When the dance was ended, a magnificent feast was served up, consisting of all delicacies: so much was the young prince engaged with Cinderella, that he did not eat one morsel of the supper.
Cinderella drew near her sisters, and frequently spoke to them; and in her goodness of heart she offered them the delicacies which she had received from the prince: but they did not know she was their sister.
When Cinderella heard the clock strike three-quarters past eleven, she made a low courtesy to the whole assembly and retired in haste.
You see how fortune befriends the good-hearted, and even out of such unpromising material as a pumpkin and mice, can make a coach and six, with which to honor her worthy favorite. So Cinderella goes to the ball; but to teach her to be diligent and faithful in her engagements, her faëry godmother enjoins upon her that she return home at twelve. Native beauty and grace attract the princely heart; and while the king's son pays no heed to her pretentious sisters, he is all grace and condescension to little Cinderella. Obedient to her engagement with her godmother, she returns in all the splendor and honor of the coach and six.
On reaching home, she found her godmother; and after thanking her for the treat she had enjoyed, she ventured to express a wish to return to the ball on the following evening, as the prince had requested her to do.
She was still relating to her godmother all that had happened at court, when her two sisters knocked at the door. Cinderella went and let them in, pretending to yawn and stretch herself, and rub her eyes, and saying, "How late you are!" just as if she was waked up out of a nap, though, truth to say, she had never felt less disposed to sleep in her life. "If you had been to the ball," said one of the sisters, "you would not have thought it late. There came the most beautiful princess ever seen, who loaded us with polite attentions, and gave us oranges and citrons."
Cinderella could scarcely contain her delight, and inquired the name of the princess. But they replied that nobody knew her name, and that the king's son was in great trouble about her, and would give the world to know who she could be. "Is she, then, so very beautiful?" said Cinderella, smiling. "Oh, my! how I should like to see her! Oh, do, my Lady Javotte, lend me the yellow dress you wear every day, that I may go to the ball and have a peep at this wonderful princess." "A likely story, indeed!" cried Javotte, tossing her head disdainfully, "that I should lend my clothes to a dirty Cinderella like you!"
Cinderella expected to be refused, and was not sorry for it, as she would have been puzzled what to do, had her sister really lent her the dress she begged to have.
On the following evening the sisters again went to the court ball, and so did Cinderella, dressed even more magnificently than before. The king's son never left her side, and kept paying her the most flattering attentions. The young lady was nothing loth to listen to him; so it came to pass that she forgot her godmother's injunctions, and, indeed, lost her reckoning so completely, that before she deemed it could be eleven o'clock, she was startled at hearing the first stroke of midnight. She rose hastily, and flew away like a startled fawn. The prince attempted to follow her, but she was too swift for him; only, as she flew she dropped one of her glass slippers, which he picked up very eagerly. Cinderella reached home quite out of breath, without either coach or footmen, and with only her shabby clothes on her back; nothing, in short, remained of her recent magnificence, save a little glass slipper, the fellow to the one she had lost.
