"Let's go back to the castle," she said, "and I'll show you all my
lovely jewels and things. Wouldn't you like that?"
"Yes, said Gerald with very plain hesitation. "But "
"But what?" The Princess's tone was impatient.
"But we're most awfully hungry." "Oh, so am I!" cried the Princess.
"We've had nothing to eat since breakfast."
"And it's three now," said the Princess, looking at the sun-dial.
"Why, you've had nothing to eat for hours and hours and hours. But
think of me! I haven't had anything to eat for a hundred years."
Come along to the castle.
"The mice will have eaten everything," said Jimmy sadly. He saw
now that she really was a Princess.
"Not they," cried the Princess joyously. "You forget everything's
enchanted here. Time simply stood still for a hundred years. Come
along, and one of you must carry my train, or I shan't be able to
move now it's grown such a frightful length."
When you are young so many things are difficult to believe, and
yet the dullest people will tell you that they are true such things,
for instance, as that the earth goes round the sun, and that it is not
flat but round. But the things that seem really likely, like
fairy-tales and magic, are, so say the grown-ups, not true at all. Yet
they are so easy to believe, especially when you see them
happening. And, as I am always telling you, the most wonderful
things happen to all sorts of people, only you never hear about
them because the people think that no one will believe their
stories, and so they don't tell them to any one except me.
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