coming straight down upon them, they took to their heels and scampered away across the mountain, leaving me safe, only much frightened. As soon as it had sent them off, the bird went gliding again up the light, and the moment it reached the globe the light disappeared, just as if a shutter had been closed over a window, and I saw it no more. But I had no more trouble with the cobs that night or ever after.”
“How strange!” exclaimed Curdie.
“Yes, it was strange; but I can’t help believing it, whether you do or not,” said his mother.
“It’s exactly as your mother told it to me the very next morning,” said his father.
“You don’t think I’m doubting my own mother?” cried Curdie. “There are other people in the world quite as well worth believing as your own mother,” said his mother. “I don’t know that she’s so much the fitter to be believed that she happens to be your mother, Mr. Curdie. There are mothers far more likely to tell lies than the little girl I saw talking to the primroses a few weeks ago. If she were to lie I should begin to doubt my own word.”
“But princesses have told lies as well as other people,” said Curdie.
“Yes, but not princesses like that child. She’s a good girl, I am certain, and that’s more than being a princess. Depend upon it you will have to be sorry for behaving so to her, Curdie. You ought at least to have held your tongue.”
“I am sorry now,” answered Curdie.
“You ought to go and tell her so, then.”
“I don’t see how I could manage that. They wouldn’t let a miner boy like me have a word with her alone; and I couldn’t tell her before that