to like," Mary stammered. "Have you
been here always?"

"Nearly always. Sometimes I have been taken to places at the seaside,
but I won't stay because people stare at me. I used to wear an iron
thing to keep my back straight, but a grand doctor came from London to
see me and said it was stupid. He told them to take it off and keep me
out in the fresh air. I hate fresh air and I don't want to go out."

"I didn't when first I came here," said Mary. "Why do you keep looking
at me like 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 firelight. "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