corner in front of them; and when they turned the corner too, they found
it quiet there, but he saw nothing of the lady.
“Now you lead me,” he said, taking her hand, “and I'll take care of you.”
The girl withdrew her hand, but only to dry her eyes with her frock, for
the other had enough to do with her broom. She put it in his again, and
led him, turning after turning, until they stopped at a cellar-door in a
very dirty lane. There she knocked.
“I shouldn't like to live here,” said Diamond.
“Oh, yes, you would, if you had nowhere else to go to,” answered the
girl. “I only wish we may get in.”
“I don't want to go in,” said Diamond.
“Where do you mean to go, then?”
“Home to my home.”
“Where's that?”
“I don't exactly know.”
“Then you're worse off than I am.”
“Oh no, for North Wind--” began Diamond, and stopped, he hardly knew
why.
“What?” said the girl, as she held her ear to the door listening.
But Diamond did not reply. Neither did old Sal.
“I told you so,” said the girl. “She is wide awake hearkening. But we
don't get in.”
“What will you do, then?” asked Diamond.
“Move on,” she answered.
“Where?”
“Oh, anywheres. Bless you, I'm used to it.”
“Hadn't you better come home with me, then?”
“That's a good joke, when you don't know where it is. Come on.”
“But where?”
“Oh, nowheres in particular. Come on.”
Diamond obeyed. The wind had now fallen considerably. They wandered on
and on, turning in this direction and that, without any reason for one
way more than another, until they had got out of the thick of the houses
into a waste kind of place. By this time they were both very tired.
Diamond felt a good deal inclined to cry, and thought he had been very
silly to get down from the back of North Wind; not that he would have
minded it if he had done the girl any good; but he thought he had been
of no use to her. He was mistaken there, for she was far happier for
having Diamond with her than if she had been wandering about alone. She
did not seem so tired as he was.
“Do let us rest a bit,” said Diamond.
“Let's see,” she answered. “There's something like a railway there.
Perhaps there's an open arch.”
They went towards it and found one, and, better still, there was an
empty barrel lying under the arch.
“Hallo! here we are!” said the girl. “A barrel's the jolliest bed
going--on the tramp, I mean. We'll have forty winks, and then go on
again.”
She crept in, and Diamond crept in beside her. They put their arms round
each other, and when he began to grow warm, Diamond's courage began to
come back.
“This is jolly!” he said. “I'm so glad!”
“I don't think so much of it,” said the girl. “I'm used to it, I
suppose. But I can't think how a kid like you comes to be out all alone
this time o' night.”
She called him a kid, but she was not really a month older than he was;
only she had had to work for her bread, and that so soon makes people
older.
“But I shouldn't have been out so late if I hadn't got down to help
you,” said Diamond. “North Wind is gone home long ago.”
“I think you must ha' got out o' one o' them Hidget Asylms,” said the
girl. “You said something about the north wind afore that I couldn't get
the rights of.”
So now, for the sake of his character, Diamond had to tell her the whole
story.
She did not believe a word of it. She said he wasn't such a flat as to
believe all that bosh. But as she spoke there came a great blast of wind
through the arch, and set the barrel rolling. So they made haste to get
out of it, for they had no notion of being rolled over and over as if
they had been packed tight and wouldn't hurt, like a barrel of herrings.
“I thought we should have had a sleep,” said Diamond; “but I can't say
I'm very sleepy after all. Come, let's go on again.”
They wandered on and on, sometimes sitting on a door-step, but always
turning into lanes or fields when they had a chance.
They found themselves at last on a rising ground that sloped rather
steeply on the other side. It was a waste kind of spot below, bounded by
an irregular wall, with a few doors in it. Outside lay broken things in
general, from garden rollers to flower-pots and wine-bottles. But the
moment they reached the brow of the rising ground, a gust of wind
seized them and blew them down hill as fast as they could run. Nor could
Diamond stop before he went bang against one of the doors in the wall.
To his dismay it burst open. When they came to themselves they peeped
in. It was the back door of a garden.
“Ah, ah!” cried Diamond, after staring for a few moments, “I thought
so! North Wind takes nobody in! Here I am in master's garden! I tell you
what, little girl, you just bore a hole in old Sal's wall, and put your
mouth to it, and say, 'Please, North Wind, mayn't I go out with you?'
and then you'll see what'll come.”
