Brick Fairy Tales: Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Hansel and Gretel, and More (6 page)

He would dance with no other maiden, and never left loose of her hand,

and if any one else came to invite her, he said, “This is my partner.”

She danced till it was evening, and then she wanted to go home. But the King’s son said, “I will go with thee and bear thee company,” for he wished to see to whom the beautiful maiden belonged.

She escaped from him, however,

and sprang into the pigeon-house.

The King’s son waited until her father came, and then he told him that the stranger maiden had leapt into the pigeon-house.

The old man thought, “Can it be Cinderella?”

and they had to bring him an axe and a pickaxe that he might hew the pigeon-house to pieces,

but no one was inside it.

And when they got home Cinderella lay in her dirty clothes among the ashes, and a dim little oil-lamp was burning on the mantle-piece,

for Cinderella had jumped quickly down from the back of the pigeon-house and had run to the little hazel-tree,

and there she had taken off her beautiful clothes and laid them on the grave,

and the bird had taken them away again, and then she had placed herself in the kitchen amongst the ashes in her grey gown.

Next day when the festival began afresh, and her parents and the step-sisters had gone once more, Cinderella went to the hazel-tree and said—

“Shiver and quiver, my little tree,

Silver and gold throw down over me.”