Page:Hardings luck - nesbit.djvu/220

178 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