Fairy Tales for Young Readers

by E. Nesbit

  The night had changed its mind and turned out wet, and she had to run all the way home in the mud; and it was very difficult, because she had dropped one of her glass slippers in her haste to get away, and:

  “You know how hard it is to run

  With one shoe off and one shoe on.”

  When the Prince, wild with anxiety and disappointment, rushed out to ask the sentries about the magnificent Princess who had driven away, they told him that no one had passed out except a ragged beggar girl, running like a mad thing. So he went back to the palace with despair in his heart, and his dancing shoes wet through.

  He did not sleep a wink all night, and next morning he sent for the herald, who was a very good fellow, and rather clever in his way.

  “My dear herald,” said the Prince, sitting on the edge of his bed in his blue satin dressing-gown sewn with seed-pearls, and waggling the toes of his gold-embroidered slippers, “you saw that strange Princess last night...? Well...”

  “Bless you, your Highness,” said the herald, who was about the same age as the Prince, “I know all about it. Lost lady. Love of a life. No expense spared. Return and all will be forgotten and forgiven. You want to find her?”

  “I should think I did!”

  “Well, it’s quite simple. What’s that sparklety thing sticking out of the breast pocket of your dressing-gown?”

  “Yes,” said the Prince oddly, and drew out Cinderella’s slipper.

  “Well, then!” said the herald, and unfolded his idea, which pleased Prince Charming so much that within an hour the herald had set out, with the glass slipper borne before him on a blue cushion with a fringe of peacock’s feathers, and the trumpets blowing like grampuses, and the pennons flying like pretty pigeons all about him, to find the lady whose foot that slipper would fit. For in those days shoes were not sold ready-made in shops, but were made specially to fit the people who were to wear them. And besides, the glass slipper was magic, and so had too much sense to have fitted any one but its owner, even if the country had been full of shops selling Rats’ Ready-made Really Reliable Boots.

  The herald called at every house, great and small, and every girl in every house had to try on the slipper. At last, when it was evening, and he was getting very tired of the whole business, and was beginning to wish that shoes had never been invented at all, he came to the house where Cinderella lived.

  Blow, blow! went the trumpets; flutter, flutter, went the pennons; and the herald’s voice, rather faint and husky, cried:

  “Oyez, oyez, oyez! Prince Charming offers his hand and heart to the lady who can wear this little glass slipper. Who’ll try? Who’ll try? Who’ll try? Will ye try? Will ye try? Will ye try, try, try?” So that he sounded like a butcher in the Old Kent Road of a Saturday night, only they say “buy” instead of “try.”

  Dressalinda and Marigolda pushed and hustled Cinderella to make her open the door quickly. She was quite as anxious as they were to open it, for reasons of her own—reasons which you know as well as she did.

  So the door was thrown open, and in came the herald, and the trumpeters and men-at-arms grouped themselves picturesquely about the doorsteps, to the envy and admiration of the neighbours.

  Dressalinda sat down in the big carved chair in the hall, and stuck out a large stout foot.

  “No good,” said the herald. “I’m sorry, miss. It’s a fine foot—as fine as ever I saw—but it’s not just the cut for the glass slipper.”

  And even Dressalinda had to own that it wasn’t.

  Then Marigolda tried. And though she had had time to slip upstairs and put on her best fine silk stockings the little glass slipper would not begin to go on to her long flat foot.

  “It’s the heel, miss,” said the herald. “I’m sorry, but it’s not my fault, nor yours either. We can’t help our heels, nor yet other people’s. So now for the other girl.”

  “What other girl?” “There is no other girl,” said the two sisters together.

  But the herald said, “What about the one who opened

  the door?”

  “Oh, that was only Cinderella,” “Just a kitchen wench,” said Marigolda and Dressalinda, tossing their heads.

