But Cinderella continued to speak musingly, as if to herself.  “She doesn’t whip me.  But to know that you’re never to be praised or loved; to have your mother look at you coldly, and say nothing—­or just to have her pay no attention at all, but to act as if a wrong had been done her somehow . . . a whipping would be easy, compared with that.”

Everychild took her up with swift comprehension.  “I know what you mean,” he declared.  “Not to have them listen when you speak, as if you were in the way . . .”

Cinderella gazed at him darkly.  “Child, what do you know of such things?” she demanded.

Everychild answered simply, “Our mothers were like that too.  I know what it means.”

Cinderella said, “Your mothers?”

“First it was just me,” explained Everychild.  “And then it was Hansel and Grettel.”

“Ah, those poor children!” exclaimed Cinderella.  “I’ve heard how their parents took them out into the woods to lose them.  I’m surprised they ever went back.”

“They’re not going back again.  They’re going with me.  With me and the giant and——­”

“But where?” interrupted Cinderella.

“And you shall go with us,” concluded Everychild.  “That’s what I wanted to tell you.  We’re going to find the truth.”

But this only brought a sad smile to Cinderella’s lips.  “Ah,” she said, “I wonder if it would be really wise to do that.  Sometimes I think our hearts never break until we know the whole truth.”

Everychild could not understand this; and he was relieved when the Masked Lady spoke.  She was still polishing spoons slowly.  Now she said, without looking up, “Our hearts break when we know only half the truth.  They are healed when all the truth is known.”

“Come, it will be great to have you go too,” declared Everychild urgently.

Cinderella slowly relaxed in her chair.  She rested her chin in her palm and gazed at the floor.  Her eyes presently took in the fact that she had lost a slipper.

“I don’t see how I could manage it,” she said.  “I seem to have lost a slipper.  One of the pretty glass ones.  But there, you don’t know about that.”  She aroused herself and began looking about for her old slippers.  She looked here and there.  She found them at last under the bed.  She took them into her hands and turned them over and over, regarding them sadly.  Then without seeming cause she started guiltily and fixed her gaze on the door through which her sisters had made their entrance and exit.

“Some one is coming!” she whispered excitedly,

Everychild sprang to his feet.

“It’s my mother, I think,” added Cinderella.  “I’m afraid there’ll be trouble.  Please run away.  No, I don’t think I could go with you, after all.”

Everychild stood undecided an instant; and then he could see the inner door opening.  He would have run away, then, but it was too late; and Cinderella seized him by the arm.  It was plain that she was trying to think of a place where he might hide.