The Princess and Curdie

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that ran through their little meadow close by the door of their cottage, issuing from the far-up whiteness often folded in clouds, Curdie's mo

place, how the princess had once led him up many stairs to what she called a beautiful room in the top of the tower, where she went through all the-what should he call it?-the behaviour of presenting him to her grandmother, talking now to her and now to him, while all the time he

ve the castle, just as the king and princess were taking their leave. Since that time neither had seen or heard anything that could be supposed connected with her. Strangely enough, however, nobody had seen her go away. If she was such a

children could not always distinguish betwixt dreams and actual events. At the same time there was his mother's testimony: what was he to do with that? H

ut it, and therefore, of course, the less inclined to talk about it to his father and mother; for although his father was one of those men

earth; but as to great-great-grandmothers, they would have mocked Curdie all the rest of his life for the absurdity of not being absolutely certain that the solemn belief of his father and mother was nothing but ridiculous nonsense. Why, to them the very word 'great-great-grandmother' would have been a week's laughter! I am not sure that they were able quite to believe there were such persons as great-great-grandmothers; they had never seen one. They were not companions to give the best of help toward progress, and as Curdie grew, he grew at this time faster in body than in mind-with t

the latter sort comes at length to know at once whether a thing is true the moment it comes before him; one of the former class grows more and more afraid of being taken in,

mething wrong when a mother catches herself sighing over the time when her boy was in petticoats, or a father looks sad when he thinks how he used to carry him on his shoulder. The boy should enclose and keep, as his li

n his hand, a light flashed across his eyes. He looked, and there was a snow-white pigeon settling on a rock in front of him, in the red light of the level sun. There it fel

seemed to feel both its bill and its feathers, as the one adjusted the other to fly again, and his heart swelled with the pleasure of its involuntary sympathy. Another moment and i

s stained with another red than that of the sunset flood in which it had been revelling-ah God! who knows the joy of a bird, the ecstasy of a creature that has neither storehouse nor barn!-when he held it, I say, in his victorious hands, t

wn what a pigeon was. A good many discoveries of a similar kind have to be made by most of us. Once more it opened its eyes-then closed them again, and its throbbing ceased. Curdie gave a sob: its last look reminded him of the princess-he did not know why. He remembered how hard he had laboured to set her beyond danger, and yet what dangers she had h

ewhere-yes, from the grandmother's lamp, and flew round the king and Irene and himself, and then flew away: this might be that very pigeon! Horrible to think! And if it wasn't, yet it

not knowing what to do, with the dead pigeon in his hand? Things looked bad indeed. Was the whole world going to make a work about a pigeon-a white pigeon? The sun went down. Great clouds gathered over the west, and shortened the twilight. The wind gave a howl, and then lay down again. The clouds gathered thi

nce seen silver run from the furnace. It shone from somewhere above the roofs of the castle: it must be the great old princess's moon! How could she be there? Of course she was not there! He had asked the whole household, and nobody knew anything about her or her globe either. It couldn't be! And yet what did that signify