'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 colour and scent, and remember the dry, withered-looking little thing I dibbled into the hole in the same spot in the spring.Ionly think how wonderful and lovely it all is.It seems just as full of reason as it is of wonder.How it is done I can't tell, only there it is! And there is this in it, too, Curdie - of which you would not be so ready to think - that when you come home to your father and mother, and they find you behaving more like a dear, good son than you have behaved for a long time, they at least are not likely to think you were only dreaming.'
'Still,' said Curdie, looking a little ashamed, 'I might have dreamed my duty.'
'Then dream often, my son; for there must then be more truth in your dreams than in your waking thoughts.But however any of these things may be, this one point remains certain: there can be no harm in doing as she told you.And, indeed, until you are sure there is no such person, you are bound to do it, for you promised.'
'it seems to me,' said his father, 'that if a lady comes to you in a dream, Curdie, and tells you not to talk about her when you wake, the least you can do is to hold your tongue.'
'True, Father! Yes, Mother, I'll do it,' said Curdie.
Then they went to bed, and sleep, which is the night of the soul, next took them in its arms and made them well.
