"My n.o.ble preserver!" said the Princess, and held out her hand.
Jimmy shook it vigorously.
"But I say," said he, "you aren"t really a Princess, are you?"
"Of course I am," she answered; "who else could I be? Look at my crown!" She pulled aside the spangled veil, and showed beneath it a coronet of what even Jimmy could not help seeing to be diamonds.
"But " said Jimmy.
"Why," she said, opening her eyes very wide, "you must have known about my being here, or you"d never have come. How did you get past the dragons?"
Gerald ignored the question. "I say," he said, "do you really believe in magic, and all that?"
"I ought to," she said, "if anybody does. Look, here"s the place where I p.r.i.c.ked my finger with the spindle." She showed a little scar on her wrist.
"Then this really is an enchanted castle?"
"Of course it is," said the Princess. "How stupid you are!" She stood up, and her pink brocaded dress lay in bright waves about her feet.
"I said her dress would be too long," said Jimmy.
"It was the right length when I went to sleep," said the Princess; "it must have grown in the hundred years."
"I don"t believe you"re a Princess at all," said Jimmy; "at least "
"Don"t bother about believing it, if you don"t like," said the Princess. "It doesn"t so much matter what you believe as what I am.
She turned to the others.
"Let"s go back to the castle," she said, "and I"ll show you all my lovely jewels and things. Wouldn"t you like that?"
"Yes, said Gerald with very plain hesitation. "But "
"But what?" The Princess"s tone was impatient.
"But we"re most awfully hungry." "Oh, so am I!" cried the Princess.
"We"ve had nothing to eat since breakfast."
"And it"s three now," said the Princess, looking at the sun-dial.
"Why, you"ve had nothing to eat for hours and hours and hours. But think of me! I haven"t had anything to eat for a hundred years."
Come along to the castle.
"The mice will have eaten everything," said Jimmy sadly. He saw now that she really was a Princess.
"Not they," cried the Princess joyously. "You forget everything"s enchanted here. Time simply stood still for a hundred years. Come along, and one of you must carry my train, or I shan"t be able to move now it"s grown such a frightful length."
When you are young so many things are difficult to believe, and yet the dullest people will tell you that they are true such things, for instance, as that the earth goes round the sun, and that it is not flat but round. But the things that seem really likely, like fairy-tales and magic, are, so say the grown-ups, not true at all. Yet they are so easy to believe, especially when you see them happening. And, as I am always telling you, the most wonderful things happen to all sorts of people, only you never hear about them because the people think that no one will believe their stories, and so they don"t tell them to any one except me. And they tell me, because they know that I can believe anything.
When Jimmy had awakened the Sleeping Princess, and she had invited the three children to go with her to her palace and get something to eat, they all knew quite surely that they had come into a place of magic happenings. And they walked in a slow procession along the gra.s.s towards the castle. The Princess went first, and Kathleen carried her shining train; then came Jimmy, and Gerald came last. They were all quite sure that they had walked right into the middle of a fairy-tale, and they were the more ready to believe it because they were so tired and hungry. They were, in fact, so hungry and tired that they hardly noticed where they were going, or observed the beauties of the formal gardens through which the pink-silk Princess was leading them. They were in a sort of dream, from which they only partially awakened to find themselves in a big hail, with suits of armour and old flags round the walls, the skins of beasts on the floor, and heavy oak tables and benches ranged along it.
The Princess entered, slow and stately, but once inside she twitched her sheeny train out of Jimmy"s hand and turned to the three.
"You just wait here a minute," she said, "and mind you don"t talk while I"m away. This castle is crammed with magic, and I don"t know what will happen if you talk." And with that, picking up the thick goldy-pink folds under her arms, she ran out, as Jimmy said afterwards, "most unprincesslike," showing as she ran black stockings and black strap shoes.
Jimmy wanted very much to say that he didn"t believe anything would happen, only he was afraid something would happen if he did, so he merely made a face and put out his tongue. The others pretended not to see this, which was much more crushing than anything they could have said. So they sat in silence, and Gerald ground the heel of his boot upon the marble floor. Then the Princess came back, very slowly and kicking her long skirts in front of her at every step. She could not hold them up now because of the tray she carried.
It was not a silver tray, as you might have expected, but an oblong tin one. She set it down noisily on the end of the long table and breathed a sigh of relief..
"Oh! it was heavy," she said. I don"t know what fairy feast the children"s fancy had been busy with. Anyhow, this was nothing like it. The heavy tray held a loaf of bread, a lump of cheese, and a brown jug of water. The rest of its heaviness was just plates and mugs and knives.
"Come along," said the Princess hospitably. "I couldn"t find anything but bread and cheese but it doesn"t matter, because everything"s magic here, and unless you have some dreadful secret fault the bread and cheese will turn into anything you like. What would you like?" she asked Kathleen.
"Roast chicken," said Kathleen, without hesitation.
The pinky Princess cut a slice of bread and laid it on a dish.
"There you are," she said, "roast chicken. Shall I carve it, or will you?"
"You, please," said Kathleen, and received a piece of dry bread on a plate.
"Green peas?" asked the Princess, cut a piece of cheese and laid it beside the bread.
Kathleen began to eat the bread, cutting it up with knife and fork as you would eat chicken. It was no use owning that she didn"t see any chicken and peas, or anything but cheese and dry bread, because that would be owning that she had some dreadful secret fault.
"If I have, it is a secret, even from me," she told herself.
The others asked for roast beef and cabbage and got it, she supposed, though to her it only looked like dry bread and Dutch cheese.
"I do wonder what my dreadful secret fault is," she thought, as the Princess remarked that, as for her, she could fancy a slice of roast peac.o.c.k. "This one, she added, lifting a second mouthful of dry bread on her fork, "is quite delicious."
"It"s a game, isn"t it?" asked Jimmy suddenly.
"What"s a game?" asked the Princess, frowning.
"Pretending it"s beef the bread and cheese, I mean."
"A game? But it is beef. Look at it," said the Princess, opening her eyes very wide.
"Yes, of course," said Jimmy feebly. "I was only joking."
Bread and cheese is not perhaps so good as roast beef or chicken or peac.o.c.k (I"m not sure about the peac.o.c.k. I never tasted peac.o.c.k, did you?); but bread and cheese is, at any rate, very much better than nothing when you have gone on having nothing since breakfast (gooseberries and ginger-beer hardly count) and it is long past your proper dinner-time. Everyone ate and drank and felt much better.
"Now," said the Princess, brushing the bread crumbs off her green silk lap, "if you"re sure you won"t have any more meat you can come and see my treasures. Sure you won"t take the least bit more chicken? No? Then follow me."
She got up and they followed her down the long hall to the end where the great stone stairs ran up at each side and joined in a broad flight leading to the gallery above. Under the stairs was a hanging of tapestry.
"Beneath this arras," said the Princess, "is the door leading to my private apartments." She held the tapestry up with both hands, for it was heavy, and showed a little door that had been hidden by it.
"The key," she said, "hangs above."