"I was only joking."
Bread and cheese is not perhaps so good as roast beef or chicken
or peacock (I'm not sure about the peacock. I never tasted peacock,
did you?); but bread and cheese is, at any rate, very much better
than nothing when you have gone on having nothing since
breakfast (gooseberries and ginger-beer hardly count) and it is long
past your proper dinner-time. Everyone ate and drank and felt
much better.
"Now," said the Princess, brushing the bread crumbs off her green
silk lap, "if you're sure you won't have any more meat you can
come and see my treasures. Sure you won't take the least bit more
chicken? No? Then follow me."
She got up and they followed her down the long hall to the end
where the great stone stairs ran up at each side and joined in a
broad flight leading to the gallery above. Under the stairs was a
hanging of tapestry.
"Beneath this arras," said the Princess, "is the door leading to my
private apartments." She held the tapestry up with both hands, for
it was heavy, and showed a little door that had been hidden by it.
"The key," she said, "hangs above."
And so it did, on a large rusty nail.
"Put it in," said the Princess, "and turn it." Gerald did so, and the
great key creaked and grated in the lock.
"Now push," she said; "push hard, all of you. They pushed hard, all
of them. The door gave way, and they fell over each other into the
dark space beyond.
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