'
'Yes, ma'am,' said Curdie. 'Please, am I to go now?'
'Yes,' answered the princess, and held out her hand to him.
Curdie took it, trembling with joy. It was a very beautiful hand
- not small, very smooth, but not very soft - and just the same to
his fire-taught touch that it was to his eyes. He would have stood
there all night holding it if she had not gently withdrawn it.
'I will provide you a servant,' she said, 'for your journey and to
wait upon you afterward.'
'But where am I to go, ma'am, and what am I to do? You have given
me no message to carry, neither have you said what I am wanted for.
I go without a notion whether I am to walk this way or that, or
what I am to do when I get I don't know where.'
'Curdie!' said the princess, and there was a tone of reminder in
his own name as she spoke it, 'did I not tell you to tell your
father and mother that you were to set out for the court? And you
know that lies to the north. You must learn to use far less direct
directions than that. You must not be like a dull servant that
needs to be told again and again before he will understand. You
have orders enough to start with, and you will find, as you go on,
and as you need to know, what you have to do. But I warn you that
perhaps it will not look the least like what you may have been
fancying I should require of you.
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