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Once upon a time there lived a rich man who had a very beautiful daughter. The child's mother died and after a time the man married a widow who had two daughters.
He thought she would make a good stepmother for his little girl, but the wedding was scarcely over when this stepmother began to treat the man's daughter unkindly. She was jealous because the girl was so much more beautiful than her own two daughters and has a much sweeter disposition. The girl was always so gentle and kind that it made the stepmother's two daughters seem even more disagreeable than they were, which was disagreeable enough.
The daughters, too, became envious of their stepsister and they persuaded their mother to deep her working in the kitchen day and night, scrubbing and rubbing and doing all the hardest tasks. Each night when the girl's work was finished, she was so weary that she would sit right down in the chimney corner among the cinders. So the stepmother and the stepsisters began to call her Cinderella.