Sir JAMES'S _Cinderella_ is maid-of-all-work to the housekeeper of a retired humourist turned painter (Mr. O. B. CLARENCE), a vague peppery sentimental old bachelor with an ideal of which a full-sized cast of the "Venus di Milo" stands for symbol in his studio. _Cinderella_ is dumpy and plain (that is the idea which Miss HILDA TREVELYAN tries loyally but without much success to suggest to us), but she has the tiniest possible feet. Regretfully admitting the superiority of Venus's "uppers" she takes heart of grace, knowing from history how important in princely eyes is her own particular endowment. She is always asking odd questions, such as "why doctors ask you to say ninety-nine" and tailors measuring gentlemen's legs call out "42-6; 38-7." She also has a queer _penchant_ for stealing boards, betrays some connection with a firm, Celeste et Cie. of Bond Street, and knows some German words. Which concatenation of facts justifies the old bachelor in consulting a friendly policeman (Mr. GERALD DU MAURIER). Bond Street turns out to be a mean street, Celeste et Cie the name under which _Cinderella_ trades, dealing in medical treatment, shaves, friendly counsel or dressmaking all at a penny fee. Also she keeps in a Wendyish sort of way a _creche_ for orphan babes in boxes evidently made of the borrowed boards. Our policeman, coming to work up his case, loses his heart. But _Cinderella's_ mind is preoccupied with her ball. Ill from overwork and underfeeding, she wanders into the street, falls faint--and dreams her ball. Whereupon our authentic magician, coming to his own, lifts a curtain of her queer little mind and gives us an all too short glimpse of the state function, with an _h_-dropping, strap-hanging King and Queen out of a pack of cards; their disdainful Prince, who is none other, of course, than our policeman done into a bewigged _Monsieur Beaucaire_; a moody and peremptory Peer, _Lord Times_; the Censor (black-visored, with an axe); a grotesquely informal Lord Mayor; a bevy of preposterous revue beauties with their caps set at the Prince, against an all-gold background with the orphans babbling in a royal box above the throne. Of course you have the heroine's belated entry, her triumph and her abrupt flight, and the voice of the distraught Prince crying after her, which is of course the voice of her own policeman, who finds her and takes her to hospital. Then convalescence in a cottage (alleged, really a palace) by the sea and the final declaration of "romantical" policeman's love.