Page:The Princess and Curdie.djvu/52

 only you know what to make of a thing, you'll know soon enough what to think of it. Now I needn't tell you, surely, Curdie, what you've got to do with this?"

"I suppose you mean, mother," answered Curdie, "that I must do as the old lady told me?"

"That is what I mean: what else could it be? Am I not right, Peter?"

"Quite right, Joan," answered Peter, "so far as my judgment goes. It is a very strange story, but you see the question is not about believing it, for Curdie knows what came to him."

"And you remember, Curdie," said his mother, " that when the princess took you up that tower once before, and there talked to her great-great-grandmother, you came home quite angry with her, and said there was nothing in the place but an old tub, a heap of straw—oh, I remember your inventory quite well!—an old tub, a heap of straw, a withered apple, and a sunbeam. According to your eyes, that was all there was in the great old musty garret. But now you have had a glimpse of the old princess herself!"

"Yes, mother, I did see her—or if I didn't,—" said Curdie very thoughtfully—then began again. "The hardest thing to believe, though I saw it with my own eyes, was when the thin, filmy creature, that seemed