The Enchanted Castle quotes

It was a very sleek boy, brown and thin and interesting-looking, that knocked at the door of the parlour where Mademoiselle sat reading a yellow-covered book and wishing vain wishes.

Gerald could always make himself look interesting at a moment’s notice, a very useful accomplishment in dealing with strange grownups.

It was done by opening his grey eyes rather wide, allowing the corners of his mouth to droop, and assuming a gentle, pleading expression, resembling that of the late little Lord Fauntleroy—who must, by the way, be quite old now, and an awful prig.

“It’s not that,” said Kathleen suddenly. “I know what Gerald means, only I never think of the things in time myself.

You see, if you want grownups to be nice to you the least you can do is to be nice to them and think of little things to please them.

I never think of any myself. Jerry does; that’s why all the old ladies like him. It’s not bribery. It’s a sort of honesty—like paying for things.”

I never think of any myself. Jerry does; that’s why all the old ladies like him.

It’s not bribery. It’s a sort of honesty⁠—like paying for things.

”

“I don’t believe you’re a Princess at all,” said Jimmy; “at least—”

“Don’t bother about believing it, if you don’t like,” said the Princess. “It doesn’t so much matter what you believe as what I am.”

She turned to the others.

But the things that seem really likely, like fairytales and magic, are, so say the grownups, not true at all. Yet they are so easy to believe, especially when you see them happening.

And, as I am always telling you, the most wonderful things happen to all sorts of people, only you never hear about them because the people think that no one will believe their stories, and so they don’t tell them to anyone except me.

And they tell me, because they know that I can believe anything.

“And oh! I do wish you hadn’t written such whoppers to your aunt. I’m sure we oughtn’t to tell lies for anything.”

“What’s the use of telling the truth if nobody believes you?” came from among the splashes.

“I don’t know,” said Kathleen, “but I’m sure we ought to tell the truth.”

by day those gardens were like dreams, at night they were like visions. He could not see his feet as he walked, but he saw the movement of the dewy grass-blades that his feet displaced.

And he had that extraordinary feeling so difficult to describe, and yet so real and so unforgettable⁠—the feeling that he was in another world, that had covered up and hidden the old world as a carpet covers a floor.

The floor was there all right, underneath, but what he walked on was the carpet that covered it—and that carpet was drenched in magic, as the turf was drenched in dew.

The floor was there all right, underneath, but what he walked on was the carpet that covered it—and that carpet was drenched in magic, as the turf was drenched in dew.

The feeling was very wonderful; perhaps you will feel it some day. There are still some places in the world where it can be felt, but they grow fewer every year.

The enchantment of the garden held him.

“The way she walks,” said Gerald.

You can, in fact, almost always tell whether the thing has been found that people have gone to look for by the sound of their feet as they return.

Mabel’s feet said “No go” as plain as they could speak. And her face confirmed the cheerless news.

“But how his uncle could he be so cruel to leave him the château and no money?” Mademoiselle asked; and Kathleen and Jimmy stood amazed at the sudden keenness of her interest in what seemed to them the dullest story.

“Oh, I can tell you that too,” said Mabel.

“Lord Yalding wanted to marry a lady his uncle didn’t want him to, a barmaid or a ballet lady or something, and he wouldn’t give her up, and his uncle said, ‘Well then,’ and left everything to the cousin.”

“Would she really like it?” Kathleen wondered. “Aunt Emily says grownups never really like playing. They do it to please us.”

“They little know,” Gerald answered, “how often we do it to please them.”

“We’ve got to do that dressing-up with the Princess clothes anyhow—we said we would,” said Kathleen. “Let’s treat her to that.”

“Can you recommend me to a good hotel?”

The speaker had no inside to his head. Gerald had the best of reasons for knowing it. The speaker’s coat had no shoulders inside it—only the crossbar that a jacket is slung on by careful ladies.

He won’t feed out of any hand but mine.” Gerald did not mind what he said.

The only people one is allowed to tell lies to are the Ugly-Wuglies; they are all clothes and have no insides, because they are not human beings, but only a sort of very real visions, and therefore cannot be really deceived, though they may seem to be.

Through the back door that has the blue, yellow, red, and green glass in it, down the iron steps into the yard, Gerald led the way, and the Ugly-Wuglies trooped after him.

“Wonder what lies he’s telling them,” Jimmy grumbled.

“Oh! not lies,” said Mabel; “he’s only telling them as much of the truth as it’s good for them to know.”

“If you’d been a man,” said Jimmy witheringly, “you’d have been a beastly Jesuit, and hid up chimneys.”

