by Joan Hall

Created on: July 30, 2009   Last Updated: July 31, 2009

A revision of Cinderella Chapter I - The ball is announced

In a humble cottage at the edge of a wood in a tiny kingdom lived a widowed woman. Her name was Sarah, and she shared her home with her two daughters and her stepdaughter. They worked very hard and had very little, but their home was full of love and good will and they were happy.

Sarah's daughters, Beatrice and Margaret, were gentle-spirited girls who lent themselves to creating beauty in their modest home. Beatrice, the older daughter, was gifted to sew beautiful clothing and tapestries from even the simplest materials. Margaret, the younger daughter, tended the family's garden and grew the most beautiful and exotic flowers in the village, which she used to decorate their home in a way that was a wonder to all who saw it. Sarah's stepdaughter, Ella, was in many ways the very opposite of the other girls. She had an adventurous and boundless spirit and an inquisitive mind.

Every day they lived, there was much work to do. They had to grow most of their own food, since they could rarely afford to buy from anyone else. They had to maintain their own house, fix anything that would break, and tend their few animals. When chores were done, Beatrice and Margaret would meticulously clean themselves up and change clothes before taking up their hobby projects. But Ella couldn't wait to get out of the house and go into town, where there was so much to see and learn. She so often showed up in the village square still dusty and disheveled from chores that people said she looked like she had slept in the cinders all night. Eventually, she earned the nickname "Cinderella", which she bore with pride.

Once in town, she loved nothing more than to go from place to place and talk to everyone she could. She knew every merchant, every craftsman, every farmer. She knew how they plied their trade and how much they paid in taxes. She talked to the mothers as they walked through the marketplace, to the children who played in the square, to the widows, orphans, and beggars. She knew how they lived their daily lives and how they handled hard times, which were many. She would share her observations with them and occasionally even helped neighbors come together and resolve disagreements. The townsfolk would jokingly say, "Cinderella should be king."

After her hours spent in the village, she would come home bubbling over with stories of everything she had seen and everyone she had met. Her stepmother

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