For an instant she seemed afraid to enter; yet plainly she was also afraid to remain standing there on the threshold.  She glanced swiftly about the room and then she entered and closed the door sharply behind her.  She stood for a moment, panting and leaning against the door.

There was something very strange about her; for although she was weary and frightened, and clad in the shabbiest old dress imaginable, her face nevertheless shone with rapture.

Need I tell you what had occurred to her?  She had forgotten what the good fairy had told her about coming home before one o’clock; and as a result her coach-and-four and her coachman had been changed back to what they had originally been:  a pumpkin, a rat, and four mice.  What a disaster!

Yet after she had stood against the door long enough to catch her breath she advanced into the room, thrusting her arms upward and forward as if she were embracing a lovely vision.  Her eyes burned with a glorious light.

She had not seen the figure at the table, bending over the spoons.  It was plain that in imagination she was seeing something far different.  And then she uttered these words (to nobody at all!): 

“Oh, the wonder of it, the wonder of it!”

Then something else happened.  One of the inner doors opened and a young lady stood craning her neck so that she could look into the room.  She stood so an instant, and then she was joined by another young lady, and both came into the room.

They were both simply glorious in party-frocks, though on the skirt of one the ruffles had been bunched clumsily, and the bodice of the other was slightly twisted.

They were Cinderella’s sisters.

The first sister had opened the door just in time to hear what Cinderella said; and now she rather cleverly imitated Cinderella’s words and manner—­

“‘Oh, the wonder of it!’ The wonder of what?”

For a moment longer Cinderella gazed into space, her eyes holding a glorious vision.  Then, lowering her gaze and observing her sisters, she said, a little less fervently, “Oh . . . everything!”

The second sister now spoke.  There was a pitying note in her voice as she said to the first sister, “As if she had the slightest idea of anything as wonderful as the things we’ve seen!”

To which the first sister replied with a sigh—­“Poor Cinderella!”

But Cinderella only turned away from them that she might hide the secret in her eyes.  She sat down before the fireplace, and the two sisters seated themselves on either side of her.  None of them had taken the slightest notice of the figure at the wooden table in the middle of the room.

Cinderella seemed to be dreaming again, while the two sisters were plainly overflowing with excitement.  They glanced at each other across Cinderella as if to say, “Shall we tell her?” And each nodded eagerly to the other.