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374 At the Back of the North Wind
"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." |
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