“And now,” said Francis, when the meal was over, “what are we going to do next?”
“We can’t do anything but wait for news,” said the Princess. “Our Scouts will let us know soon enough. I only hope the Book People won’t attack us at the same time as the Under Folk. That’s always the danger.”
“How could they get in?” Mavis asked.
“Through the golden door,” said the Princess. “Of course they couldn’t do anything if we hadn’t read the books they’re in. That’s the worst of Education. We’ve all read such an awful lot, and that unlocks the books and they can come out if anyone calls them. Even our fish are intolerably well read—except the Porpoises, dear things, who never could read anything. That’s why the golden door is guarded by them, of course.”
“If not having read things is useful,” said Mavis, “we’ve read almost nothing. Couldn’t we help guard the door?”
“The very thing,” said the Princess joyously; “for you possess the only weapon that can be used against these people or against the authors who created them. If you can truthfully say to them, ‘I never heard of you,’ your words become a deadly sword that strikes at their most sensitive spot.”
“What spot?” asked Bernard. And the Princess answered, “Their vanity.”
So the little party went toward the golden door and found it behind a thick wall of Porpoises. Incessant cries came from beyond the gates, and to every cry they answered like one Porpoise, “We never heard of you. You can’t come in. You can’t come in. We never heard of you.”
“We shan’t be any good here,” said Bernard, among the thick, rich voices of the Porpoises. “They can keep anyone back.”
“Yes,” said the Princess; “but if the Book Folk look through the gate and see that they’re only Porpoises their wounded vanity will heal, and they’ll come on as strongly as ever. Whereas if they did find human beings who have never heard of them the wounds ought to be mortal. As long as you are able truthfully to say that you don’t know them they can’t get in.”