Page:The sleeping beauty and other fairy tales from the old French (1910).djvu/101

Cinderella At all events when Cinderella opened the kitchen door the little lady stood as she had stood the night before, in the glow of the hearth, awaiting her.

'Well, child,' she said, frowning, yet the frown was not altogether unkindly, 'it is easily seen that you have forgotten my warning and have suffered for it. But what is that you are clutching?'

Poor Cinderella drew from under her bedraggled bodice a crystal slipper, fellow to the missing one. It was the one remnant of all her finery, and somehow, scarcely knowing why, she had hugged it to her while she ran and never let it slip in all her stumblings.

Her godmother gazed at her with a queer expression, that began by being a frown, yet in the end had certainly changed into a shrewd smile.

'You have been careless,' she said. 'Yet I am pleased to see that you have managed to keep, at any rate, one-half of your godmother's gift.' I think she meant by this that whereas all the rest of Cinderella's adornment had been contrived out of something other than it was, the two glass slippers had been really produced out of the Fairy's pocket. 67