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, stroki