  “There’s many a pretty foot under a ragged skirt,” said the herald; and he went to the top of the kitchen stairs, and called “Cinderella! Cinderella!”—not because he thought it at all possible that the slipper would fit a kitchen wench, but because he had undertaken to try it on all girls. Also, he disliked the elder sisters as much as any one possibly could on so short an acquaintance. When you knew them better, of course, it was different.

  So poor Cinderella came, all ragged and dusty, but with her bright beauty shining through the dust and the rags like the moon through clouds. And the herald knew that she was the lost Princess, even before she slipped on the little glass shoe, pulled the other one from her pocket, slipped that on too, and stood up in the pair of them.

  “Found!” cried the herald. “Oh, joy! the long-lost Princess! You are to come with me at once to the palace.”

  “I can’t come like this,” said Cinderella, looking at her rags. “I can’t, and I won’t!”

  But the fairy godmother appeared most opportunely from the cupboard under the stairs where the boots and galoshes were kept, and with one wave of her wand clothed Cinderella from head to foot in cloth-of-splendour.

  Then Cinderella looked at her unkind sisters, and said timidly, “Goodbye.”

  And the sisters looked at her, and frowned, and “Goodbye” said they.

  Then the fairy smiled, and, pointing her wand at them, said, “Speak the truth.” And there in the presence of Cinderella and the fairy and the herald and each other and the hat-and-umbrella-stand they had to speak it.

  “I have been very unkind and hateful to Cinderella,” said Dressalinda, “and I am very sorry. I have been sorry since the night before last, but I was ashamed to say so. I am sorry because on that night I lost my heart to a good gentleman, who lost his to me, and I hate the thought of all the wickedness that makes me unworthy of him.”

  “That’s right,” said the herald kindly. “‘A fault that’s owned, is half atoned.’ And what does the other lady say?”

  “I say the same as my sister,” said Marigolda, “and I hope Cinderella will forgive us.”

  “Of course I do,” said Cinderella heartily. So that was settled.

  They all went to Court—the fairy godmother made the pumpkin coach again in a moment—and Prince Charming met Cinderella at the steps of the palace, and kissed her before the whole crowd there assembled, and every one cheered, and a chorus of invisible fairies sang:

  “Take her, O Prince, faithful and true;

  That little foot was just made for the shoe.

  We are so glad! Every one knew

  That little Princess was just made for you.

  “Shout for the pair, Army and Fleet!

  Lonely policeman, hurrah on your beat!

  May life be long, joy be complete,

  Rose-strewn the path of those dear little feet!”

  The two noble gentlemen rushed forward, as soon as politeness to the Prince allowed, to greet their dear ladies, who had been the wicked sisters, and who now were so sorry and ashamed, because love had taught them to wish to be good.

  They were all married the next day, and when Marigolda and Dressalinda confessed to their father how horrid they had been to Cinderella, he said, “Dear, dear! And I never noticed! How remiss of me!” and went back to his books.

  But the cruel step-mother, who had brought up her children so badly, and who was not sorry at all, was sent to a Home for the Incurably Unkind. She is treated kindly, but she is not allowed the chance of being unkind to any one else.

  And Cinderella and Charming and the sisters and their husbands all lived exactly as long as was good for them, and loved each other more and more every day of their lives. And no one can ask for a better fate than that!

  BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

  THE
RE WAS ONCE a rich merchant, who had a “town house replete with every modern convenience,” and a “country house standing in its own grounds of seventeen acres, agreeably situated in the most delightful rural scenery, with vineries, pineries, conservatories, palm-houses, stabling, piggeries, henneries, and accommodation for 300,000 full-grown bees.” At least, that is what the auctioneer said about the houses when he came to sell them. For the merchant was unlucky. A great storm swept the sea and wrecked his six ships, that were coming home to him full of priceless stuffs; a band of robbers attacked his caravans as they came across the desert laden with the richest gems of the East. It was all quite sudden. He went to bed rich, happy, and contented. He opened his newspaper next morning, and in half a minute knew that he was a ruined man. His debts, though not more than a man in his position is accustomed to incur, and is able to pay in due course, were enough to swallow up all the money he had in the bank, as well as what he got by the sale of the two houses and all the rest of it, including his horses and carriages, and the beautiful clothes and jewels of his three daughters. Their mother had died years before, and now for the first time their father was glad of it. “At least,” he said, “she will not have to suffer the pinch of poverty.”

