"What is it, then?" the nurse asked, laughing a fat, comfortable laugh.
Dickie's reply was naturally "Dickie Harding."
"Why," said the Nurse, opening wide eyes at him under grey brows, "you have forgotten it. They do say that the fever hurts the memory, but this beats all. Dost mean to tell me the fever has mazed thy poor brains till thou don't know that thy name's Richard ." And Dickie heard her name a name that did not sound to him at all like Harding.
"Is that my name?" he asked.
"It is indeed," she answered.
Dickie felt an odd sensation of fixedness. He had expected when he went to sleep that the dream would, in sleep, end, and that he would wake to find himself alone in the empty house at New Cross. But he had wakened to the same dream once more, and now he began to wonder whether he really belonged here, and whether this were the real life, and the other—the old, sordid, dirty New Cross life—merely a horrid dream, the consequence of his fever. He lay and thought, and looked at the rich, pleasant room, the kind, clear face of the nurse, the green, green branches of the trees, the tapestry and the rushes. At last he spoke.
"Nurse," said he.
"Ah! I thought you'd come to yourself," she said. "What is it, my dearie?"
"If I am really the name you said, I've forgotten it. Tell me all about myself, will you, Nurse?"
