He sprang out of bed and went leaping round the room, jumping on to chairs and off them, running and dancing.
"What ails the child?" the nurse grumbled; "get thy hose on, for shame, taking a chill as like as not. What ails thee to act so?"
"It's the not being lame," Dickie explained, coming to a standstill by the window that looked out on the good green garden. "You don't know how wonderful it seems, just at first, you know, not to be lame."
CHAPTER VI
BURIED TREASURE
And then, as he stood there in the sunshine, he suddenly knew.
Having succeeded in dreaming once again the dream which he had so longed to dream, Dickie Harding looked out of the window of the dream-house in Deptford into the dream-garden with its cut yew-trees and box avenues and bowling-greens, and perceived without doubt that this was no dream, but real—as real as the other Deptford where he had sown Artistic Bird Seed and gathered moonflowers and reaped the silver seeds of magic, for it was magic. Dickie was sure of it now. He had not lived in the time of the First James, be sure, without hearing magic talked of. And it seemed quite plain to him that if this that had happened to him was not magic, then there never was and never would be any magic to happen to any one. He turned from the window and looked at the tapestry-hung room—the big bed, the pleasant, wrinkled face of the nurse—and he knew that all this was as real as anything that had happened to him in that other life where he was a little lame boy who took the road with a dirty tramp for father, and lay in the bed with green curtains.
"Was thy friend well, in thy dream?" the nurse asked.