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“If you had been at the ball,” said the elder sister, “you would not have felt tired. One of the guests was the loveliest Princess—oh, the loveliest you ever could see! She showed us a thousand civilities. She gave us nectarines and citrons. ”

Cinderellacontained her joy. Upstairs, while she unplaited her sisters’ hair and unlaced their bodices, she asked the name of the Princess. But they answered that no one knew her; that the King’s son was wild about her, and would give everything in the world to discover who she was. Cinderellasmiled. She no longer felt any temptation at all to be clumsy with the hairpins.

“Why then,” she said, “she must be beautiful indeed. And she went away, you say, without telling her name? Is no one going to see her again?”

“As for that she may come again to the ball to-morrow. I am told that the Princebegged it, almost with tears in his eyes … For there is to be another ball to-morrow, and we are going!”

Cinderellahad quite well expected some such rebuff, and was glad enough to get it, for it would have been very awkward if her sister had been willing to lend the gown.

The next evening the two sisters were at the ball; and so was Cinderella,but in even finer attire than before. Her godmother had spared no pains, and as for the expense, that hardly needs to be considered when you can turn pumpkins into gilt coaches, cobwebs into Valenciennes lace, and beetles’ wings into rubies, with the tap of a wand.

The King’s son in his impatience flew to her coach door as soon as she arrived. Throughout the evening he never left her side, nor ceased to make pretty speeches; and she, pretty maid, was far from finding his behaviour tiresome—so far, indeed, that she forgot her godmother’s warning. The end was, that in the midst of a dance she heard the stroke of a clock, looked up, was dismayed to find it the first stroke of twelve when she believed it yet an hour short of midnight, and made her escape as lightly as a deer. The Princefollowed, but could not catch her. Only she dropped one of her glass slippers, which he picked up and treasured.

With the last stroke of twelve, coach and footmen had whisked away, and poor Cinderella,barefoot now as well as in rags, panted home-ward over roads where the flints cut her until she bled, and the owls and great moths blundered out of the bushes against her face. To make matters worse, a thunderstorm broke before she had ran half the distance, and she arrived home in a terrible plight, muddy, drenched to the skin, and almost more dead than alive. In one thing only she was fortunate: she had outstripped her sisters, whose coach on the way home lost a wheel—and I have a suspicion that Cinderella’sgodmother had something to do with this misadventure too.

At all events when Cinderellaopened the kitchen door the little lady stood as she had stood the night before, in the glow of the hearth, awaiting her.

“Well, child,” she said, frowning, yet the frown was not altogether unkindly, “it is easily seen that you have forgotten my warning and have suffered for it. But what is thatyou are clutching?”

Poor Cinderelladrew from under her be-draggled bodice a crystal slipper, fellow to the missing one. It was the one remnant of all her finery, and somehow, scarcely knowing why, she had hugged it to her while she ran and never let it slip in all her stumblings.

Her godmother gazed at her with a queer expression, that began by being a frown, yet in the end had certainly changed into a shrewd smile.