CHAPTER 12
A Short Chapter About Curdie
Curdie spent many nights in the mine. His father and he had taken Mrs.Peterson into the secret, for they knew mother could hold her tongue,which was more than could be said of all the miners' wives.
But Curdie did not tell her that every night he spent in the mine, partof it went in earning a new red petticoat for her.
Mrs. Peterson was such a nice good mother! All mothers are nice andgood more or less, but Mrs. Peterson was nice and good all more and noless. She made and kept a little heaven in that poor cottage on thehigh hillside for her husband and son to go home to out of the low andrather dreary earth in which they worked. I doubt if the princess wasvery much happier even in the arms of her huge great-grandmother thanPeter and Curdie were in the arms of Mrs. Peterson. True, her handswere hard and chapped and large, but it was with work for them; andtherefore, in the sight of the angels, her hands were so much the morebeautiful. And if Curdie worked hard to get her a petticoat, sheworked hard every day to get him comforts which he would have missedmuch more than she would a new petticoat even in winter. Not that sheand Curdie ever thought of how much they worked for each other: thatwould have spoiled everything.
When left alone in the mine Curdie always worked on for an hour or twoat first, following the lode which, according to Glump, would lead atlast into the deserted habitation. After that, he would set out on areconnoitring expedition. In order to manage this, or rather thereturn from it, better than the first time, he had bought a huge ballof fine string, having learned the trick from Hop-o'-my-Thumb, whosehistory his mother had often told him. Not that Hop-o'-my-Thumb hadever used a ball of string--I should be sorry to be supposed so far outin my classics--but the principle was the same as that of the pebbles.The end of this string he fastened to his pickaxe, which figured no badanchor, and then, with the ball in his hand, unrolling it as he went,set out in the dark through the natural gangs of the goblins'territory. The first night or two he came upon nothing worthremembering; saw only a little of the home-life of the cobs in thevarious caves they called houses; failed in coming upon anything tocast light upon the foregoing design which kept the inundation for thepresent in the background. But at length, I think on the third orfourth night, he found, partly guided by the noise of their implements,a company of evidently the best sappers and miners amongst them, hardat work. What were they about? It could not well be the inundation,seeing that had in the meantime been postponed to something else. Thenwhat was it? He lurked and watched, every now and then in the greatestrisk of being detected, but without success. He had again and again toretreat in haste, a proceeding rendered the more difficult that he hadto gather up his string as he returned upon its course. It was notthat he was afraid of the goblins, but that he was afraid of theirfinding out that they were watched, which might have prevented thediscovery at which he aimed. Sometimes his haste had to be such that,when he reached home towards morning, his string, for lack of time towind it up as he 'dodged the cobs', would be in what seemed mosthopeless entanglement; but after a good sleep, though a short one, healways found his mother had got it right again. There it was, wound ina most respectable ball, ready for use the moment he should want it!
'I can't think how you do it, mother,' he would say.
'I follow the thread,' she would answer--'just as you do in the mine.'She never had more to say about it; but the less clever she was withher words, the more clever she was with her hands; and the less hismother said, the more Curdie believed she had to say. But still he hadmade no discovery as to what the goblin miners were about.
The Princess and the Goblin Page 12