While she was talking, the two sisters were heard knocking at the gate, and the fairy godmother vanished, leaving Cinderella sitting in the chimney corner, rubbing her eves and pretending to be very sleepy.
“Ah,” cried the eldest sister maliciously, “it has been the most delightful ball, and there was present the most beautiful princess I ever saw, who was so exceedingly polite to us both.”
“Was she?” said Cinderella indifferently; “and who might she be?”
“Nobody knows, though everybody would give their eyes to know, especially the king’s Son.”
“Indeed!” replied Cinderella, a little more interested; “I should like to see her. Miss Javotte”—that was the elder sister’s name—“will you not let me go to-morrow, and lend me your yellow gown that you wear on Sundays?”
“What, lend my yellow gown to a cinder wench! I am not so mad as that;” at which refusal Cinderella did not complain, for if her sister really had lent her the gown, she would have been considerably embarrassed.
The next night came, and the two young ladies, richly dressed in different toilets, went to the ball.
Cinderella, more splendidly attired and beautiful than ever, followed them shortly after. “Now remember twelve o’clock,” was her godmother’s parting speech; and she thought she certainly should. But the prince’s attentions to her were greater even than the first evening, and in the delight of listening to his pleasant conversation, time slipped by unperceived. While she was sitting beside him in a lovely alcove, and looking at the moon from under a bower of orange blossoms, she heard a clock strike the first stroke of twelve. She started up, and fled away as lightly as a deer.
Amazed, the prince followed, but could not catch her. Indeed he missed his lovely princess altogether, and only saw running out of the palace doors, a little dirty lass whom he had never beheld before, and of whom he certainly would never have taken the least notice. Cinderella arrived at home breathless and weary, ragged and cold, without carriage, or footman or coachman; the only remnant of her past magnificence being one of her little glass slippers—the other she had dropped in the ballroom as she ran away.
When the two sisters returned, they were full of this strange adventure, how the beautiful lady had appeared at the ball more beautiful than ever, and enchanted everyone who looked at her; and how as the clock was striking twelve she had suddenly risen up and fled through the ballroom, disappearing no one knew how or where, and dropping one of her glass slippers behind her in her flight. How the king’s son had remained inconsolable, until he chanced to pick up the little glass slipper, which he carried away in his pocket, and was seen to take it out continually, and look at it affectionately, with the air of a man very much in love; in fact, from his behavior during the remainder of the evening, all the court and royal family were convinced that he had become desperately enamored of the wearer of the little glass slipper.