“There it is,” said the dream, pointing toward the boat. And now Teddy
saw that another gray figure was in it. As he looked, it slowly and
sorrowfully stepped from the boat and came up the beach toward them. It
was very beautiful, and in its hand it carried a great bunch of shining
bubbles, fastened to a stick by parti-colored ribbons, just as Teddy
had seen Italians carrying balloons, only these bubble-balloons were
growing and shrinking and changing every moment, just as though they
were alive.
As she came toward them the ugly dream frowned and shook his hands at
her. “Go away! Go away!” he cried. “There’s no use your following me
around this way. You sha’n’t be dreamed to-night.”
“I think you might let me go into her dream with you,” said the pretty
dream, sorrowfully. “She didn’t know she oughtn’t to eat the
plum-cake.”
“Well, you sha’n’t,” said the ugly dream. “She ain’t going to have any
dream but me, and I’m going to look just as ugly as I can. I’m going to
do this way,” and the naughty little dream put his thumbs in the
corners of his mouth, drawing it wide, and at the same time drew down
the outside corners of his eyes with his forefingers, just as Teddy had
seen the boys at school do sometimes. Then the dream hopped up into the
air and cut a caper. “Ho, ho!” he cried, “won’t it be fun? You can come
along and see me frighten her, if you want to.” This last he said to
Teddy.
Teddy thought him a very naughty, ugly-tempered little dream, but still
he went with him, wondering all the time how he could induce him to let
the pretty dream go to Harriett, and as they walked up the road
together the pretty dream still followed them, carrying her bunch of
bubbles.
They went on and on, until they came to a place where the ground was
rough, and broken up with a number of black holes. The ugly dream went
from one to another of these, pausing, and laying his ear to their
edges.
“What are you doing?” asked Teddy.
“Hush! can’t you see I’m listening?” said the dream crossly.
At last, after pausing at one of them, he turned to Teddy and nodded
his head. “This is it,” he said; “this is where Harriett lives.”
“Why, it isn’t at all!” cried Teddy, indignantly. “My cousin Harriett
doesn’t live in a hole! She lives in a great big house with doors and
windows.”
“Well, anyway, this is her chimney,” said the dream, “and it’s the only
way to get into her house from here. If you want to come, come; and if
you don’t want to, why, stay,” and the dream sat down on the edge of
the hole.
Teddy hesitated. “If I went down that way, I think I’d fall and hurt
myself,” he said at last.
“Pooh! No, you wouldn’t if you took my hand,” said the dream. “I always
go this way, and it’s as easy as anything.”
So Teddy sat down on the edge of the hole, and grasped the dream’s
shadowy fingers in his. Then they pushed themselves off the edge, and
down they went through the darkness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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