a thread as well as a rope, or anything else? There is something you
cannot explain, and her explanation may be the right one."
"It's no explanation at all, mother; and I can't believe it."
"That may be only because you do not understand it. If you did, you
would probably find it was an explanation, and believe it thoroughly. I
don't blame you for not being able to believe it, but I do blame you for
fancying such a child would try to deceive you. Why should she?
Depend
upon it, she told you all she knew. Until you had found a better way of
accounting for it all, you might at least have been more sparing of your
judgment."
"That is what something inside me has been saying all the time," said
Curdie, hanging down his head. "But what do you make of the
grandmother?
That is what I can't get over. To take me up to an old garret, and try
to persuade me against the sight of my own eyes that it was a beautiful
room, with blue walls and silver stars, and no end of things in it, when
there was nothing there but an old tub and a withered apple and a heap
of straw and a sunbeam! It was too bad! She _might_ have had some
old
Madhuri Noah
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