All sorts of fine things were bought for the sisters to wear, satins and velvets and laces and jewels, feathers for their hair, and glittering fans for them to carry, and the stepmother’s dress was no less fine than theirs.
Cinderella sighed and sighed. “I wish I might go to the ball, too, and see that handsome Prince and all the lovely ladies,” she said.
“You!” cried the sisters, laughing. “A pretty sight you would be at the ball; you with your rags and your sooty hands.”
“Go scour your pots and pans,” cried the stepmother. “That is all you are fit for, you cinder-wench.”
So Cinderella went back to her work, but as she scrubbed and rubbed the tears ran down her cheeks so fast she could hardly see.
The night of the ball the sisters dressed themselves in all their finery and came into the kitchen to show themselves to Cinderella; they hoped to make her envious. They swept up and down the room and spread their gowns and smiled and ogled while Cinderella admired them. After they tired of her admiration they and the stepmother stepped into a fine coach and rolled gayly away to the ball.
But Cinderella sat in a corner by the fire and wept and wept.
Suddenly, as she wept, a little old woman in a high-pointed hat and buckled shoes appeared in the kitchen, and where she came from no one could have told. Her eyes shone and twinkled like two stars, and she carried a wand in her hand.
“Why are you so sad, my child,” she asked; “and why do you weep so bitterly?”
Cinderella looked at her with wonder. “I am weeping,” she said, “because my sisters have gone to the ball without me, and because I wished to go too.”