“Because I couldn’t go to sleep either and my head ached.  Tell me your name again.”

“Mary Lennox.  Did no one ever tell you I had come to live here?”

He was still fingering the fold of her wrapper, but he began to look a little more as if he believed in her reality.

“No,” he answered.  “They daren’t.”

“Why?” asked Mary.

“Because I should have been afraid you would see me.  I won’t let people see me and talk me over.”

“Why?” Mary asked again, feeling more mystified every moment.

“Because I am like this always, ill and having to lie down.  My father won’t let people talk me over either.  The servants are not allowed to speak about me.  If I live I may be a hunchback, but I shan’t live.  My father hates to think I may be like him.”

“Oh, what a queer house this is!” Mary said.  “What a queer house!  Everything is a kind of secret.  Rooms are locked up and gardens are locked up—­and you!  Have you been locked up?”

“No.  I stay in this room because I don’t want to be moved out of it.  It tires me too much.”

“Does your father come and see you?” Mary ventured.

“Sometimes.  Generally when I am asleep.  He doesn’t want to see me.”

“Why?” Mary could not help asking again.

A sort of angry shadow passed over the boy’s face.

“My mother died when I was born and it makes him wretched to look at me.  He thinks I don’t know, but I’ve heard people talking.  He almost hates me.”

“He hates the garden, because she died,” said Mary half speaking to herself.

“What garden?” the boy asked.

“Oh! just—­just a garden she used to like,” Mary stammered.  “Have you been here always?”

“Nearly always.  Sometimes I have been taken to places at the seaside, but I won’t stay because people stare at me.  I used to wear an iron thing to keep my back straight, but a grand doctor came from London to see me and said it was stupid.  He told them to take it off and keep me out in the fresh air.  I hate fresh air and I don’t want to go out.”

“I didn’t when first I came here,” said Mary.  “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

“Because of the dreams that are so real,” he answered rather fretfully.  “Sometimes when I open my eyes I don’t believe I’m awake.”

“We’re both awake,” said Mary.  She glanced round the room with its high ceiling and shadowy corners and dim firelight.  “It looks quite like a dream, and it’s the middle of the night, and everybody in the house is asleep—­everybody but us.  We are wide awake.”

“I don’t want it to be a dream,” the boy said restlessly.

Mary thought of something all at once.

“If you don’t like people to see you,” she began, “do you want me to go away?”

He still held the fold of her wrapper and he gave it a little pull.

“No,” he said.  “I should be sure you were a dream if you went.  If you are real, sit down on that big footstool and talk.  I want to hear about you.”