And when the sun came over the top of the sweet chestnut it fell upon a warm and comfortable heap of children asleep.
You really can’t stay up all night, or even dream that you stay up, and then hold important councils next day just as though nothing had happened.
When the children awoke, because the sun had crept up over the sweet chestnut and was shining straight into their eyes, everything looked different and much more interesting.
‘I tell you what,’ said Charlotte. ‘Let’s do fern-seed again.’
‘It’s only on the eve of——’ Charles began, but Charlotte interrupted.
‘The seed goes on when once you’ve planted it—chewed it, I mean. I’m certain it does. If we don’t see anything, we may dream something more.’
‘There wouldn’t be time for a really thick dream before dinner,’ Charles objected.
‘Never mind! Let’s try. If we are late for dinner we’d tell the truth and say that we fell asleep in the woods. There’s such heaps of fern here it would be simply silly not to try.’
There was something in this. Fern-seed was chewed once more. Bracken, I have heard really well-educated people say, is not a fern at all, but it seemed a fern to them. And it certainly did its best to act up to what was expected of it. For when the three removed the little green damp pads from their eyes and blinked at the green leaves, there in the thick of them was Rupert, looking at them between the hazel thicket and the honeysuckle—a real live Rupert, and no dream-nonsense about him.