第20章

Hands Curdie went home, pondering much, and told everything to his father and mother.As the old princess had said, it was now their turn to find what they heard hard to believe.if they had not been able to trust Curdie himself, they would have refused to believe more than the half of what he reported, then they would have refused that half too, and at last would most likely for a time have disbelieved in the very existence of the princess, what evidence their own senses had given them notwithstanding.

For he had nothing conclusive to show in proof of what he told them.When he held out his hands to them, his mother said they looked as if he had been washing them with soft soap, only they did smell of something nicer than that, and she must allow it was more like roses than anything else she knew.His father could not see any difference upon his hands, but then it was night, he said, and their poor little lamp was not enough for his old eyes.As to the feel of them, each of his own hands, he said, was hard and horny enough for two, and it must be the fault of the dullness of his own thick skin that he felt no change on Curdie's palms.

'Here, Curdie,' said his mother, 'try my hand, and see what beast's paw lies inside it.'

'No, Mother,' answered Curdie, half beseeching, half indignant, 'Iwill not insult my new gift by making pretence to try it.That would be mockery.There is no hand within yours but the hand of a true woman, my mother.'

'I should like you just to take hold of my hand though,' said his mother.'You are my son, and may know all the bad there is in me.'

Then at once Curdie took her hand in his.And when he had it, he kept it, stroking it gently with his other hand.

'Mother,' he said at length, 'your hand feels just like that of the princess.'

'What! My horny, cracked, rheumatic old hand, with its big joints, and its short nails all worn down to the quick with hard work -like the hand of the beautiful princess! Why, my child, you will make me fancy your fingers have grown very dull indeed, instead of sharp and delicate, if you talk such nonsense.Mine is such an ugly hand I should be ashamed to show it to any but one that loved me.But love makes all safe - doesn't it, Curdie?'

'Well, Mother, all I can say is that I don't feel a roughness, or a crack, or a big joint, or a short nail.Your hand feels just and exactly, as near as I can recollect, and it's not more than two hours since I had it in mine - well, I will say, very like indeed to that of the old princess.'

'Go away, you flatterer,' said his mother, with a smile that showed how she prized the love that lay beneath what she took for its hyperbole.The praise even which one cannot accept is sweet from a true mouth.'If that is all your new gift can do, it won't make a warlock of you,' she added.

'Mother, it tells me nothing but the truth,' insisted Curdie, 'however unlike the truth it may seem.it wants no gift to tell what anybody's outside hands are like.But by it I know your inside hands are like the princess's.'