"Cinderella, would you not be glad to go to the ball?"
"Young ladies," she said, "you only jeer at me; it is not for such as I
am to go there."
"You are right," they replied; "people would laugh to see a Cinderwench
at a ball."
Any one but Cinderella would have dressed their hair awry, but she was
good-natured, and arranged it perfectly well. They were almost two days
without eating, so much were they transported with joy. They broke above
a dozen laces in trying to lace themselves tight, 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--" but she could not finish for sobbing.
Her godmother, who was a fairy, said to her, "You wish you could go to
the ball; is it not so?"
"Alas, yes," said Cinderella, sighing.
"Well," said her godmother, "be but a good girl, and I will see that you
go." Then she took her into her chamber, and said to her, "Run into the
garden, and bring me a pumpkin."
Cinderella went at once to gather the finest she could get, and brought
it to her godmother, not being able to imagine how this pumpkin could
help her to go to the ball. Her godmother scooped out all the inside of
it, leaving nothing but the rind. Then she struck it with her wand, and
the pumpkin was instantly turned into a fine gilded coach.
She then went to look into the mouse-trap, where she found six mice, all
alive. She ordered Cinderella to lift the trap-door, when, giving each
mouse, as it went out, a little tap with her wand, it was that moment
turned into a fine horse, and the six mice made a 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 not a rat in the rat-trap--we may make a coachman of him."
"You are right," replied her godmother; "go and look."
Cinderella brought the rat-trap to her, and in it there were three huge
rats. The fairy chose the one which had the largest beard, and, having
touched him with her wand, he was turned into a fat coachman with the
finest mustache and whiskers ever seen.