Page:The Princess and Curdie.djvu/131

, for that they were strangers recommended them to her.

The moment her door was shut, the other doors began to open, and soon there appeared little groups about here and there a threshold, while a few of the more courageous ventured out upon the square—all ready to make for their houses again, however, upon the least sign of movement in the little thatched one.

The baker and the barber had joined one of these groups, and were busily wagging their tongues against Curdie and his horrible beast.

"He can't be honest," said the barber; "for he paid me double the worth of the pane he broke in my window."

And then he told them how Curdie broke his window by breaking a stone in the street with his hammer. There the baker struck in.

"Now that was the stone," said he, "over which I had fallen three times within the last month: could it be by fair means he broke that to pieces at the first blow? Just to make up my mind on that point I tried his own hammer against a stone in the gate; it nearly broke both my arms, and loosened half the teeth in my head!"