ONCE MORE
THE next night Diamond was seated by his open window, with his head on his hand, rather tired, but so eagerly waiting for the promised visit that he was afraid he could not sleep. But he started suddenly, and found that he had been already asleep. He rose, and looking out of the window saw something white against his beech-tree. It was North Wind. She was holding by one hand to a top branch.
Her hair and her garments went floating away behind her over the tree, whose top was swaying about while the others were still.
"Are you ready, Diamond?" she asked.
"Yes," answered Diamond, "quite ready."
In a moment she was at the window, and her arms came in and took him.
She sailed away so swiftly that he could at first mark nothing but the speed with which the clouds above and the dim earth below went rushing past. But soon he began to see that the sky was very lovely, with mottled clouds all about the moon, on which she threw faint colours like those of mother-of-pearl, or an opal. The night was warm, and in the lady's arms he did not feel the wind which down below was making waves in the ripe corn, and ripples on the rivers and lakes.
At length they descended on the side of an open earthy hill, just where, from beneath a stone, a spring came bubbling out.
"I am going to take you along this little brook," said North Wind.
"I am not wanted for anything else to-night, so I can give you a treat."She stooped over the stream and holding Diamond down close to the surface of it, glided along level with its flow as it ran down the hill. And the song of the brook came up into Diamond's ears, and grew and grew and changed with every turn. It seemed to Diamond to be singing the story of its life to him. And so it was.
It began with a musical tinkle which changed to a babble and then to a gentle rushing. Sometimes its song would almost cease, and then break out again, tinkle, babble, and rush, all at once. At the bottom of the hill they came to a small river, into which the brook flowed with a muffled but merry sound. Along the surface of the river, darkly clear below them in the moonlight, they floated; now, where it widened out into a little lake, they would hover for a moment over a bed of water-lilies, and watch them swing about, folded in sleep, as the water on which they leaned swayed in the presence of North Wind;and now they would watch the fishes asleep among their roots below.
Sometimes she would hold Diamond over a deep hollow curving into the bank, that he might look far into the cool stillness.
Sometimes she would leave the river and sweep across a clover-field.
The bees were all at home, and the clover was asleep. Then she would return and follow the river. It grew wider and wider as it went.
Now the armies of wheat and of oats would hang over its rush from the opposite banks; now the willows would dip low branches in its still waters; and now it would lead them through stately trees and grassy banks into a lovely garden, where the roses and lilies were asleep, the tender flowers quite folded up, and only a few wide-awake and sending out their life in sweet, strong odours. Wider and wider grew the stream, until they came upon boats lying along its banks, which rocked a little in the flutter of North Wind's garments. Then came houses on the banks, each standing in a lovely lawn, with grand trees; and in parts the river was so high that some of the grass and the roots of some of the trees were under water, and Diamond, as they glided through between the stems, could see the grass at the bottom of the water.
Then they would leave the river and float about and over the houses, one after another--beautiful rich houses, which, like fine trees, had taken centuries to grow. There was scarcely a light to be seen, and not a movement to be heard: all the people in them lay fast asleep.
"What a lot of dreams they must be dreaming!" said Diamond.
"Yes," returned North Wind. "They can't surely be all lies--can they?"
"I should think it depends a little on who dreams them,"suggested Diamond.
"Yes," said North Wind. "The people who think lies, and do lies, are very likely to dream lies. But the people who love what is true will surely now and then dream true things. But then something depends on whether the dreams are home-grown, or whether the seed of them is blown over somebody else's garden-wall. Ah! there's some one awake in this house!"They were floating past a window in which a light was burning.
Diamond heard a moan, and looked up anxiously in North Wind's face.
