'The hardest thing to believe, though I saw it with my own eyes, was when the thin, filmy creature that seemed almost to float about in the moonlight like a bit of the silver paper they put over pictures, or like a handkerchief made of spider threads, took my hand, and rose up.

She was taller and stronger than you, Mother, ever so much!--at least, she looked so.' 'And most certainly was so, Curdie, if she looked so,' said Mrs Peterson.
'Well, I confess,' returned her son, 'that one thing, if there were no other, would make me doubt whether I was not dreaming, after all, wide awake though I fancied myself to be.' 'Of course,' answered his mother, 'it is not for me to say whether you were dreaming or not if you are doubtful of it yourself; but it doesn't make me think I am dreaming when in the summer I hold in my hand the bunch of sweet peas that make my heart glad with their colour and scent, and remember the dry, withered-looking little thing I dibbled into the hole in the same spot in the spring.

I only think how wonderful and lovely it all is.

It seems just as full of reason as it is of wonder.

How it is done I can't tell, only there it is! And there is this in it, too, Curdie--of which you would not be so ready to think--that when you come home to your father and mother, and they find you behaving more like a dear, good son than you have behaved for a long time, they at least are not likely to think you were only dreaming.' 'Still,' said Curdie, looking a little ashamed, 'I might have dreamed my duty.' 'Then dream often, my son; for there must then be more truth in your dreams than in your waking thoughts.