And it was a long climb, but he reached the top at last--a little landing, with a door in front and one on each side.
Which should he knock at?
As he hesitated, he heard the noise of a spinning wheel.

He knew it at once, because his mother's spinning wheel had been his governess long ago, and still taught him things.

It was the spinning wheel that first taught him to make verses, and to sing, and to think whether all was right inside him; or at least it had helped him in all these things.
Hence it was no wonder he should know a spinning wheel when he heard it sing--even although as the bird of paradise to other birds was the song of that wheel to the song of his mother's.
He stood listening, so entranced that he forgot to knock, and the wheel went on and on, spinning in his brain songs and tales and rhymes, till he was almost asleep as well as dreaming, for sleep does not always come first.

But suddenly came the thought of the poor bird, which had been lying motionless in his hand all the time, and that woke him up, and at once he knocked.
'Come in, Curdie,' said a voice.
Curdie shook.

It was getting rather awful.