And then a little figure--Edred it must be; no, Elfrida--climbed up on to the window-ledge. And jumped out. Out of the third-floor window undoubtedly jumped. Another followed it--that was Edred. "It _is_ a dream," said Dickie to himself, "but if they've been made to jump out, to punish them for getting even with old Parrot-nose or anything, I'll jump too." He rushed past the nurse, past her voice and the other voice that was talking with hers, made one bound to the window, set his knee on it, stood up and jumped; and he heard, as his knee touched the icy window-sill, the strange voice say, "Another," and then he was in the air falling, falling. "I shall wake when I reach the ground," Dickie told himself, "and then I shall know it's all only a dream, a silly dream." But he never reached the ground. He had not fallen a couple of yards before he was caught by something soft as heaped feathers or drifted snow; it moved and shifted under him, took shape; it was a chair--no, a carriage. And there were reins in his hand--white reins. And a horse? No--a swan with wide, white wings. He grasped the reins and guided the strange steed to a low swoop that should bring him near the flare of torches in the street, outside the great front door. And as the swan laid its long neck low in downward flight he saw his cousins in a carriage like his own rise into the sky and sail away towards the south. Quite without meaning to do it he pulled on the reins; the swan rose. He pulled again and the carriage stopped at the landing window. Hands dragged him in. The old nurse's hands. The swan glided away between snow and stars, and on the landing inside the open window the nurse held him fast in her arms. "My lamb!" she said; "my dear, foolish, brave lamb!" Dickie was pulling himself together. "If it's a dream," he said slowly, "I've had enough. I want to wake up. If it's real--real, with magic in it--you've got to explain it all to me--every bit. I can't go on like this. It's not fair." "Oh, tell him and have done," said the voice that had begun all the magic, and it seemed to him that something small and white slid along the wainscot of the corridor and vanished quite suddenly, just as a candle flame does when you blow the candle out. "I will," said the nurse. "Come, love, I _will_ tell you everything." She took him down into a warm curtained room, blew to flame the gray ashes on the open hearth, gave him elder wine to drink, hot and spiced, and kneeling before him, rubbing his cold, bare feet, she told him.