He talked to me there. That other
time it was when I was down by the doll's-house. He showed me the smoke
coming up from the chimneys when the sun stuck through, and the moon was
all red one night, and the stars."
He found himself gazing out over the square, over the twisted chimneys,
that seemed to be laughing at him, over the shining wires and glittering
roofs, out to the mist that wrapped the city beyond his vision--so vast,
so huge, so many people--March Square was nothing. He was nothing--John
Scarlett nothing at all.
Then, with a sigh, he turned back. His Friend, the other night, had been
real enough. Fairies, ghosts, goblins and dragons--everything was real.
Everything. It was all terrible, terrible to think of, but, above and
beyond all else, he must not forget, on the day of his departure, that
farewell; something disastrous would come upon him were he so
ungrateful.
And then he would go downstairs again, down to newspapers and fires,
toast and tea, the large print of Frith's "Railway Station," and the
coloured supplement of Greiffenhagen's "Idyll," and the tattered numbers
of the _Windsor_ and the _Strand_ magazines, and, behold, all these
things were real and all the things in the nursery unreal.
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