'Yes, father; of course it does.Only it will be nice to make her cry.I'll have the skin taken off between her toes, and tie them up till they grow together.Then her feet will be like other people's, and there will be no occasion for her to wear shoes.'
'Do you mean to insinuate I've got toes, you unnatural wretch?'
cried the queen; and she moved angrily towards Harelip.The councillor, however, who was betwixt them, leaned forward so as to prevent her touching him, but only as if to address the prince.
'Your Royal Highness,' he said, 'possibly requires to be reminded that you have got three toes yourself - one on one foot, two on the other.'
'Ha! ha! ha!' shouted the queen triumphantly.
The councillor, encouraged by this mark of favour, went on.
'It seems to me, Your Royal Highness, it would greatly endear you to your future people, proving to them that you are not the less one of themselves that you had the misfortune to be born of a sun-mother, if you were to command upon yourself the comparatively slight operation which, in a more extended form, you so wisely meditate with regard to your future princess.'
'Ha! ha! ha!' laughed the queen louder than before, and the king and the minister joined in the laugh.Harelip growled, and for a few moments the others continued to express their enjoyment of his discomfiture.
The queen was the only one Curdie could see with any distinctness.
She sat sideways to him, and the light of the fire shone full upon her face.He could not consider her handsome.Her nose was certainly broader at the end than its extreme length, and her eyes, instead of being horizontal, were set up like two perpendicular eggs, one on the broad, the other on the small end.Her mouth was no bigger than a small buttonhole until she laughed, when it stretched from ear to ear - only, to be sure, her ears were very nearly in the middle of her cheeks.
Anxious to hear everything they might say, Curdie ventured to slide down a smooth part of the rock just under him, to a projection below, upon which he thought to rest.But whether he was not careful enough, or the projection gave way, down he came with a rush on the floor of the cavern, bringing with him a great rumbling shower of stones.
The goblins jumped from their seats in more anger than consternation, for they had never yet seen anything to be afraid of in the palace.But when they saw Curdie with his pick in his hand their rage was mingled with fear, for they took him for the first of an invasion of miners.The king notwithstanding drew himself up to his full height of four feet, spread himself to his full breadth of three and a half, for he was the handsomest and squarest of all the goblins, and strutting up to Curdie, planted himself with outspread feet before him, and said with dignity:
'Pray what right have you in my palace?'
'The right of necessity, Your Majesty,' answered Curdie.'I lost my way and did not know where I was wandering to.'
'How did you get in?'
'By a hole in the mountain.'
'But you are a miner! Look at your pickaxe!'
Curdie did look at it, answering:
'I came upon it lying on the ground a little way from here.Itumbled over some wild beasts who were playing with it.Look, Your Majesty.' And Curdie showed him how he was scratched and bitten.
The king was pleased to find him behave more politely than he had expected from what his people had told him concerning the miners, for he attributed it to the power of his own presence; but he did not therefore feel friendly to the intruder.
'You will oblige me by walking out of my dominions at once,' he said, well knowing what a mockery lay in the words.
'With pleasure, if Your Majesty will give me a guide,' said Curdie.
'I will give you a thousand,' said the king with a scoffing air of magnificent liberality.
'One will be quite sufficient,' said Curdie.
