use they always meant the same thing, and that
was because they always loved what was fair and true and right better,
not than anything else, but than everything else put together.

'Then will you tell Curdie?' said she.

'You can talk best, Joan,' said he. 'You tell him, and I will
listen--and learn how to say what I think,' he added.

'I,' said Curdie, 'don't know what to think.'

'It does not matter so much,' said his mother. 'If 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 judgement 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 almost to float about in the moonlight like a bit of the silver
paper they put over pictures, or like a handkerchief made of spider
threads, took my hand, and rose up. She was taller and stronger than
you, Mother, ever so much!--at least, she looked so.'

'And most certainly was so, Curdie, if she looked so,' said Mrs
Peterson.

'Well, I confess,' returned her son, 'that one thing, if there were no
other, would make me doubt whether I was not dreaming, after all, wide
awake though I fancied myself to be.'

'Of course,' answered his mother, 'it is not for me to say whether you
were dreaming or not if you are doubtful of it yourself; but it doesn't
make me think I am dreaming when in the summer I hold in my hand the
bunch of sweet peas that make my heart glad with their colou