“I daresay I shall. But I'm out in the wind too often already to want
more of it.”
“I said with the North Wind, not in it.”
“It's all one.”
“It's not all one.”
“It is all one.”
“But I know best.”
“And I know better. I'll box your ears,” said the girl.
Diamond got very angry. But he remembered that even if she did box his
ears, he musn't box hers again, for she was a girl, and all that boys
must do, if girls are rude, is to go away and leave them. So he went in
at the door.
“Good-bye, mister” said the girl.
This brought Diamond to his senses.
“I'm sorry I was cross,” he said. “Come in, and my mother will give you
some breakfast.”
“No, thank you. I must be off to my crossing. It's morning now.”
“I'm very sorry for you,” said Diamond.
“Well, it is a life to be tired of--what with old Sal, and so many holes
in my shoes.”
“I wonder you're so good. I should kill myself.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn't! When I think of it, I always want to see what's
coming next, and so I always wait till next is over. Well! I suppose
there's somebody happy somewheres. But it ain't in them carriages. Oh
my! how they do look sometimes--fit to bite your head off! Good-bye!”
She ran up the hill and disappeared behind it. Then Diamond shut the
door as he best could, and ran through the kitchen-garden to the stable.
And wasn't he glad to get into his own blessed bed again!
CHAPTER V. THE SUMMER-HOUSE
DIAMOND said nothing to his mother about his adventures. He had half a
notion that North Wind was a friend of his mother, and that, if she did
not know all about it, at least she did not mind his going anywhere with
the lady of the wind. At the same time he doubted whether he might not
appear to be telling stories if he told all, especially as he could
hardly believe it himself when he thought about it in the middle of the
day, although when the twilight was once half-way on to night he had no
doubt about it, at least for the first few days after he had been with
her. The girl that swept the crossing had certainly refused to believe
him. Besides, he felt sure that North Wind would tell him if he ought to
speak.
It was some time before he saw the lady of the wind again. Indeed
nothing remarkable took place in Diamond's history until the following
week. This was what happened then. Diamond the horse wanted new shoes,
and Diamond's father took him out of the stable, and was just getting on
his back to ride him to the forge, when he saw his little boy standing
by the pump, and looking at him wistfully. Then the coachman took his
foot out of the stirrup, left his hold of the mane and bridle, came
across to his boy, lifted him up, and setting him on the horse's back,
told him to sit up like a man. He then led away both Diamonds together.
The boy atop felt not a little tremulous as the great muscles that
lifted the legs of the horse knotted and relaxed against his legs, and
he cowered towards the withers, grasping with his hands the bit of mane
worn short by the collar; but when his father looked back at him,
saying once more, “Sit up, Diamond,” he let the mane go and sat up,
notwithstanding that the horse, thinking, I suppose, that his master
had said to him, “Come up, Diamond,” stepped out faster. For both the
Diamonds were just grandly obedient. And Diamond soon found that, as he
was obedient to his father, so the horse was obedient to him. For he had
not ridden far before he found courage to reach forward and catch hold
of the bridle, and when his father, whose hand was upon it, felt the boy
pull it towards him, he looked up and smiled, and, well pleased, let go
his hold, and left Diamond to guide Diamond; and the boy soon found that
he could do so perfectly. It was a grand thing to be able to guide a
great beast like that. And another discovery he made was that, in order
to guide the horse, he had in a measure to obey the horse first. If he
did not yield his body to the motions of the horse's body, he could not
guide him; he must fall off.
The blacksmith lived at some distance, deeper into London. As they
crossed the angle of a square, Diamond, who was now quite comfortable
on his living throne, was glancing this way and that in a gentle pride,
when he saw a girl sweeping a crossing scuddingly before a lady. The
lady was his father's mistress, Mrs. Coleman, and the little girl was
she for whose sake he had got off North Wind's back. He drew Diamond's
bridle in eager anxiety to see whether her outstretched hand would
gather a penny from Mrs. Coleman. But she had given one at the last
crossing, and the hand returned only to grasp its broom. Diamond could
not bear it. He had a penny in his pocket, a gift of the same lady the
day before, and he tumbled off his horse to give it to the girl. He
tumbled off, I say, for he did tumble when he reached the ground. But he
got up in an instant, and ran, searching his pocket as he ran. She
made him a pretty courtesy when he offered his treasure, but with a
bewildered stare. She thought first: “Then he was on the back of the
North Wind after all!” but, looking up at the sound of the horse's feet
on the paved crossing, she changed her idea, saying to herself, “North
Wind is his father's horse! That's the secret of it! Why couldn't he say
so?” And she had a mind to refuse the penny. But his smile put it all
right, and she not only took his penny but put it in her mouth with a
“Thank you, mister. Did they wollop you then?”
