Now when the night came for the Royal Ball Cinder-Maid had to help the two sisters to dress in their fine dresses and saw them drive off in the carriage with her father and their mother. But she went to her own mother's grave and sat beneath the hazel tree and wept and cried out:
"Tree o'mine, O tree o'me,
With my tears I've watered thee;
Make me a lady fair to see,
Dress me as splendid as can be."
And with that the little bird on the tree called out to her,
"Cinder-Maid, Cinder-Maid, shake the tree,
Open the first nut that you see."
So Cinder-Maid shook the tree and the first nut that fell she took up and opened, and what do you think she saw?—a beautiful silk dress blue as the heavens, all embroidered with stars, and two little lovely shoon made of shining copper. And when she had dressed herself the hazel tree opened and from it came a coach all made of copper with four milk-white horses, with coachman and footmen all complete. And as she drove away the little bird called out to her:
"Be home, be home ere mid-o'night
Or else again you'll be a fright."
When Cinder-Maid entered the ball-room she was the loveliest of all the ladies and the Prince, who had been dancing with her step-sisters, would only dance with her. But as it came towards midnight Cinder-Maid remembered what the little bird had told her and slipped away to her carriage. And when the Prince missed her he went to the guards at the Palace door and told them to follow the carriage. But Cinder-Maid when she saw this, called out:
"Mist behind and light before,
Guide me to my father's door."
And when the Prince's soldiers tried to follow her there came such a mist that they couldn't see their hands before their faces. So they couldn't find which way Cinder-Maid went.
When her father and step-mother and two sisters came home after the ball they could talk of nothing but the lovely lady: "Ah, would not you have liked to have been there?" said the sisters to Cinder-Maid as she helped them to take off their fine dresses. "There was a most lovely lady with a dress like the heavens and shoes of bright copper, and the Prince would dance with none but her; and when midnight came she disappeared and the Prince could not find her. He is going to give a second ball in the hope that she will come again. Perhaps she will not, and then we will have our chance."