Page:Fairy tales (1).pdf/8

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keen! Could I not see her? Ah! dear Miss Charlotte, do lend me your yellow suit of clothes which you wear every day: Ah! to be sure, cries Miss Charlotte, send my clothes to such a dirty Cinder-breech as thou art, who’s the fool then? Cinderilla indeed expected some such answer; and was very glad of the refusal; for she would have been sadly put to it, if her sister had lent her in earnest, what she asked for jestingly.

The next day the two sisters were at the ball; and so was Cinderilla, but dressed more magnificently than before. The king’s son was always by her, and never ceased his compliments and amorous speeches to her; to whom all this was so far from being tiresome, that she quite forgot what her godmother had recommended to her; so that she at last counted the clock striking twelve, when she took it to be no more than eleven; she then rose up and fled as nimbly as a deer. The prince followed, but could not overtake her; she left behind one of her glass slippers, fellow to that she dropped. The guards at the palace were asked. If they had not seen a princess go out? who said, They had seen nobody go out, but a young girl, very meanly, drest, who had more the air of a poor country girl, than a gentlewoman.

When the two sisters returned from the ball, Cinderilla asked them, if they had been well diverted and if the fine lady had been there? They told her, yes, but that she hurried away immediately when it struck twelve, and with so much haste, that she dropped one of her little glass slippers, the prettiest in the world, and which the king's son had taken up; that he had done nothing but looked at her all the time of the ball, and that certainly he was very much in love with the