“But I don't want you to say what's hard to find. If you were to say one word to comfort me that wasn't true, then I should know you must be a dream, for a great beautiful lady like you could never tell a lie.”
“But she mightn't know how to say what she had to say, so that a little boy like you would understand it,” said North Wind. “Here, let us get down again, and I will try to tell you what I think. You musn't suppose I am able to answer all your questions, though. There are a great many things I don't understand more than you do.”
She descended on a grassy hillock, in the midst of a wild furzy common. There was a rabbit-warren underneath, and some of the rabbits came out of their holes, in the moonlight, looking very sober and wise, just like patriarchs standing in their tent-doors, and looking about them before going to bed. When they saw North Wind, instead of turning round and vanishing again with a thump of their heels, they cantered slowly up to her and snuffled all about her with their long upper lips, which moved every way at once. That was their way of kissing her; and, as she talked to Diamond, she would every now and then stroke down their furry backs, or lift and play with their long ears. They would, Diamond thought, have leaped upon her lap, but that he was there already.
“I think,” said she, after they had been sitting silent for a while, “that if I were only a dream, you would not have been able to love me so. You love me when you are not with me, don't you?”
“Indeed I do,” answered Diamond, stroking her hand. “I see! I see! How could I be able to love you as I do if you weren't there at all, you know? Besides, I couldn't be able to dream anything half so beautiful all out of my own head; or if I did, I couldn't love a fancy of my own like that, could I?”
“I think not. You might have loved me in a dream, dreamily, and forgotten me when you woke, I daresay, but not loved me like a real being as you love me. Even then, I don't think you could dream anything that hadn't something real like it somewhere. But you've seen me in many shapes, Diamond: you remember I was a wolf once—don't you?”
“Oh yes—a good wolf that frightened a naughty drunken nurse.”
“Well, suppose I were to turn ugly, would you rather I weren't a dream then?”
“Yes; for I should know that you were beautiful inside all the same. You would love me, and I should love you all the same. I shouldn't like you to look ugly, you know. But I shouldn't believe it a bit.”
“Not if you saw it?”