
ll about her head in the prettiest of short curls, amid which the most exquisite jewels—diamonds, and rubies, and emeralds—sparkled against the firelight. Her dress had wide panniers bulging over a skirt of lace flounces, billowy and delicate as sea-foam, and a stiff bodice, shaped to the narrowest waist imaginable. Jewels flashed all over this dress—or at least Cinderellasupposed them to be jewels, though, on second thoughts, they might be fireflies, butterflies, glowworms. They seemed at any rate to be alive, and to dart from one point to another of her attire. Lastly, this strange lady held in her right hand a short wand, on the end of which trembled a pale bluish-green flame; and it was this which had first caught Cinderella’seye and caused her to look up.

“Good evening, child,” said the visitor in a sharp clear voice, at the same time nodding kindly across the firelight. “You seem to be in trouble. What is the matter?”

“I wish,” sobbed Cinderella. “I wish,” she began again, and again she choked. This was all she could say for weeping.

“You wish, dear, that you could go to the ball; is it not so?”

“Ah, yes!” said Cinderellawith a sigh.

“Well, then,” said the visitor, “be a good girl, dry your tears, and I think it can be managed. I am your godmother, you must know, and in younger days your mother and I were very dear friends. ” She omitted, perhaps purposely, to add that she was a Fairy; but Cinderellawas soon to discover this too. “Do you happen to have any pumpkins in the garden?” her godmother asked.

Cinderellathought this an odd question. She could not imagine what pumpkins had to do with going to a ball. But she answered that there were plenty in the garden—a whole bed of them in fact.

“Then let us go out and have a look at them. ”

They went out into the dark garden to the pumpkin patch, and her godmother pointed to the finest of all with her wand.

“Pick that one,” she commanded.

Cinderellapicked it, still wondering. Her godmother opened a fruit knife that had a handle of mother-of-pearl. With this she scooped out the inside of the fruit till only the rind was left; then she tapped it with her wand, and at once the pumpkin was changed into a beautiful coach all covered with gold.

“Next we must have horses,” said her godmother mother. “The question is, Have you such a thing as a mouse trap in the house?”

Cinderellaran to look into her mouse trap, where she found six mice all alive. Her godmother, following, told her to lift the door of the trap a little way, and as the mice ran out one by one she gave each a tap with her wand, and each mouse turned at once into a beautiful horse—which made a fine team of six horses, of a lovely grey, dappled with mouse colour.

Now the trouble was to find a coachman.

“I will go and see,” said Cinderella,who had dried her tears and was beginning to find this great fun, “if there isn’t such a thing as a rat in the rat trap. We can make a coachman of him. ”

“You are right, dear,” said her godmother; “run and look. ”

Cinderellafetched her the rat trap. There were three large rats in it. The Fairy chose one of the three because of his enormous whiskers, and at a touch he was changed into a fat coachman.