ch
the moon was shining, made a circuit like a bird about to alight, and
settled with him in his nest on the top of the great beech-tree. There
she placed him on her lap and began to hush him as if he were her own
baby, and Diamond was so entirely happy that he did not care to speak a
word. At length, however, he found that he was going to sleep, and
that would be to lose so much, that, pleasant as it was, he could not
consent.

"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 for ever. 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 tree-tops 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,