  His daughters, however, had to suffer it with him. The two elder ones, as is usual in fairy stories, were proud, vain, and unattractive. They had had several offers of marriage, because it was known that their father would give them a good dowry, but they had refused every offer with scorn. Nothing short of an admiral or a duke would satisfy their ambition, and dukes were scarce just then, and all the admirals were already married. The youngest daughter was so lovely that from her childhood she had been called “Beauty.” She was as pretty as a picture, and as good as she was pretty. Every one, except her sisters, agreed that she was a perfect dear.

  A few of the merchant’s old friends clubbed together and bought him a cottage in the country, and made him a present of enough money every year for him and his daughters to live on, if he was very careful. It was a nice little house, called Rose Cottage, with a vine and climbing honeysuckle and jasmine growing all over it, and there was a good garden, with fruit trees and flowers.

  “Now,” said the merchant cheerfully, when they were dumped down with a few odds and ends of furniture in the empty cottage, “the world is full of ups and downs, and we are in the downs just now. If we are to live here comfortably we must all work, for we can’t afford a servant.”

  “We won’t work,” said the two elder sisters. “It’s too much to expect us to soil our hands with anything so low as work.”

  “My dears,” said the merchant, “if we do have to work for a year or two, it’s only what nine-tenths of our fellow creatures have to do all their lives long. And Fortune’s wheel will very likely take another turn, if we’re patient, and lift us up again.”

  But the elder sisters only sniffed superior, and sat apart in a window-seat, remarking on the smallness of the honeysuckle and the poor quality of the jasmine flowers, while Beauty and her father arranged the furniture, got the beds ready, swept up the dust and straw scattered by the men who had done the removing, set the table, and cooked some steak for supper.

  The sisters did nothing but grumble, even saying that the steak was tough, which it wasn’t, and that the plates were not clean, which they were.

  And as they began so they went on. They spent all their time in reading and re-reading a lot of odd numbers of the Real Lady’s Home Journal, which an old housemaid had sent them out of pity, and trying to imagine new dresses, silks and satins and lace—to be made from the cut-out paper patterns given away with the Real Lady.

  The merchant took off his coat and turned up his shirt sleeves and went to work like a man. He cleaned the boots and knives, carried coals, blacked the grates, drew water from the well, and did all the heavy work that women ought never to be allowed to do. Besides all that, he kept the garden in perfect order, so that not a weed showed its head there, and lupins, leopard’s bane, larkspur, gardener’s garters, goat’s rue, columbines, poppies and lilies and sweet williams all grew as if they had been born there. But there were no roses, and, of course, there was no money to spare for rose-bushes. I suppose it was called Rose Cottage so as to have at least one “rose” there—on the gate-post, where the name was painted.

  Beauty, for her part, kept the house clean and pretty, washed, starched, ironed, baked, brewed, and sewed, and she and her father were as happy as the days were long, except for the grumblings of the sisters, and even these the two workers got used to in time, so that they hardly noticed them—just as people who live near a railway get used to the rattling and screaming and thundering of the trains, and people who live in towns get used to the voices of poor people saying, “I am starving. Give me a penny, for the love of God!” You’ll agree with me that if you can get used to the noise of railways and the voices of your starving brothers you can get used to anything. So the disagreeableness of the sisters almost ceased to be a worry, and everything went on getting pleasanter and pleasanter for a year—and it came to be jasmine-time again.

  And then one morning when Beauty was shaking the door-mats at the front gate, with a blue handkerchief over her head to keep the dust from her hair, the postman came along the road; and oh, wonderful! he had a letter in his hand—the first they had had since they came to live at Rose Cottage.

