very time when Diamond slept well and
remembered nothing about it in the morning, he had been all that night
at the back of the north wind. I am almost sure that was how he woke
so refreshed, and felt so quiet and hopeful all the day. Indeed he said
this much, though not to me--that always when he woke from such a sleep
there was a something in his mind, he could not tell what--could not
tell whether it was the last far-off sounds of the river dying away in
the distance, or some of the words of the endless song his mother had
read to him on the sea-shore. Sometimes he thought it must have been
the twittering of the swallows--over the shallows, you, know; but it may
have been the chirping of the dingy sparrows picking up their breakfast
in the yard--how can I tell? I don't know what I know, I only know what
I think; and to tell the truth, I am more for the swallows than the
sparrows. When he knew he was coming awake, he would sometimes try hard
to keep hold of the words of what seemed a new song, one he had not
heard before--a song in which the words and the music somehow appeared
to be all one; but even when he thought he had got them well fixed in
his mind, ever as he came awaker--as he would say--one line faded away
out of it, and then another, and then another, till at last there was
nothing left but some lovely picture of water or grass or daisies, or
something else very common, but with all the commonness polished off it,
and the lovely soul of it, which people so seldom see, and, alas! yet
seldomer believe in, shining out. But after that he would sing the
oddest, loveliest little songs to the baby--of his own making, his
mother said; but Diamond said he did not make them; they were made
somewhere inside him, and he knew nothing about them till they were
coming out.

When he woke that first morning he got up at once, saying to himself,
"I've been ill long enough, and have given a great deal of trouble; I
must try and be of use now, and help my mother." When he went into her
room he found her lighting the fire, and his father just getting out of
bed. They had only the one room, besides the little one, not much more
than a closet, in which Diamond slept. He began at once to set things
to rights, but the baby waking up, he took him, and nursed him till
his mother had got the breakfast ready. She was looking gloomy, and his
father was silent; and indeed except Diamond had done all he possibly
could to keep out the mise