Fairy Tales & Fantasy: George MacDonald Collection (With Complete Original Illustrations). George MacDonald
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coverlid of rose-color, and velvet curtains all round it of a lovely pale blue. The walls were also blue—spangled all over with what looked like stars of silver.
The old lady left her, and going to a strange-looking cabinet, opened it and took out a curious silver casket. Then she sat down on a low chair, and calling Irene, made her kneel before her, while she looked at her hand. Having examined it, she opened the casket, and took from it a little ointment. The sweetest odor filled the room—like that of roses and lilies—as she rubbed the ointment gently all over the hot swollen hand. Her touch was so pleasant and cool, that it seemed to drive away the pain and heat wherever it came.
"Oh, grandmother! it is so nice!" said Irene. "Thank you; thank you."
Then the old lady went to a chest of drawers, and took out a large handkerchief of gossamer-like cambric, which she tied around her hand.
"I don't think that I can let you go away to-night," she said. "Do you think you would like to sleep with me?"
"Oh, yes, yes, dear grandmother!" said Irene, and would have clapped her hands, forgetting that she could not.
"You won't be afraid then to go to bed with such an old woman?"
"No. You are so beautiful, grandmother."
"But I am very old."
"And I suppose I am very young. You won't mind sleeping with such a very young woman, grandmother?"
"You sweet little pertness!" said the old lady, and drew her toward her, and kissed her on the forehead and the cheek and the mouth.
Then she got a large silver basin, and having poured some water into it, made Irene sit on the chair, and washed her feet. This done, she was ready for bed. And oh, what a delicious bed it was into which her grandmother laid her! She hardly could have told she was lying upon anything: she felt nothing but the softness. The old lady having undressed herself, lay down beside her.
"Why don't you put out your moon?" asked the princess.
"That never goes out, night or day," she answered. "In the darkest night, if any of my pigeons are out on a message, they always see my moon, and know where to fly to."
"But if somebody besides the pigeons were to see it—somebody about the house, I mean—they would come to look what it was, and find you."
"The better for them then," said the old lady. "But it does not happen above five times in a hundred years that any one does see it. The greater part of those who do, take it for a meteor, wink their eyes, and forget it again. Besides, nobody could find the room except I pleased. Besides again—I will tell you a secret—if that light were to go out, you would fancy yourself lying in a bare garret, on a heap of old straw, and would not see one of the pleasant things round about you all the time."
"I hope it will never go out," said the princess.
"I hope not. But it is time we both went to sleep. Shall I take you in my arms?"
The little princess nestled close up to the old lady, who took her in both her arms, and held her close to her bosom.
"Oh dear! this is so nice!" said the princess. "I didn't know anything in the whole world could be so comfortable. I should like to lie here for ever."
"You may if you will," said the old lady. "But I must put you to one trial—not a very hard one, I hope.—This night week you must come back to me. If you don't, I do not know when you may find me again, and you will soon want me very much."
"Oh! please, don't let me forget."
"You shall not forget. The only question is whether you will believe I am anywhere—whether you will believe I am anything but a dream. You may be sure I will do all I can to help you to come. But it will rest with yourself after all. On the night of next Friday, you must come to me. Mind now."
"I will try," said the princess.
"Then good night," said the old lady, and kissed the forehead which lay in her bosom.
In a moment more the little princess was dreaming in the midst of the loveliest dreams—of summer seas and moonlight and mossy springs and great murmuring trees, and beds of wild flowers with such odors as she had never smelled before. But after all, no dream could be more lovely than what she had left behind when she fell asleep.
In the morning she found herself in her own bed. There was no handkerchief or anything else on her hand, only a sweet odor lingering about it. The swelling had all gone down; the prick of the brooch had vanished:—in fact her hand was perfectly well.
CHAPTER XII
A SHORT CHAPTER ABOUT CURDIE
CURDIE spent many nights in the mine. His father and he had taken Mrs. Peterson into the secret, for they knew mother could hold her tongue, which was more than could be said of all the miners' wives. But Curdie did not tell her that every night he spent in the mine, part of it went in earning a new red petticoat for her.
Mrs. Peterson was such a nice good mother! All mothers are more or less, but Mrs. Peterson was nice and good all more and no less. She made a little heaven in that poor cottage on the hillside—for her husband and son to go home to out of the dreary earth in which they worked. I doubt if the princess was very much happier even in the arms of her huge great-grandmother than Peter and Curdie were in the arms of Mrs. Peterson. True, her hands were hard, and chapped, and large, but it was with work for them; and therefore in the sight of the angels, her hands were so much the more beautiful. And if Curdie worked hard to get her a petticoat, she worked hard every day to get him comforts which he would have missed much more than she would a new petticoat even in winter. Not that she and Curdie ever thought of how much they worked for each other: that would have spoiled everything.
When left alone in the mine, Curdie always worked on for an hour or two first, following the lode which, according to Glump, would lead at last into the deserted habitation. After that, he would set out on a reconnoitering expedition. In order to manage this, or rather the return from it, better than the first time, he had bought a huge ball of fine string, having learned the trick from Hop-o'-my-Thumb, whose history his mother had often told him. Not that Hop-o'-my-Thumb had ever used a ball of string—I should be sorry to be supposed so far out in my classics—but the principle was the same as that of the pebbles. The end of this string he fastened to his pickaxe, which figured no bad anchor, and then, with the ball in his hand, unrolling as he went, set out in the dark through the natural gangs of the goblins' territory. The first night or two he came upon nothing worth remembering; saw only a little of the home-life of the cobs in the various caves they called houses; failed in coming upon anything to cast light upon the foregoing design which kept the inundation for the present in the background. But at length, I think on the third or fourth night, he found, partly guided by the noise of their implements, a company of evidently the best sappers and miners amongst them, hard at work. What were they about? It could not well be the inundation, seeing that had in the meantime been postponed to something else. Then what was it? He lurked and watched, every now and then in the greatest risk of being detected, but without success. He had again and again to retreat in haste, a proceeding rendered the more difficult that he had to gather up his string as he returned upon its course. It was not that he was afraid of the goblins, but that he was afraid of their finding out that they were watched, which might have prevented the discovery at which he aimed. Sometimes his haste had to be such that, when he reached home toward morning, his string for lack of time to wind it up as he "dodged the cobs," would be in what seemed the most hopeless entanglement; but after a good sleep though a short one, he always found his mother had got it right again. There it was, wound in a most respectable ball, ready for use the moment he should want it!
"I can't think how you do it, mother," he would say.
"I follow the thread," she would answer—"just as you do in the mine."
She