dream, and that Beale, who had been kind to him and taken him through
the pleasant country and slept with him in the bed with the green
curtains, was really waiting for him at Gravesend.
"And this is all a dream," said Dickie, "and I _must_ wake up."
But he couldn't wake up.
And the trees and grass and lights and beautiful things, the kindly
great people with their splendid dresses, the King and Queen, the aunts
and uncles and the little cousins--all these things refused to fade away
and jumble themselves up as things do in dreams. They remained solid and
real. He knew that this must be a dream, and that Beale and Gravesend
and New Cross and the old lame life were the real thing, and yet he
could not wake up. All the same the light had gone out of everything,
and it is small wonder that when he got home at last, very tired indeed,
to his father's house at Deptford he burst into tears as nurse was
undressing him.
"What ails my lamb?" she asked.
"I can't explain; you wouldn't understand," said Dickie.
"Try," said she, very earnestly.
He looked round the room at the tapestries and the heavy furniture.
"I can't," he said.
"Try," she said again.
"It's ... don't laugh, Nurse. There's a dream that feels real--about a
dreadful place--oh, so different from this. But there's a man waiting
there for me that was good to me when I was--when I wasn't ... that was
good to me; he's waiting in the dream and I want to get back to him. And
I can't."
"Thou'rt better here than in that dreadful place," said the nurse,
stroking his hair.
"Yes--but Beale. I know he's waiting there. I wish I could bring him
here."
"Not yet," said the nurse surprisingly; "'tis not easy to bring those we
love from one dream to another."
"One dream to another?"
"Didst never hear that all life is a dream?" she asked him. "But thou
shalt go. Heaven forbid that one of thy race should fail a friend. Look!
there are fresh sheets on thy bed. Lie still and think of him that was
good to thee."
He lay there, very still. He had decided to wake up--to wake up to the
old, hard, cruel life--to poverty, dulness, lameness. There was no other
thing to be done. He _must_ wake up and keep his promise to Beale. But
it was hard--hard--hard. The beautiful house, the beautiful garden, the
games, the boat-building, the soft clothes, the kind people, the
uplifting sense that he was Somebody ... yet he must go. Yes, if he
could he would.
The nurs
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