Once upon a time there lived a beautiful girl named Cinderella. She lived with her father, for her mother was dead, and the old man doted on her and spoiled her. There was never anybody to tell Cinderella that she was not the most wonderful, the most perfect, the most darling girl ever to set foot on this earth, and so she came to believe that this was the case. She was, not to put too fine a point on it, rather awful.

Then it came to pass that her father met a woman, whom he married, and this woman had two daughters, and they all came to live with Cinderella and her father in their big house on the hill above the town. Now the two daughters were not as beautiful or as perfect as Cinderella. In fact, they were distinctly plain, and one of them had a left eye that was not quite level with her right eye, which made her look like she was standing on a slight slope. The other sister was a little overweight, and was perhaps too fond of bread and jam for her own good, but she was a kind-hearted soul, as was her sister.

Cinderella hated both of them. She was jealous of how they took up her father’s time, time that had once been devoted entirely to her. Cinderella decided to call them her ugly stepsisters, on the grounds that, if they were not quite ugly, then they were at least uglier than she was, and whenever Cinderella had the chance she would tell people of the two dreadful girls who lived with her, who were not wonderful and perfect and darling and never would be, and of her wicked, wicked stepmother (who was not, in fact, very wicked at all, but merely felt that Cinderella was a spoiled little brat, and treated her as such when she misbehaved).

A year went by, during which Cinderella did no housework at all, and spent her time complaining to her friends, her father, and anyone else who would listen (including the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker, who worked in the same building and felt that it was only a matter of time before someone wrote a nursery rhyme about them) of how terrible her life was. Eventually, a vote was taken in the house, and Cinderella was presented with a choice by her family. Actually, it wasn’t much of a choice at all: Cinderella would have to make up for all of the housework that she had not done, which was calculated as at least one week’s worth of cleaning and cooking and tidying. She was told that she could do a little more than her share every day for a month or two, or she could take on the burden of all of the cooking and cleaning in the house for one week, after which her debt would be forgiven. She was also to stay indoors until all of her work was done, which meant that she would miss the prince’s ball, a fact that caused Cinderella to stamp her feet and cry, and generally act like quite the little madam.

In the end, Cinderella decided to complete everything in one week, because she was that kind of girl and didn’t like to think that she might have to do something useful every day, but in fact she did nothing at all. She just sat in the kitchen and moaned and cried, and complained about her cruel treatment at the hands of her dreadful family. After two days had gone by, during which her family did their best to ignore her and subsisted rather nicely on pies from the baker, a passing good fairy heard Cinderella cries and appeared in the kitchen.

“What ails you, good child?” the fairy asked.

“My mother has dead, and my father has remarried”, Cinderella replied, “and now his new family has forced me to spend my days alone in this kitchen” - all of which was true, in one way, but also rather untrue in another.

“Why, that is terrible,” said the good fairy, who was a trusting soul and not very bright.

“What’s worse”, continued Cinderella, “is that tonight there is to be a ball at the prince’s castle, and they will not let me go. My stepsisters are jealous of me. They are afraid that the prince will see me and fall in love with me, and I will be free of them at last.”

Even the good fairy thought this was a little vain of Cinderella. Admittedly, Cinderella was a good looking girl, but princes were known to have very high standards about these things, and it wasn’t entirely proper for a young girl to believe that she could capture a prince’s heart so easily. Nevertheless, the good fairy gave Cinderella the benefit of the doubt on the grounds that the girl might be somewhat traumatised by her circumstances.

“You shall go to the ball, Cinderella,” said the fairy.

“But how?” asked Cinderella. “I have only this tattered dress to wear.”

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