wed, but could not catch her. Indeed, he
missed his lovely princess altogether, and only saw running out of
the palace doors a little dirty lass whom he had never beheld before,
and of whom he certainly would never have taken the least notice.
Cinderella arrived at home breathless and weary, ragged and cold,
without carriage or footmen or coachman, the only remnant of her past
magnificence being one of her little glass slippers--the other she had
dropped in the ballroom as she ran away.

When the two sisters returned they were full of this strange
adventure: how the beautiful lady had appeared at the ball more
beautiful than ever, and enchanted every one who looked at her; and
how as the clock was striking twelve she had suddenly risen up and
fled through the ballroom, disappearing no one knew how or where, and
dropping one of her glass slippers behind her in her flight. How the
king's son had remained inconsolable until he chanced to pick up the
little glass slipper, which he carried away in his pocket, and was
seen to take it out continually, and look at it affectionately, with
the air of a man very much in love; in fact, from his behavior during
the remainder of the evening, all the court and royal family were
convinced that he had become desperately enamoured of the wearer of
the little glass slipper.

Cinderella listened in silence, turning her face to the kitchen fire,
and perhaps it was that which made her look so rosy, but nobody ever
noticed or admired her at home, so it did not signify, and next
morning she went to her weary work again just as before.

A few days after, the whole city was attracted by the sight of a
herald going round with a little glass slipper in his hand,
publishing, with a flourish of trumpets, that the king's son ordered
this to be fitted on the foot of every lady in the kingdom, and that
he wished to marry the lady whom it fitted best, or to whom it and
the fellow-slipper belonged. Princesses, duchesses, countesses, and
simple gentlewomen all tried it on, but, being a fairy slipper, it
fitted nobody; and, besides, nobody could produce its fellow-slipper,
which lay all the time safely in the pocket of Cinderella's old linsey
gown.

At last the herald came to the house of the two sisters, and though
they well knew neither of themselves was the beautiful lady, they made
every attempt to get their clumsy feet into the glass slipper, but in
vain.

"Let me try it on," said Cinderella, f