ould repent it, except
that the drink was gone? Tell me that, Miss Innocence.'

'Lying!' said a great, coarse footman. 'I suppose you mean when I told
you yesterday you were a pretty girl when you didn't pout? Lying,
indeed! Tell us something worth repenting of! Lying is the way of
Gwyntystorm. You should have heard Jabez lying to the cook last night!
He wanted a sweetbread for his pup, and pretended it was for the
princess! Ha! ha! ha!'

'Unkindness! I wonder who's unkind! Going and listening to any
stranger against her fellow servants, and then bringing back his wicked
words to trouble them!' said the oldest and worst of the housemaids.
'One of ourselves, too! Come, you hypocrite! This is all an invention
of yours and your young man's, to take your revenge of us because we
found you out in a lie last night. Tell true now: wasn't it the same
that stole the loaf and the pie that sent you with the impudent
message?'

As she said this, she stepped up to the housemaid and gave her, instead
of time to answer, a box on the ear that almost threw her down; and
whoever could get at her began to push and bustle and pinch and punch
her.

'You invite your fate,' she said quietly.

They fell furiously upon her, drove her from the hall with kicks and
blows, hustled her along the passage, and threw her down the stair to
the wine cellar, then locked the door at the top of it, and went back
to their breakfast.

In the meantime the king and the princess had had their bread and wine,
and the princess, with Curdie's help, had made the room as tidy as she
could--they were terribly neglected by the servants. And now Curdie set
himself to interest and amuse the king, and prevent him from thinking
too much, in order that he might the sooner think the better.
Presently, at His Majesty's request, he began from the beginning, and
told everything he could recall of his life, about his father and
mother and their cottage on the mountain, of the inside of the mountain
and the work there, about the goblins and his adventures with them.

When he came to finding the princess and her nurse overtaken by the
twilight on the mountain, Irene took up her share of the tale, and told
all about herself to that point, and then Curdie took it up again; and
so they went on, each fitting in the part that the other did not know,
thus keeping the hoop of the story running straight; and the king
listened with wondering and delighted ears, astonish