  “It’s for your father,” said the postman. “Thank God for a beautiful day.”

  “Yes,” said Beauty, and took the letter to her father, who was digging a dish of new potatoes for dinner.

  He opened it.

  “What is it?” asked Beauty, for he looked glad.

  He did not answer. And “Oh, what is it?” Beauty asked, for now he looked sorry.

  “I almost wish it hadn’t happened,” he said slowly, scraping the earth off the fork with the edge of his boot. “For we’ve been very happy together here, my Beauty. But I suppose I ought to go—if it’s only for the sake of your poor sisters.” He handed her the letter, which told how two of the merchant’s ships, which were supposed to be lost, had come safely to port, laden with rich treasure, so that he was now a wealthy man again; and please would he hurry up and take his goods away, for they were littering up the quays, and the Municipal Council could not allow the roadway to be obstructed by the strewn-about bales of any merchant.

  Well, of course he set out at once. The two sisters got up, half dressed and with their hair in curl-papers, to say goodbye to him. Beauty gave him a good breakfast; and if she did drop a tear or two into his coffee cup as she filled it, nobody was the worse or the wiser.

  “Goodbye, my dears,” he said, as he stood by the gate waiting for the coach. “I’ll bring you each a present. What would you like?”

  “A purse full of money—quite full,” said the eldest.

  “A casket of jewels,” said the second.

  “And what shall I bring for my Beauty?” the old man asked fondly, for she had said nothing.

  “Oh, bring me a rose,” said Beauty, who didn’t want him to bother about presents for her, when she knew how busy he would be clearing up his bales and things.

  But when he came to the city he found that there were no ships, and no bales, and no anything at all for him but disappointment. The letter was just a hoax, planned by some of the young men whom the elder sisters had treated so rudely long ago. He shrugged his shoulders and turned to go home again, not too unhappy, after all, because he had still his best treasure at home—his dear Beauty.

  He found that no coach went past Rose Cottage till next morning, and he was afraid that if he did not get home that night Beauty would be unhappy and anxious, so he decided to travel by the Flying Serpent, a coach which would set him down about tea-time at a town ten miles from home. He would walk those ten miles and be home for supper.

  And sure enough he started to walk those ten miles. But he did not get home to supper.

  Thinking of Beauty and of his pleasant, bus
y life with her, he forgot to read the sign-posts with proper care, and so wandered quite out of the right road. The path got rough and stony, and the boughs of the trees hung low over it. At last even the absent-minded merchant could not help seeing that it was not the high-road that he was on. Also he now noticed that it was nearly dark—so dark that he could not see to read the next sign-post, and had actually to climb up it before he could make out that it was trying to say to him, “This is the right way.”

  He was quite sure that the sign-post was wrong, but there did not seem to be any other that knew better, so he went on, quite soon through inky darkness, only guided by a blue light that shone ahead like a sick star. It led him through a garden, where he stumbled among trellises and against statues, and blundered up steps, till at last he came to a great house; and over its front door was the blue lamp that had guided him.

  He knocked, but as no one answered he lifted the latch and went in. There was a hall, beautiful and big, and beyond that another, still bigger and more beautiful. This hall had a pleasant wood fire, and a sideboard loaded with the nicest kind of cold supper. A little table near the fire was laid for one.

  The merchant ventured to sit down by the fire and try to dry himself. He looked longingly at the pleasant things on the sideboard, and at last he could not bear his hunger any longer, for he had had nothing since breakfast. “When the master of the house comes in I’m sure he will forgive me,” he said, and instantly ate a cold partridge. Then he had some pickled salmon, a game pie, three fat buns, some cherry pie, and a cream cheese. Then he did not feel so hungry, but he was strangely sleepy, so he looked about for a place to rest, and, finding a nice little room opening out of the hall, he pulled off his wet clothes and crept between the cool clean sheets and fell fast asleep.