"Wait until I tell you the princess that you are! You're Snowdrop who was given to the dwarfs to keep. You remember her, don't you?"
"I think she had a cruel mother who wanted to get her out of the way."
"Yes, but it was all because Snowdrop was the most beautiful woman in the world; no one else was half so fair. How was it? When the mother looked into her mirror and asked if any one were fairer than she, she saw Snowdrop's face. Of course, no woman could stand that, so she cast Snowdrop out and the ugly dwarfs took care of her."
"The dwarfs were kinder to her than her own people."
Merryvale, with a hasty glance at the girl, sensed the ugly reality of his story and, turning very red, began plucking the dead leaves from the nearest tree.
"It must be wonderful," he remarked, rather clumsily, "to be a new person every day. Who will you be to-morrow?"
"Miss Patty's maid." All her brightness had gone and she moved as if about to leave him.
"Oh, no," he exclaimed, "not that! Cinderella, perhaps. To-morrow you will be Cinderella before the fairy godmother came to take her to the ball."
"Yes, because nothing had happened then."
"Not before the ball, but after; the next morning when the prince searches with the golden slipper in his hand."