our yellow
suit of clothes which you wear every day."

"Ay, to be sure," cried Miss Charlotte; "lend my clothes to such it
dirty cinder maid as thou art! I should be a fool."

Cinderella expected well 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 Cinderella,
but dressed more magnificently than before. The King's son was always by
her, and never ceased his compliments and kind 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 nimble as a deer. The Prince followed, but could
not overtake her. She left behind one of her glass slippers, which the
Prince took up most carefully. She got home, but quite out of breath,
and in her old clothes, having nothing left her 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 not seen a Princess go out.

They said they had seen nobody go out but a young girl, very meanly
dressed, and who had more of the air of a poor country girl than a
gentlewoman.

When the two sisters returned from the ball Cinderella asked them if
they had been well diverted and if the beautiful Princess 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, which the King's son had
taken up; that he had done nothing but look at her all the time at
the ball, and that most certainly he was very much in love with the
beautiful person who owned the glass slipper.

What they said was very true, for a few days after the King's son caused
it to be proclaimed, by sound of trumpet, that he would marry her whose
foot this slipper would just fit. They whom he employed began to try it
upon the Princesses, then the Duchesses and all the Court, but in vain.
It was brought to the two sisters, who did all they possibly could to
thrust their feet into the slipper, but they could not effect it.

On the following morning there was a great noise of trumpets and drums,
and a procession passed through the town, at the head of which rode the
King