“Ah!” replied Cinderella, “you mock me! It is not for me to go to balls.”
“You are right,” said they; “people might well laugh to see a cinder-wench at a ball.” Any one but Cinderella might have left their hair awry, but she was good-humored and did it to perfection.
For almost two days they scarcely ate anything, so transported were they with joy. They broke a dozen or more laces by drawing them too tight in their efforts to make themselves look as slender as possible, and they spent all their time before the mirror.
At last the happy day came; they departed, and Cinderella followed them with [[30]]her eyes as long as she could. When she could see them no longer she began to cry.
Her godmother, seeing her in tears, asked her what was the matter.
“I wish—I w-i-s-h”—but she could not finish for weeping.
Her godmother, who was a fairy, said to her, “You wish you could go to the ball, do you not?”
“Alas, yes!” said Cinderella, sighing.
“Well,” said her godmother, “be a good girl, and I will see to it that you go.”
