CINDERELLA
tucked and frilled and goffered in just such a fashion, and so on with crimping and pleating and tabbing and piping and boxing, until poor Cinderella began to wonder why the lot of some was so easy and the lot of others so hard. Nevertheless, she worked and worked and worked; and always in her drudgery came day-dreams of what she would wear if she were invited to the ball. She had it all planned out to the smallest frill,—but how absurd! She must toil at her sisters' bidding and, on the great night when they were there in their finery, she must sit among the cinders dreaming—in a faery world of her own—of the prince who came to claim her as his bride. Fool! what a wild fancy! What an unattainable dream!—and there was the bell ringing again: her sisters wanted something, and woe betide her if she dallied.
At last the night of the ball arrived. Early towards the evening there was no peace in the household. When the elder sister had fully decided, in spite of her complexion, to wear her velvet cramoisie trimmed à l'anglaise, and the younger had thought out her gold-flowered robe in conjunction with a jewelled stomacher, to say nothing of an old silk underskirt, which, after all, would be hidden; when they had squabbled over the different jewels they possessed, each complimenting the other on the set she desired least herself; when the milliner and the hairdresser had called and gone away exhausted; when the beauty specialist had reached the limit of his art and departed sighing heavily; then and not till then was Cinderella called up and allowed the great privilege of admiring the result.
Now Cinderella had, by nature, what one might call 'absolute taste.' She knew instinctively how one should look at a state ball, and she gave them her simple, but perfect, advice, with a deft touch to this and that, which made all the difference. She got no thanks, of course; but one of the sisters did unbend a little.
Cinderella, said she, 'wouldn't you like to be going to the ball?'
'Heigho!' sighed Cinderella. 'Such delights are not for me. I dream of them, but that is all.'
67
