Now in the speech one of them made that night at their great gathering, of which I heard only a part, he said that peace would be secured for a generation at least by the pledge the prince would hold for the good behaviour of her relatives: that's what he said, and he must have meant the sun-woman the prince was to marry.

I am quite sure the king is much too proud to wish his son to marry any but a princess, and much too knowing to fancy that his having a peasant woman for a wife would be of any great advantage to them.' 'I see what you are driving at now,' said his mother.
'But,' said his father, 'our king would dig the mountain to the plain before he would have his princess the wife of a cob, if he were ten times a prince.' 'Yes; but they think so much of themselves!' said his mother.

'Small creatures always do.

The bantam is the proudest cock in my little yard.' 'And I fancy,' said Curdie, 'if they once got her, they would tell the king they would kill her except he consented to the marriage.' 'They might say so,' said his father, 'but they wouldn't kill her; they would keep her alive for the sake of the hold it gave them over our king.

Whatever he did to them, they would threaten to do the same to the princess.' 'And they are bad enough to torment her just for their own amusement--I know that,' said his mother.
'Anyhow, I will keep a watch on them, and see what they are up to,' said Curdie.