'But what do you make of the grandmother?
That is what I can't get over.

To take me up to an old garret, and try to persuade me against the sight of my own eyes that it was a beautiful room, with blue walls and silver stars, and no end of things in it, when there was nothing there but an old tub and a withered apple and a heap of straw and a sunbeam! It was too bad! She might have had some old woman there at least to pass for her precious grandmother!' 'Didn't she speak as if she saw those other things herself, Curdie ?' 'Yes.

That's what bothers me.

You would have thought she really meant and believed that she saw every one of the things she talked about.
And not one of them there! It was too bad, I say.' 'Perhaps some people can see things other people can't see, Curdie,' said his mother very gravely.

'I think I will tell you something I saw myself once--only Perhaps You won't believe me either!' 'Oh, mother, mother!' cried Curdie, bursting into tears; 'I don't deserve that, surely!' 'But what I am going to tell you is very strange,' persisted his mother; 'and if having heard it you were to say I must have been dreaming, I don't know that I should have any right to be vexed with you, though I know at least that I was not asleep.' 'Do tell me, mother.