It might as well have been in the dust hole! If it had been locked up--then, to be sure!' 'Drinking!' said the chief porter, with a husky laugh.

'And who wouldn't drink when he had a chance?
Or who would repent it, except that the drink was gone?
Tell me that, Miss Innocence.' 'Lying!' said a great, coarse footman.

'I suppose you mean when I told you yesterday you were a pretty girl when you didn't pout?
Lying, indeed! Tell us something worth repenting of! Lying is the way of Gwyntystorm.

You should have heard Jabez lying to the cook last night! He wanted a sweetbread for his pup, and pretended it was for the princess! Ha! ha! ha!' 'Unkindness! I wonder who's unkind! Going and listening to any stranger against her fellow servants, and then bringing back his wicked words to trouble them!' said the oldest and worst of the housemaids.
'One of ourselves, too! Come, you hypocrite! This is all an invention of yours and your young man's, to take your revenge of us because we found you out in a lie last night.

Tell true now: wasn't it the same that stole the loaf and the pie that sent you with the impudent message ?' As she said this, she stepped up to the housemaid and gave her, instead of time to answer, a box on the ear that almost threw her down; and whoever could get at her began to push and bustle and pinch and punch her.
'You invite your fate,' she said quietly.
They fell furiously upon her, drove her from the hall with kicks and blows, hustled her along the passage, and threw her down the stair to the wine cellar, then locked the door at the top of it, and went back to their breakfast.
In the meantime the king and the princess had had their bread and wine, and the princess, with Curdie's help, had made the room as tidy as she could--they were terribly neglected by the servants.