ke that?"

"Because of the dreams that are so real," he answered rather fretfully.
"Sometimes when I open my eyes I don't believe I'm awake."

"We're both awake," said Mary. She glanced round the room with its
high ceiling and shadowy corners and dim fire-light. "It looks quite
like a dream, and it's the middle of the night, and everybody in the
house is asleep--everybody but us. We are wide awake."

"I don't want it to be a dream," the boy said restlessly.

Mary thought of something all at once.

"If you don't like people to see you," she began, "do you want me to go
away?"

He still held the fold of her wrapper and he gave it a little pull.

"No," he said. "I should be sure you were a dream if you went. If you
are real, sit down on that big footstool and talk. I want to hear
about you."

Mary put down her candle on the table near the bed and sat down on the
cushioned stool. She did not want to go away at all. She wanted to
stay in the mysterious hidden-away room and talk to the mysterious boy.

"What do you want me to tell you?" she said.

He wanted to know how long she had been at Misselthwaite; he wanted to
know which corridor her room was on; he wanted to know what she had
been doing; if she disliked the moor as he disliked it; where she had
lived before she came to Yorkshire. She answered all these questions
and many more and he lay back on his pillow and listened. He made her
tell him a great deal about India and about her voyage across the
ocean. She found out that because he had been an invalid he had not
learned things as other children had. One of his nurses had taught him
to read when he was quite little and he was always reading and looking
at pictures in splendid books.

Though his father rarely saw him when he was awake, he was given all
sorts of wonderful things to amuse himself with. He never seemed to
have been amused, however. He could have anything he asked for and was
never made to do anything he did not like to do. "Everyone is obliged
to do what pleases me," he said indifferently. "It makes me ill to be
angry. No one believes I shall live to grow up."

He said it as if he was so accustomed to the idea that it had ceased to
matter to him at all. He seemed to like the sound of Mary's voice. As
she went on talking he listened in a drowsy, interested way. Once or
twice she wondered if he were not gradually falling into a doze. But
at last he asked a question which op