“Ay, to be sure!” cried Miss Charlotte, “lend 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 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 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 nimble as a deer. The prince followed, but could not overtake her. She left behind her one of her glass slippers, which the prince took up most carefully. She get home, but quite out of breath, without coach or footman, and in the nasty old clothes, having nothing left of all her finery, but one of the little slippers, fellow to that she dropped. The guards at the palace gate were asked, if they had seen a princess go out? who said, they had seen no body go out, but a young girl, very meanly dressed, who had more the air of a poor country wench, 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 the clock 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 most certainly he was very much in love with the beautiful person that owned the little slipper.