“If you’d been a man,” said Jimmy witheringly, “you’d have been a beastly Jesuit, and hid up chimneys.”

“If I were only just a boy,” Mabel retorted, “I shouldn’t be scared out of my life by a pack of old coats.”

“I’m so sorry you were frightened,” Gerald’s honeyed tones floated down the staircase; “we didn’t think about you being frightened. And it was a good trick, wasn’t it?”

“Whispering,” said the smallest Ugly-Wugly suddenly, “ain’t manners.”

“He hasn’t any, anyhow,” whispered the lady Ugly-Wugly; “don’t mind him⁠—quite a self-made man,”

and squeezed Mabel’s arm with horrible confidential flabbiness.

Here he sat down, a child on each side of him, drew a hand of each through his velveteen arm, pressed them to his velveteen sides in a friendly, reassuring way, and said: “Now then! Go ahead!”

Mabel merely sobbed. We must excuse her. She had been very brave, and I have no doubt that all heroines, from Joan of Arc to Grace Darling, have had their sobbing moments.

But Gerald said: “It’s no use. If I made up a story you’d see through it.”

On a stone seat well in the sun sat the two lady Ugly-Wuglies, and Kathleen approached them gingerly.

Valour is easier in the sunshine than at night, as we all know.

When she and Jimmy came close to the bench, they saw that the Ugly-Wuglies were only Ugly-Wuglies such as they had often made. There was no life in them. Jimmy shook them to pieces, and a sigh of relief burst from Kathleen.

What was Gerald to do? What could he do?

It is almost impossible, especially for one so young as Gerald, to enter a large London office and explain that the elderly and respected head of it is not what he seems, but is really your little brother, who has been suddenly advanced to age and wealth by a tricky wishing ring.

If you think it’s a possible thing, try it, that’s all. Nor could he knock at the door of Mr. U. W.

There is a curtain, thin as gossamer, clear as glass, strong as iron, that hangs forever between the world of magic and the world that seems to us to be real.

And when once people have found one of the little weak spots in that curtain which are marked by magic rings, and amulets, and the like, almost anything may happen.

Their marble clothes did not seem to interfere at all with their swimming, as your clothes would if you suddenly jumped into the basin of the Trafalgar Square fountains and tried to swim there.

And they swam most beautifully, with that perfect ease and absence of effort or tiredness which you must have noticed about your own swimming⁠—in dreams.

And it was the most lovely place to swim in; the water-lilies, whose long, snaky stalks are so inconvenient to ordinary swimmers, did not in the least interfere with the movements of marble arms and legs. The moon was high in the clear sky-dome.

“No, but I am seven times as much,” said the Sun-god. “You see, there’s numbers, and there’s quantity, to say nothing of quality. You see that, I’m sure.”

“Explanations always weary me,” Phoebus interrupted.

“Shall we join the ladies?”

“come on.” Downheartedly, and quite sure that there wasn’t and couldn’t be any boat, the four children started to explore the island. How often each one of them had dreamed of islands, how often wished to be stranded on one! Well, now they were.

Reality is sometimes quite different from dreams, and not half so nice.

It was worst of all for Mabel, whose shoes and stockings were far away on the mainland. The coarse grass and brambles were very cruel to bare legs and feet.

to gloat over all the things which they knew and which the crowd didn’t know about the castle and the sliding panels, the magic ring and the statues that came alive.

Perhaps one of the pleasantest things about magic happenings is the feeling which they give you of knowing what other people not only don’t know but wouldn’t, so to speak, believe if they did.

On the white road outside the gates of the castle was a dark spattering of breaks and wagonettes and dogcarts. Three or four waiting motorcars puffed fatly where they stood, and bicycles sprawled in heaps along the grassy hollow by the red brick wall.

Kathleen did not mean to give up the ring; Mabel did not mean that she should; Jimmy certainly used no force. Yet presently he held it in his hand. It was his hour.

There are times like that for all of us, when what we say shall be done is done.

“Now,” said Jimmy, “this is the ring Mabel told you about. I say it is a wishing-ring. And if you will put it on your hand and wish, whatever you wish will happen.”

“Disguised as a fiddlestick-end,” said Gerald. “Ha, ha! I see something old Sherlock Holmes never saw, nor that idiot Watson, either.

If you want a really impenetrable disguise, you ought to disguise yourself as what you really are.

I’ll remember that.”

So they went, Mabel and Jimmy leading, while Mademoiselle and Lord Yalding followed, hand in hand.

“It’s much safer to walk hand in hand,” said Lord Yalding; “with these children at large one never knows what may happen next.”