was a beautiful room, with blue walls and silver stars, and no end of things in it, when there was nothing there but an old tub and a withered apple and a heap of straw and a sunbeam! It was too bad! She might have had some old woman there at least to pass for her precious grandmother!”
“Didn’t she speak as if she saw those other things herself, Curdie?”
“Yes. That’s what bothers me. You would have thought she really meant and believed that she saw every one of the things she talked about. And not one of them there! It was too bad, I say.”
“Perhaps some people can see things other people can’t see, Curdie,” said his mother very gravely. “I think I will tell you something I saw myself once—only Perhaps you won’t believe me either!”
“Oh, mother, mother!” cried Curdie, bursting into tears; “I don’t deserve that, surely!”
“But what I am going to tell you is very strange,” persisted his mother; “and if having heard it you were to say I must have been dreaming, I don’t know that I should have any right to be vexed with you, though I know at least that I was not asleep.”
“Do tell me, mother. Perhaps it will help me to think better of the princess.”
“That’s why I am tempted to tell you,” replied his mother. “But first, I may as well mention that, according to old whispers, there is something more than common about the king’s family; and the queen was of the same blood, for they were cousins of some degree. There were strange stories told concerning them—all good stories—but strange, very strange. What they were I cannot tell, for I only remember the faces of my grandmother and my mother as they talked together about them.