ght almost teach
you the whole science of natural history--the heavenly sort, I mean.'

'I will think,' said Curdie. 'But oh! please! one word more: may I
tell my father and mother all about it?'

'Certainly--though perhaps now it may be their turn to find it a little
difficult to believe that things went just as you must tell them.'

'They shall see that I believe it all this time,' said Curdie.

'Tell them that tomorrow morning you must set out for the court--not
like a great man, but just as poor as you are. They had better not
speak about it. Tell them also that it will be a long time before they
hear of you again, but they must not lose heart. And tell your father
to lay that stone I gave him at night in a safe place--not because of
the greatness of its price, although it is such an emerald as no prince
has in his crown, but because it will be a news-bearer between you and
him. As often as he gets at all anxious about you, he must take it and
lay it in the fire, and leave it there when he goes to bed. In the
morning he must find it in the ashes, and if it be as green as ever,
then all goes well with you; if it have lost colour, things go ill with
you; but if it be very pale indeed, then you are in great danger, and
he must come to me.'

'Yes, ma'am,' said Curdie. 'Please, am I to go now?'

'Yes,' answered the princess, and held out her hand to him.

Curdie took it, trembling with joy. It was a very beautiful hand--not
small, very smooth, but not very soft--and just the same to his
fire-taught touch that it was to his eyes. He would have stood there
all night holding it if she had not gently withdrawn it.

'I will provide you a servant,' she said, 'for your journey and to wait
upon you afterward.'

'But where am I to go, ma'am, and what am I to do? You have given me
no message to carry, neither have you said what I am wanted for. I go
without a notion whether I am to walk this way or that, or what I am to
do when I get I don't know where.'

'Curdie!' said the princess, and there was a tone of reminder in his
own name as she spoke it, 'did I not tell you to tell your father and
mother that you were to set out for the court? And you know that lies
to the north. You must learn to use far less direct directions than
that. You must not be like a dull servant that needs to be told again
and again before he will understand. You have orders enough to start
with, and you will find, as you go on, and