Cinderella by C. S. Evans

Author:C. S. Evans [Evans, C. S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-5394-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

And then the woman smiled.

Have you ever seen a ray of sunshine light up the shadows of a gloomy place? Well, the strange woman’s smile was like that. She no longer appeared old, but as young and radiant as a spring morning, and her eyes glowed deep and pure and true.

‘I know, I know!’ cried Cinderella. ‘You are the woman who was in the garden that night when my mother died. The moon pointed you out to me, and I wanted to come down to you, but when I looked again you had disappeared.’

‘Because the time was not ripe,’ said the woman. ‘You only saw me that once, but many is the time that I have seen you. I have watched you at your work day after day, and I know all that you have endured through the malice of your stepmother and your stepsisters. At night, when you sat here brooding among the cinders and thought yourself all alone, I was never very far away. When you went to your garret and lay down on your straw bed, it was I who watched over your sleep.’

‘Why,’ said Cinderella, ‘who then can you be?’

‘I am your godmother,’ answered the old woman. ‘Your mother and I were friends when she was a girl, and I promised her before she died that I would make your welfare my care. You were crying when I came in. Tell me what was the matter?’

‘It was nothing,’ said Cinderella, who was just a little ashamed at having been discovered in tears. ‘I wanted – I wanted –’

‘You wanted to go to the ball – isn’t that it?’

‘Yes,’ said Cinderella with a sigh.

‘Well, if you will be a good girl and do what I tell you, and don’t ask any questions, you shall go. Have you a pumpkin-bed in the garden?’

‘Why, yes,’ said Cinderella wonderingly.

‘Then go to it at once, and bring me the biggest pumpkin you can find. Now don’t stop to ask me why, but just do as I say, and you will discover the reason quickly enough.’

Cinderella ran into the garden at once, and soon came back with a fine pumpkin, which she gave to her godmother, wondering the while how such a thing was going to help her to go to the ball.

‘Now a knife, if you please.’

Cinderella brought a knife, with which her godmother cut off the top of the pumpkin and scooped out the pulp until nothing was left but the hollow rind.

This she took outside into the courtyard and touched with her stick, when the pumpkin immediately changed into a most magnificent coach, all glass above and gilded panels below!

Now Cinderella realized that her godmother was a fairy, and if there was a more surprised and delighted girl in the whole country that night, I have yet to hear of her. She could not resist peeping inside the coach, which was upholstered with delicate rose-coloured silk, and she was so excited that her godmother had to touch her on the arm to bring her to herself.

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