that Lootie had been playing the child tricks, inventing no end of lies to frighten her for her own purposes.
“But how ever did Lootie come to let you go into the mountains alone?” he asked.
“Lootie knows nothing about it. I left her fast asleep—at least I think so. I hope my grandmother won’t let her get into trouble, for it wasn’t her fault at all, as my grandmother very well knows.”
“But how did you find your way to me?” persisted Curdie.
“I told you already,” answered Irene; “by keeping my finger upon my grandmother’s thread, as I am doing now.”
“You don’t mean you’ve got the thread there?”
“Of course I do. I have told you so ten times already. I have hardly—except when I was removing the stones—taken my finger off it. There!” she added, guiding Curdie’s hand to the thread, “you feel it yourself—don’t you?”
“I feel nothing at all,” replied Curdie. “Then what can be the matter with your finger? I feel it perfectly. To be sure it is very thin, and in the sunlight looks just like the thread of a spider, though there are many of them twisted together to make it—but for all that I can’t think why you shouldn’t feel it as well as I do.”
Curdie was too polite to say he did not believe there was any thread there at all. What he did say was:
“Well, I can make nothing of it.”
“I can, though, and you must be glad of that, for it will do for both of us.”