'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 that you are clutching?'
Poor Cinderella drew from under her bedraggled 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.
'You have been careless,' she said. 'Yet I am pleased to see that you have managed to keep, at any rate, one-half of your godmother's gift. 'I think she meant by this that whereas all the rest of Cinderella's adornment had been contrived out of something other than it was, the two glass slippers had been really produced out of the Fairy's pocket. They alone had not vanished at the stroke of midnight. 'But what has become of the other one?' her godmother asked.
Cinderella did not know for certain, but fancied that she must have dropped it in her hurry to escape from the palace.
'Yes, you are careless,' repeated the Fairy; 'but decidedly you are not unlucky.'
And with that she vanished, as the bell sounded announcing the sisters'return.
They were not in the best of humours, to begin with. Cinderella asked them if they had again found the ball enjoyable, and if the beautiful lady had been there. They told her yes; but that on the stroke of twelve she had taken flight, and so hurriedly that she had let fall one of her small glass slippers, the prettiest in the world, which the King's son had picked up. They added, that this indeed was the first cause of their delay; for, seeking their carriage, they had found the entry blocked, and the Prince in the wildest state of mind, demanding of the guards if they had not seen a Princess pass out. The guards answered that they had seen no one pass out but a ragged girl, who looked more like a country wench than a Princess. Amid this to-do, the sisters had with difficulty found their coach; and then, within two miles of home, a wheel had come off and the coach had lurched over, in a thunderstorm, too; and they had been forced to walk the rest of the way, the one with a bruised shoulder, and the other (which was worse) with a twisted ankle. But, after all, the dance had been worth these mischances and sufferings; and, said they, harking back, the Prince was undoubtedly deep in love, for they had left him gazing fondly at the slipper, and little doubt—mysteriously as she chose to behave—he would make every effort to find the beautiful creature to whom it belonged.
They told the truth, too. For a few days after, the King's son had it proclaimed by sound of trumpet that he would marry her whose foot the slipper exactly fitted.
At first they tried it on the Princesses of the Court: