"Cinderella, would you not be glad to go to the ball?"
"Alas!" said she, "you only jeer me. It is not for such as I am to go thither."
"Thou art in the right of it," replied they. "It would make the people laugh to see a cinder
wench at a ball."
Any one but Cinderella would have dressed their heads awry, but she was very good and
dressed them perfectly well. They were almost two days without eating, so much they
were transported with joy. They broke above a dozen of laces in trying to be laced up
close, that they might have a fine, slender shape, and they were continually at their
looking-glass. At last the happy day came. They went to Court, and Cinderella followed
them with her eyes as long as she could, and when she had lost sight of them she fell a-
crying.
Her Godmother, who saw her all in tears, asked her what was the matter.
"I wish I could--I wish I could--"
She was not able to speak the rest being interrupted by her tears and sobbing.
This Godmother of hers, who was a fairy, said to her: "Thou wishest thou could'st go to
the ball. Is it not so?"
"Y--es," cried Cinderella, with a great sigh.
"Well," said her Godmother, "be but a good girl, and I will contrive that thou shalt go."
Then she took her into her chamber and said to her: "Run into the garden and bring me a
pumpkin."
Cinderella went immediately to gather the finest she could get and brought it to her
Godmother, not being able to imagine how this pumpkin could make her go to the ball.
Her Godmother scooped out all the inside of it, having left nothing but the rind; which
done, she struck it with her wand, and the pumpkin was instantly turned into a fine coach,
gilded all over with gold.
She then went to look into her mousetrap, where she found six mice all alive, and ordered
Cinderella to lift up a little the trapdoor, when, giving each mouse as it went out a little
tap with her wand, the mouse was that moment turned into a fine horse, which altogether
made a very fine set of six horses of a beautiful mouse-colored dapple-gray. Being at a
loss for a coachman, Cinderella said:
"I will go and see if there is never a rat in the rattrap--we may make a coachman of him."
"Thou art in the right," replied her Godmother. "Go and look."
