True politeness, he remembered having been told, consists in showing an interest in other people's affairs.
'Tell me,' he said, very much wishing to be polite and nice.

'Tell me what happened after I--after I--after you didn't come down the ladder with me.' 'Alone and deserted,' Lucy answered promptly, 'my sworn friend having hooked it and left me, I fell down, and both my hands were full of gravel, and the fierce soldiery surrounded me.' 'I thought you were coming just behind me,' said Philip, frowning.
'Well, I wasn't.' 'And then.' 'Well, then---- You _were_ silly not to stay.

They surrounded me--the soldiers, I mean--and the captain said, "Tell me the truth.

Are you a Destroyer or a Deliverer ?" So, of course, I said I wasn't a destroyer, whatever I was; and then they took me to the palace and said I could be a Princess till the Deliverer King turned up.

They said,' she giggled gaily, 'that my hair was the hair of a Deliverer and not of a Destroyer, and I've been most awfully happy ever since.