And now Curdie set himself to interest and amuse the king, and prevent him from thinking too much, in order that he might the sooner think the better.
Presently, at His Majesty's request, he began from the beginning, and told everything he could recall of his life, about his father and mother and their cottage on the mountain, of the inside of the mountain and the work there, about the goblins and his adventures with them.
When he came to finding the princess and her nurse overtaken by the twilight on the mountain, Irene took up her share of the tale, and told all about herself to that point, and then Curdie took it up again; and so they went on, each fitting in the part that the other did not know, thus keeping the hoop of the story running straight; and the king listened with wondering and delighted ears, astonished to find what he could so ill comprehend, yet fitting so well together from the lips of two narrators.
At last, with the mission given him by the wonderful princess and his consequent adventures, Curdie brought up the whole tale to the present moment.

Then a silence fell, and Irene and Curdie thought the king was asleep.

But he was far from it; he was thinking about many things.
After a long pause he said: 'Now at last, MY children, I am compelled to believe many things I could not and do not yet understand--things I used to hear, and sometimes see, as often as I visited my mother's home.

Once, for instance, I heard my mother say to her father--speaking of me--"He is a good, honest boy, but he will be an old man before he understands"; and my grandfather answered, "Keep up your heart, child: my mother will look after him." I thought often of their words, and the many strange things besides I both heard and saw in that house; but by degrees, because I could not understand them, I gave up thinking of them.

And indeed I had almost forgotten them, when you, my child, talking that day about the Queen Irene and her pigeons, and what you had seen in her garret, brought them all back to my mind in a vague mass.