In the Fifth at Malory Towers by Enid Blyton Page A

GWEN, Yes, of course you must be Cinderella. You would be absolutely right . Your hair would look so lovely in the firelight. Oh, how proud I shall be to see you sitting there pensive and sad, looking into...

    And so on and so on. Miss Winter’s letter was much the same. Both of them had apparently taken it completely for granted that Gwendoline would have the chief part.
    Moira came barging into the dormy one day and discovered a startled Gwendoline standing in front of her mirror, her hair all round her face, and a towel thrown over her shoulders for an evening cloak.
    “Gosh — what do you think you’re doing?” she said, in amazement. “Washing your hair or something? Are you mad, Gwen? You can’t wash your hair at this time of day. You’re due for French in five minutes.”
    Gwendoline muttered something and flung the towel back on its rack. She went bright red. Moira was puzzled.
    Two days later Moira again came rushing into the dormy to see if the windows were open. This time she found Maureen standing in front of her mirror, her hair loose down her back in a golden sheet, and one of the cubicle curtains pinned round her waist to make a train.

    Moira gaped. Maureen went pink and began to brush her hair as if it was a perfectly ordinary thing to be found with it loose, and a curtain pinned to her waist.
    Moira found her voice. “What do you and Gwen think you’re doing, parading about here with your hair loose and towels and curtains draped round you?” she demanded. “Have you both gone crackers? Every time I come into this dormy I see you or Gwen with your hair loose and things draped round you. What are you up to?”
    Maureen couldn’t possibly tell the scornful practical Moira what she was doing — merely pretending to be a beautiful Cinderella with a cloud of glorious hair, and a long golden train to her dress. But Moira suddenly guessed.
    She laughed her loud and scornful laugh. “Oh! I believe I know! You’re playing Cinderella! Both of you pretending to be Cinderella. What a hope you’ve got! We’d never choose rabbit-teeth to play Cinderella.”
    And with this very cutting remark Moira went out of the room, laughing loudly. Maureen gazed at herself in the mirror and tears came to her eyes. Rabbit-teeth! How horrible of Moira. How frightfully cruel. She couldn’t help her teeth being like that. Or could she? Very guiltily Maureen remembered how she had been told to wear a wire round her front teeth to force them back — and she hadn’t been able to get used to it, and had tucked it away in her drawer at Mazeley Manor.
    Nobody there had said anything about it. Nobody had bothered. Mazeley Manor was a free-and-easy school, as Maureen was so fond of saying, comparing it unfavourably with Malory Towers, and its compulsory games, its inquisitive Matron and determined, responsible housemistresses.
    “If I’d been here when the dentist told me to wear that wire round my teeth, Matron and Miss Potts would both have made me do it, even if I didn’t want to,” she thought. “And by now I’d have nice teeth — not sticking-out and ugly.”
    And for the first time a doubt about that wonderful school, Mazeley Manor, crept into Maureen’s mind. Was it so good after all to be allowed to do just as you liked? To play games or not as you liked? To go for walks or not at your own choice? Perhaps — yes perhaps it was better to have to do things that were good for you, whether you liked them or not, till you were old enough and responsible enough to choose.
    Maureen had chosen not to wear the wire when she should have done — and now she had been called Rabbit-Teeth, and she was sure she wouldn’t be chosen as Cinderella. She did up her hair rather soberly, blinking away a few more tears, and trying to shut her lips over the protruding front teeth.
    She forgot to unpin the curtain, and went out of the room, thinking so deeply that she didn’t even feel it dragging behind her. She met Mam’zelle