'Insolent fellow!' exclaimed the housekeeper. 'Don't you see by my
dress that I am in the king's service?'

'And am I not one of his miners?'

'Ah! that goes for nothing. I am one of his household. You are an
out-of-doors labourer. You are a nobody. You carry a pickaxe. I
carry the keys at my girdle. See!'

'But you must not call one a nobody to whom the king has spoken,'
said Curdie.

'Go along with you!' cried the housekeeper, and would have shut the
door in his face, had she not been afraid that when she stepped
back he would step in ere she could get it in motion, for it was
very heavy and always seemed unwilling to shut. Curdie came a pace
nearer. She lifted the great house key from her side, and
threatened to strike him down with it, calling aloud on Mar and
Whelk and Plout, the menservants under her, to come and help her.
Ere one of them could answer, however, she gave a great shriek and
turned and fled, leaving the door wide open.

Curdie looked behind him, and saw an animal whose gruesome oddity
even he, who knew so many of the strange creatures, two of which
were never the same, that used to live inside the mountain with
their masters the goblins, had never seen equalled. Its eyes were
flaming with anger, but it seemed to be at the housekeeper, for it
came cowering and creeping up and laid its head on the ground at
Curdie's feet. Curdie hardly waited to look at it, however, but