Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald 12-14 Free Audiobooks Kids Open Children's Library.
section 7 of the prince's enter goblin this is a librivox recording or librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org
recording by lizzy driver the princess and the goblin by george mcdonald chapters 12 to 14 chapter 12 a short chapter about curdy kirdy spent many nights in the mine his father and he had taken mrs peterson into the secret for their new mother could hold her tongue which was more than could be said of all the miners wives but curtis did not tell her that every night he spent in the mine part of it went in earning a new red petticoat for her mrs peterson was such a nice good mother all mothers are nice and good more or less but mrs peterson was nice and good all more and no less she made and kept a little heaven in that poor cottage on the high hillside for a husband and son to go home to out of the low and rather dreary earth in which they worked i doubt if the princess was very much happier even in the arms of a huge great grandmother then peter and curdy were in the arms of mrs peterson
true her hands were hard and chopped and large but it was with work for them and therefore in the sight of angels her hands were so much the more beautiful and if kerdi worked hard to get her a petticoat she worked hard every day to get him comforts which he would have missed much more than she would a new petticoat even in winter not that she and curly ever thought of how much they worked for each other that would have spoiled everything when left alone in the mine kirdi always worked on for an hour or two at first following the load which according to glump would lead at last into the deserted habitation after that he would set out on a reconnoitering expedition in order to manage this or rather return from it better than the first time he had brought a huge ball of fine string having learned the trick from hoppo my thumb whose history his mother had often told him not that hoppo my thumb had ever used a ball of string i should be sorry to be supposed so far out of my classics but the principle was the same as that of the pebbles the end of this string he fastened to his pickaxe which figured no bad anchor and then with the ball in his hand unrolling it as he went set out in the dark through the natural gangs of the goblins territory the first night or two he came upon nothing worth remembering saw only a little of the home life of the cobs in the various caves they called houses failed and coming upon anything to cast light upon the foregoing design which kept the inundation for the present in the background but at length i think on the third or fourth night he found partly guided by the noise of their implements a company of evidently the best sappers and miners amongst them hard at work what were they about it could not well be the inundation seeing that had in the meantime been postponed to something else then what was it he lurked and watched every now and then in the greatest risk of being detected but without success he had again and again to retreat in haste a proceeding rendered the more difficult that he had to gather up his string as he returned upon its course it was not that he was afraid of the goblins but that he was afraid of their finding out that they were watched which might have prevented the discovery at which he aimed
sometimes his haste had to be such that when he reached home towards mourning his string for lack of time to wind it up as he dodged the cobs would be in what seemed most hopeless entanglement but after a good sleep though a short one he always found his mother had got it right again there it was wound in a most respectable ball ready for use the moment he should want it i can't think how you do it mother he would say i follow the thread she would answer just as you do in the mine she never had...