"And this is all a dream," said Dickie, "and I must wake up."
But he couldn't wake up.
And the trees and grass and lights and beautiful things, the kindly great people with their splendid dresses, the King and Queen, the aunts and uncles and the little cousins—all these things refused to fade away and jumble themselves up as things do in dreams. They remained solid and real. He knew that this must be a dream, and that Beale and Gravesend and New Cross and the old lame life were the real thing, and yet he could not wake up. All the same the light had gone out of everything, and it is small wonder that when he got home at last, very tired indeed, to his father's house at Deptford he burst into tears as nurse was undressing him.
"What ails my lamb?" she asked.
"I can't explain; you wouldn't understand," said Dickie."
"Try," said she, very earnestly.
He looked round the room at the tapestries and the heavy furniture.
"I can't," he said.
"Try," she said again.
"It's . . . don't laugh, Nurse. There's a dream that feels real—about a dreadful place—oh, so different from this. But there's a man waiting there for me that was good to me when I was—when I wasn't . . . that was good to me; he's waiting in the dream and I want to get back to him. And I can't."
