"It's exactly as your mother told it to me the very next morning," said
his father.
"You don't think I'm doubting my own mother!" cried Curdie.
"There are other people in the world quite as well worth believing as
your own mother," said his mother. "I don't know that she's so much
the
fitter to be believed that she happens to be _your_ mother, Mr. Curdie.
There are mothers far more likely to tell lies than that little girl I
saw talking to the primroses a few weeks ago. If she were to lie I
should begin to doubt my own word."
"But princesses _have_ told lies as well as other people," said Curdie.
"Yes, but not princesses like that child. She's a good girl, I am
certain, and that's more than being a princess. Depend upon it you will
have to be sorry for behaving so to her, Curdie. You ought at least to
have held your tongue."
"I am sorry now," answered Curdie.
"You ought to go and tell her so, then."
Madhuri Noah
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