His head was lying on his new mother's arm, and she was awake watching him.
"O, mother, what a nice dream I had! O such pretty clothes--why did I wake so soon?"
She laughed and touched his arms, showing him that they were still clasping that beautiful suit of clothes to his breast--the very clothes of his wonderful dream!
There was not in all that land, nor perhaps in all the wide world, a happier little boy than Martin, when after waking from his sleep and dream he dressed himself for the first time in that new suit, and went out from the cave into the morning sunlight. He then felt the comfort of such clothes, for they were softer than the finest, softest down or silk to his skin, and kept him warm when it was cold, and cool when it was hot, and dry when it rained on him, and the earth could not soil them, nor the thorns tear them; and above everything they were the most beautiful clothes ever seen. Their colour was a deep moss green, or so it looked at a little distance, or when seen in the shade, but in the sunshine it sparkled as if small, shining, many-coloured beads had been sewn in the cloth; only there were no beads; it was only the shining threads that made it sparkle so, like clean sand in the sun. When you looked closely at the cloth, you could see the lovely pattern woven in it--small leaf and flower, the leaves like moss leaves, and the flowers like the pimpernel, but not half so big, and they were yellow and red and blue and violet in colour.
But there were many, many things besides the lovely clothes to make him contented and happy. First, the beautiful woman of the hills who loved and cherished him and made him call her by the sweet name of "mother" so many times every day that he well nigh forgot she was not his real mother. Then there was the great stony hillside on which he now lived for a playground, where he could wander all day among the rocks, overgrown with creepers and strange sweet-smelling flowers he had never seen on the plain below. The birds and butterflies he saw there were different from those he had always seen; so were the snakes which he often found sleepily coiled up on the rocks, and the little swift lizards. Even the water looked strange and more beautiful than the water in the plain, for here it gushed out of the living rock, sparkling like crystal in the sun, and was always cold when he dipped his hands in it even on the hottest days. Perhaps the most wonderful thing was the immense distance he could see, when he looked away from the hillside across the plain and saw the great dark forest where he had been, and the earth stretching far, far away beyond.