“So it is! I forgot. Well, none of these things are odder to me than it is to you to eat bread and butter.”
“Well, that's odd too, when I think of it,” persisted Diamond. “I should just like a slice of bread and butter! I'm afraid to say how long it is—how long it seems to me, that is—since I had anything to eat.”
“Come then,” said North Wind, stooping and holding out her arms. “You shall have some bread and butter very soon. I am glad to find you want some.”
Diamond held up his arms to meet hers, and was safe upon her bosom. North Wind bounded into the air. Her tresses began to lift and rise and spread and stream and flow and flutter; and with a roar from her hair and an answering roar from one of the great glaciers beside them, whose slow torrent tumbled two or three icebergs at once into the waves at their feet, North Wind and Diamond went flying southwards.
CHAPTER XII. WHO MET DIAMOND AT SANDWICH
As THEY flew, so fast they went that the sea slid away from under them like a great web of shot silk, blue shot with grey, and green shot with purple. They went so fast that the stars themselves appeared to sail away past them overhead, “like golden boats,” on a blue sea turned upside down. And they went so fast that Diamond himself went the other way as fast—I mean he went fast asleep in North Wind's arms.
When he woke, a face was bending over him; but it was not North Wind's; it was his mother's. He put out his arms to her, and she clasped him to her bosom and burst out crying. Diamond kissed her again and again to make her stop. Perhaps kissing is the best thing for crying, but it will not always stop it.
“What is the matter, mother?” he said.
“Oh, Diamond, my darling! you have been so ill!” she sobbed.