He heard the questions plainly enough—in his grave he would have heard questions that that voice put to him—but their import excited him little. What did anything matter, so long as Pam was with him? She would look to everything. Trust Pam. All he did was to dwell pleasantly upon the sound of her voice inside, and seek to slumber to it, as a child is soothed by singing. But though his soul longed for this peace, she would not grant it, but plied her questions anew with strange, inexplicable unrest. He had never known Pam so unrestful.
"Are you hurt? Do you think ... you can get up ... if I lift you? Shall I lift you? Will you let me lift you?"
He fished about listlessly for a moment or two in the depths of his well, and brought up the word "Eh," as being both easy to catch and to utter.
"Eh?" he said, without the slightest desire to be told for information's sake, and made as though once more to settle his head.
But she rubbed his cheeks vigorously with her hand, and roused him with her voice anew.
"Oh, please, please..." he heard her beg him, with tears. "Try to wake up now and answer me. Don't go back again. You must n't go back again. Do you think you can stand if I lift you? Do you?"
"Where am I?" he asked again, in the same apathetic voice.
He did n't care where he was. Wherever he was, Pam was with him. That was good enough for his taste. He merely wanted her to nurse him, and soothe him, and lull him. All speculation, all curiosity, had been knocked out of him by his fall. The heavens might have opened now, and the sight of angels descending would have caused him no wonder.
"You are down the cliff!" Pam told him, shouting the words in his ear, with the twofold object of reaching his remote understanding and rousing him by sheer strenuousness of voice. "You must have fallen. Don't you know what's happened? Can't you remember?"
He was down the cliff. He must have fallen. Did n't he know what had happened? Could n't he remember? Of a sudden—yes, of course he could remember. He was down the cliff. He must have fallen. The schoolmaster had pushed him. He 'd been fighting with the schoolmaster in a dream, and got pushed over. What did it matter—a dream? He 'd often got pushed over in dreams.