“Oh no!” answered Diamond. “They never wollops me.”
“Lor!” said the little girl, and was speechless.
Meantime his father, looking up, and seeing the horse's back bare,
suffered a pang of awful dread, but the next moment catching sight of
him, took him up and put him on, saying--
“Don't get off again, Diamond. The horse might have put his foot on
you.”
“No, father,” answered the boy, and rode on in majestic safety.
The summer drew near, warm and splendid. Miss Coleman was a little
better in health, and sat a good deal in the garden. One day she saw
Diamond peeping through the shrubbery, and called him. He talked to her
so frankly that she often sent for him after that, and by degrees it
came about that he had leave to run in the garden as he pleased. He
never touched any of the flowers or blossoms, for he was not like some
boys who cannot enjoy a thing without pulling it to pieces, and so
preventing every one from enjoying it after them.
A week even makes such a long time in a child's life, that Diamond had
begun once more to feel as if North Wind were a dream of some far-off
year.
One hot evening, he had been sitting with the young mistress, as they
called her, in a little summer-house at the bottom of the lawn--a
wonderful thing for beauty, the boy thought, for a little window in the
side of it was made of coloured glass. It grew dusky, and the lady began
to feel chill, and went in, leaving the boy in the summer-house. He sat
there gazing out at a bed of tulips, which, although they had closed for
the night, could not go quite asleep for the wind that kept waving
them about. All at once he saw a great bumble-bee fly out of one of the
tulips.
“There! that is something done,” said a voice--a gentle, merry, childish
voice, but so tiny. “At last it was. I thought he would have had to stay
there all night, poor fellow! I did.”
Diamond could not tell whether the voice was near or far away, it was so
small and yet so clear. He had never seen a fairy, but he had heard of
such, and he began to look all about for one. And there was the tiniest
creature sliding down the stem of the tulip!
“Are you the fairy that herds the bees?” he asked, going out of the
summer-house, and down on his knees on the green shore of the tulip-bed.
“I'm not a fairy,” answered the little creature.
“How do you know that?”
“It would become you better to ask how you are to know it.”
“You've just told me.”
“Yes. But what's the use of knowing a thing only because you're told
it?”
“Well, how am I to know you are not a fairy? You do look very like one.”
“In the first place, fairies are much bigger than you see me.”
“Oh!” said Diamond reflectively; “I thought they were very little.”
“But they might be tremendously bigger than I am, and yet not very big.
Why, I could be six times the size I am, and not be very huge. Besides,
a fairy can't grow big and little at will, though the nursery-tales do
say so: they don't know better. You stupid Diamond! have you never seen
me before?”
And, as she spoke, a moan of wind bent the tulips almost to the ground,
and the creature laid her hand on Diamond's shoulder. In a moment he
knew that it was North Wind.
“I am very stupid,” he said; “but I never saw you so small before, not
even when you were nursing the primrose.”
“Must you see me every size that can be measured before you know me,
Diamond?”
“But how could I think it was you taking care of a great stupid
bumble-bee?”
“The more stupid he was the more need he had to be taken care of. What
with sucking honey and trying to open the door, he was nearly dated; and
when it opened in the morning to let the sun see the tulip's heart, what
would the sun have thought to find such a stupid thing lying there--with
wings too?”
“But how do you have time to look after bees?”
“I don't look after bees. I had this one to look after. It was hard
work, though.”
“Hard work! Why, you could blow a chimney down, or--or a boy's cap off,”
said Diamond.
“Both are easier than to blow a tulip open. But I scarcely know the
difference between hard and easy. I am always able for what I have to
do. When I see my work, I just rush at it--and it is done. But I mustn't