The Enchanted Castle. Nesbit Edith

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."

      CHAPTER II

      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 grass 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 hall, 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 peacock. "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 peacock (I'm not sure about the peacock. I never tasted peacock, 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 gingerbeer hardly count) and it is long past your proper dinner-time. Every one ate and drank and felt much better.

      "Now," said the Princess, brushing the breadcrumbs 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."

      And so it did, on a large rusty nail.

      "Put it in," said the Princess, "and turn it."

      Gerald did so, and the great key creaked and grated in the lock.

      "Now push," she said; "push hard, all of you."

      They pushed hard, all of them. The door gave way, and they fell over each other into the dark space beyond.

      The Princess dropped the curtain and came after them, closing the door behind her.

      "Look out!" she said; "look out! there are two steps down."

      "Thank you," said Gerald, rubbing his knee at the bottom of the steps. "We found that out for ourselves."

      "I'm sorry," said the Princess, "but you can't have hurt yourselves much. Go straight on. There aren't any more steps."

      They went straight on – in the dark.

      "When you come to the door just turn the handle and go in. Then stand still till I find the matches. I know where they are."

      "Did they have matches a hundred years ago?" asked Jimmy.

      "I meant the tinder-box," said the Princess quickly. "We always called it the matches. Don't you? Here, let me go first."

      She did, and when they had reached the door she was waiting for them with a candle in her hand. She thrust it on Gerald.

      "Hold