"Then you have no right to say that what she told you was not true. She did take you out, and she must have had something to guide her: why not a thread as well as a rope, or anything else? There is something you cannot explain, and her explanation may be the right one." "It's no explanation at all, mother; and I can't believe it." "That may be only because you do not understand it. If you did, you would probably find it was an explanation, and believe it thoroughly. I don't blame you for not being able to believe it, but I do blame you for fancying such a child would try to deceive you. Why should she? Depend upon it, she told you all she knew. Until you had found a better way of accounting for it all, you might at least have been more sparing of your judgment." "That is what something inside me has been saying all the time," said Curdie, hanging down his head. "But what do you make of the grandmother? That is what I can't get over. To take me up to an old garret, and try to persuade me against the sight of my own eyes that it was a beautiful room, with blue walls and silver stars, and no end of things in it, when there was nothing there but an old tub and a withered apple and a heap of straw and a sunbeam! It was too bad! She _might_ have had some old woman there at least who could pass for her precious grandmother!" "Didn't she speak as if she saw those other things herself, Curdie?" "Yes. That's what bothers me. You would have thought she really meant and believed that she saw every one of the things she talked about. And not one of them there! It was too bad, I say." "Perhaps some people can see things other people can't see, Curdie," said his mother very gravely. "I think I will tell you something I saw myself once--only perhaps you won't believe me either!" "Oh, mother, mother!" cried Curdie, bursting into tears; "I don't deserve that, surely!" "But what I am going to tell you is very strange," persisted his mother; "and if having heard it, you were to say I must have been dreaming, I don't know that I should have any right to be vexed with you, though I know at least that I was not asleep." "Do tell me, mother. Perhaps it will help me to think better of the princess."