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. And they
tell me, because they know that I can believe anything.

When Jimmy had awakened the Sleeping Princess, and she had
invited the three children to go with her to her palace and get
something to eat, they all knew quite surely that they had come
into a place of magic happenings. And they walked in a slow
procession along the grass towards the castle. The Princess went
first, and Kathleen carried her shining train; then came Jimmy, and
Gerald came last. They were all quite sure that they had walked
right into the middle of a fairy-tale, and they were the more ready
to believe it because they were so tired and hungry. They were, in
fact, so hungry and tired that they hardly noticed where they were
going, or observed the beauties of the formal gardens through
which the pink-silk Princess was leading them. They were in a sort
of dream, from which they only partially awakened to find
themselves in a big hail, with suits of armour and old flags round
the walls, the skins of beasts on the floor, and heavy oak tables and