But after all, his master and mistress seemed to want to keep him out of doors as much as possible. And his father and mother sometimes looked at him very anxiously. Diamond thought that no one seemed to ask him to do much. Often they gave him a story book and sent him out to sit in the sweet air and sunshine at the foot of a big beech tree.
He did not see much of Nanny and Jim. Somehow they liked to slip off together when their work was over. They did not understand the many fancies that Diamond talked about, but they could understand each other very well. They were never unkind to him but they liked better to go off by themselves. Diamond did not mind much. He was never lonely. And then he had a beautiful place where he went and where he saw lovely things that no one else saw.
He called this place his nest. He went to it by going up a little rope ladder that hung from a branch of the big beech tree. When he reached the limb the rope hung from, he went on climbing higher and higher. Up among the leafy branches and away at the top, out of sight, he found a safe and comfortable seat which he called his nest.
"What do you see up there, Diamond," some one asked him once.
"I can see the first star peeping out of the sky. I don't see anything more except a few leaves and the big sky over me. It goes swinging about. The earth is all behind my back. There comes another star! The wind with its kisses makes me feel as if I were in North Wind's arms."
He thought he would be quite happy if only he could remember some of the songs the river sang to him when he was in the country at the back of the north wind. They seemed to be murmuring in his ear most of the time. Yet somehow they were just far enough off so that he could not catch the words.
His little brother and baby sister often played about on the grass with him and often he made up songs to sing to the baby. But these never seemed to be just like the river's songs after all. One of them was about his nest up in the beech tree and it ran like this:
What would you see if I took you up
To my little nest in the air?
You would see the sky like a clean blue cup
Turned upside downwards there.
What would you do if I took you there,
To my little nest in the tree?
My child with cries would trouble the air
To get what she could but see.
What would you get in the top of the tree,
For all your crying and grief?
Not a star would you clutch of all you see—
You could only gather a leaf.
But when you had lost your greedy grief
Content to see from afar,
You would find in your hand a withering leaf,
In your heart a shining star!