aby it is--to sleep so much! Shall I
put him down, mother?"

Diamond chattered away. What rose in his happy little heart ran out
of his mouth, and did his father and mother good. When he went to bed,
which he did early, being more tired, as you may suppose, than usual, he
was still thinking what the nonsense could be like which the angels
sang when they were too happy to sing sense. But before coming to
any conclusion he fell fast asleep. And no wonder, for it must be
acknowledged a difficult question.

That night he had a very curious dream which I think my readers would
like to have told them. They would, at least, if they are as fond of
nice dreams as I am, and don't have enough of them of their own.

He dreamed that he was running about in the twilight in the old garden.
He thought he was waiting for North Wind, but she did not come. So he
would run down to the back gate, and see if she were there. He ran and
ran. It was a good long garden out of his dream, but in his dream it
had grown so long and spread out so wide that the gate he wanted was
nowhere. He ran and ran, but instead of coming to the gate found himself
in a beautiful country, not like any country he had ever been in before.
There were no trees of any size; nothing bigger in fact than hawthorns,
which were full of may-blossom. The place in which they grew was wild
and dry, mostly covered with grass, but having patches of heath. It
extended on every side as far as he could see. But although it was so
wild, yet wherever in an ordinary heath you might have expected furze
bushes, or holly, or broom, there grew roses--wild and rare--all kinds.
On every side, far and near, roses were glowing. There too was the
gum-cistus, whose flowers fall every night and come again the next
morning, lilacs and syringas and laburnums, and many shrubs besides,
of which he did not know the names; but the roses were everywhere. He
wandered on and on, wondering when it would come to an end. It was of no
use going back, for there was no house to be seen anywhere. But he was
not frightened, for you know Diamond was used to things that were
rather out of the way. He threw himself down under a rose-bush, and fell
asleep.

He woke, not out of his dream, but into it, thinking he heard a child's
voice, calling "Diamond, Diamond!" He jumped up, but all was still about
him. The rose-bushes were pouring out their odours in clouds. He could
see the scent like mists of the same colour a