At last, with the mission given him by the wonderful princess and
his consequent adventures, Curdie brought up the whole tale to the
present moment. Then a silence fell, and Irene and Curdie thought
the king was asleep. But he was far from it; he was thinking about
many things. After a long pause he said:
'Now at last, MY children, I am compelled to believe many things I
could not and do not yet understand - things I used to hear, and
sometimes see, as often as I visited my mother's home. Once, for
instance, I heard my mother say to her father - speaking of me -
"He is a good, honest boy, but he will be an old man before he
understands"; and my grandfather answered, "Keep up your heart,
child: my mother will look after him." I thought often of their
words, and the many strange things besides I both heard and saw in
that house; but by degrees, because I could not understand them, I
gave up thinking of them. And indeed I had almost forgotten them,
when you, my child, talking that day about the Queen Irene and her
pigeons, and what you had seen in her garret, brought them all back
to my mind in a vague mass. But now they keep coming back to me,
one by one, every one for itself; and I shall just hold my peace,
and lie here quite still, and think about them all till I get well
again.'
What he meant they could not quite understand, but they saw plainly
that already he was better.
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