“Please, dear North Wind,” he said, “I am so happy that I’m afraid it’s a dream. How am I to know that it’s not a dream?”
“What does it matter?” returned North Wind.
“I should, cry” said Diamond.
“But why should you cry? The dream, if it is a dream, is a pleasant one—is it not?”
“That’s just why I want it to be true.”
“Have you forgotten what you said to Nanny about her dream?”
“It’s not for the dream itself—I mean, it’s not for the pleasure of it,” answered Diamond, “for I have that, whether it be a dream or not; it’s for you, North Wind; I can’t bear to find it a dream, because then I should lose you. You would be nobody then, and I could not bear that. You ain’t a dream, are you, dear North Wind? Do say No, else I shall cry, and come awake, and you’ll be gone forever. I daren’t dream about you once again if you ain’t anybody.”
“I’m either not a dream, or there’s something better that’s not a dream, Diamond,” said North Wind, in a rather sorrowful tone, he thought.
“But it’s not something better—it’s you I want, North Wind,” he persisted, already beginning to cry a little.
She made no answer, but rose with him in her arms and sailed away over the treetops till they came to a meadow, where a flock of sheep was feeding.
“Do you remember what the song you were singing a week ago says about Bo-Peep—how she lost her sheep, but got twice as many lambs?” asked North Wind, sitting down on the grass, and placing him in her lap as before.
“Oh yes, I do, well enough,” answered Diamond; “but I never just quite liked that rhyme.”
“Why not, child?”
“Because it seems to say one’s as good as another, or two new ones are better than one that’s lost. I’ve been thinking about it a great deal, and it seems to me that although any one sixpence is as good as any other sixpence, not twenty lambs would do instead of one sheep whose face you knew. Somehow, when once you’ve looked into anybody’s eyes, right deep down into them, I mean, nobody will do for that one any more. Nobody, ever so beautiful or so good, will make up for that one going out of sight. So you see, North Wind, I can’t help being frightened to think that perhaps I am only dreaming, and you are nowhere at all. Do tell me that you are my own, real, beautiful North Wind.”
Again she rose, and shot herself into the air, as if uneasy because she could not answer him; and Diamond lay quiet in her arms, waiting for what she would say. He tried to see up into her face, for he was dreadfully afraid she was not answering him because she could not say that she was not a dream; but she had let her hair fall all over her face so that he could not see it. This frightened him still more.
“Do speak, North Wind,” he said at last.
“I never speak when I have nothing to say,” she replied.
“Then I do think you must be a real North Wind, and no dream,” said Diamond.
“But I’m looking for something to say all the time.”
“But I don’t want you to say what’s hard to find. If you were to say one word to comfort me that wasn’t true, then I should know you must be a dream, for a great beautiful lady like you could never tell a lie.”
“But she mightn’t know how to say what she had to say, so that a little boy like you would understand it,” said North Wind. “Here, let us get down again, and I will try to tell you what I think. You musn’t suppose I am able to answer all your questions, though. There are a great many things I don’t understand more than you do.”
She descended on a grassy hillock, in the midst of a wild furzy common. There was a rabbit-warren underneath, and some of the rabbits came out of their holes, in the moonlight, looking very sober and wise, just like patriarchs standing in their tent-doors, and looking about them before going to bed. When they saw North Wind, instead of turning round and vanishing again with a thump of their heels, they cantered slowly up to her and snuffled all about her with their long upper lips, which moved every way at once. That was their way of kissing her; and, as she talked to Diamond, she would every now and then stroke down their furry backs, or lift and play with their long ears. They would, Diamond thought, have leaped upon her lap, but that he was there already.
“I think,” said she, after they had been sitting silent for a while, “that if I were only a dream, you would not have been able to love me so. You love me when you are not with me, don’t you?”
“Indeed I do,” answered Diamond, stroking her hand. “I see! I see! How could I be able to love you as I do if you weren’t there at all, you know? Besides, I couldn’t be able to
