The Enchanted Castle | Page 9

of bread and laid it on a dish.

"There you are," she said, "roast chicken. Shall I carve it, or will you?"
"You, please," said Kathleen, and received a piece of dry bread on a
plate.
"Green peas?" asked the Princess, cut a piece of cheese and laid it
beside the bread.
Kathleen began to eat the bread, cutting it up with knife and fork as you
would eat chicken. It was no use owning that she didn't see any chicken
and peas, or anything but cheese and dry bread, because that would be
owning that she had some dreadful secret fault.
"If I have, it is a secret, even from me," she told herself.
The others asked for roast beef and cabbage and got it, she supposed,
though to her it only looked like dry bread and Dutch cheese.
"I do wonder what my dreadful secret fault is," she thought, as the
Princess remarked that, as for her, she could fancy a slice of roast
peacock. "This one, she added, lifting a second mouthful of dry bread
on her fork, "is quite delicious."
"It's a game, isn't it?" asked Jimmy suddenly.
"What's a game?" asked the Princess, frowning.
"Pretending it's beef the bread and cheese, I mean."
"A game? But it is beef. Look at it," said the Princess, opening her eyes
very wide.
"Yes, of course," said Jimmy feebly. "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.
The Princess dropped the curtain and came after them, closing the door
behind her.
"Look out!" she said; "look out!" there are two steps down.
"Thank you," said Gerald, rubbing his knee at the bottom of the steps.
"We found that out for ourselves." "I'm sorry," said the Princess, "but
you can't have hurt yourselves much. Go straight on. There aren't any
more steps."
They went straight on in the dark.
"When you come to the door just turn the handle and go in. Then stand

still till I find the matches. I know where they are."
"Did they have matches a hundred years ago?" asked Jimmy.
"I meant the tinder-box," said the Princess quickly. "We always called
it the matches. Don't you? Here, let me go first."
She did, and when they had reached the door she was waiting for them
with a candle in her hand. She thrust it on Gerald.
"Hold it steady," she said, and undid the shutters of a long window, so
that first a yellow streak and then a blazing great oblong of light
flashed at them and the room was full of sunshine.
"It makes the candle look quite silly," said Jimmy. "So it does, said the
Princess, and blew out the candle. Then she took the key from the
outside of the door, put it in the inside keyhole, and turned it.
The room they were in was small and high. Its domed ceiling was of
deep blue with gold stars painted on it. The walls were of wood,
panelled and carved, and there was no furniture in it whatever.
"This," said the Princess, "is my treasure chamber." "But where, asked
Kathleen politely, "are the treasures?"
"Don't you see them?" asked the Princess.
"No, we don't," said Jimmy bluntly. "You don't come that
bread-and-cheese game with me not twice over, you