And Johannes was beginning to believe him.
'Now will you come with me? Will you seek it with me?'
'I am so tired,' said Johannes, 'let me sleep first.'
'I have no opinion of sleep,' replied Pluizer, 'I am too active for that. A man must always be wide awake and thinking. But I will grant you a little time for rest. Till to-morrow morning!' And he put on the friendliest expression of which he was capable.
Johannes looked hard into his little twinkling eyes till he could see nothing else. His head was heavy and he lay down on the mossy knoll. The little eyes seemed to go further and further from him till they were starry specks in the dark sky; he fancied he heard the sound of distant voices, as though the earth beneath him were going away and away—and then he ceased to think at all.
[1] The plucker, the spoiler.
[X]
Even before he was fairly awake, he was vaguely conscious that something strange had happened to him while he slept. Still he was not anxious to know what, or to look about him. He would rather return to the dream which was slowly fading like a rising mist—Robinetta had come to be with him again, and had stroked his hair as she used to do—and he had seen his father once more, and Presto, in the garden with the pool.
'Oh! That hurt! Who did that?' Johannes opened his eyes, and in the grey morning light, he saw a little man standing at his side who had pulled his hair. He himself was in bed, and the light was dim and subdued, as in a room.