a friend--with such long hair, too! Why, it was
longer than twenty Diamonds' tails! She was gone. And there he stood,
with his bare feet on the stones of the paved yard.

It was a clear night overhead, and the stars were shining. Orion in
particular was making the most of his bright belt and golden sword.
But the moon was only a poor thin crescent. There was just one great,
jagged, black and gray cloud in the sky, with a steep side to it like a
precipice; and the moon was against this side, and looked as if she had
tumbled off the top of the cloud-hill, and broken herself in rolling
down the precipice. She did not seem comfortable, for she was looking
down into the deep pit waiting for her. At least that was what Diamond
thought as he stood for a moment staring at her. But he was quite wrong,
for the moon was not afraid, and there was no pit she was going down
into, for there were no sides to it, and a pit without sides to it is
not a pit at all. Diamond, however, had not been out so late before in
all his life, and things looked so strange about him!--just as if he had
got into Fairyland, of which he knew quite as much as anybody; for his
mother had no money to buy books to set him wrong on the subject. I have
seen this world--only sometimes, just now and then, you know--look as
strange as ever I saw Fairyland. But I confess that I have not yet seen
Fairyland at its best. I am always going to see it so some time. But if
you had been out in the face and not at the back of the North Wind, on a
cold rather frosty night, and in your night-gown, you would have felt it
all quite as strange as Diamond did. He cried a little, just a little,
he was so disappointed to lose the lady: of course, you, little man,
wouldn't have done that! But for my part, I don't mind people crying so
much as I mind what they cry about, and how they cry--whether they cry
quietly like ladies and gentlemen, or go shrieking like vulgar emperors,
or ill-natured cooks; for all emperors are not gentlemen, and all cooks
are not ladies--nor all queens and princesses for that matter, either.

But it can't be denied that a little gentle crying does one good. It did
Diamond good; for as soon as it was over he was a brave boy again.

"She shan't say it was my fault, anyhow!" said Diamond. "I daresay she
is hiding somewhere to see what I will do. I will look for her."

So he went round the end of the stable towards the kitchen-garden. But
the moment he was cle