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I don't know it, he said. "But I don't have a cupboard, and I've always had plenty to eat."

"But that's because I've had a cupboard for you, child."

"And when yours was empty, Auntie opened hers."

His mother sighed heavily. "But that can't go on!"

"How do you know?" Diamond asked. "I think there must be a big cupboard somewhere that fills all the little cupboards."

"Well, I wish I could find the door of that cupboard," she said, shaking her head slowly. But just then she fell silent and looked up, staring out across the sea. She was silent for a long time, thinking. Something she had heard at church just yesterday came to her now, something to do with not worrying about tomorrow, for tomorrow would take care of itself. And something to do with the birds of the air and the lilies in the field, and about our heavenly Father, who feeds us.

Slowly she rose and opened the picnic basket. She looked into her little son's face for several moments, yet her eyes still seemed to be staring far away. Then she smiled and said quietly," Let's eat, Diamond."

"While they sat eating, Diamond saw something white on the beach, fluttering in the breeze. His mother went to pick it up for him. "It's a book," she said. "It looks like nursery rhymes."

"Oh, please read some!" cried Diamond.

She turned the pages, looking for one that looked good. But every time she turned the pages, a sharp little wind blew them back to the same ryhme. So finally, frustrated, she decided to read that one.

"I know a river," she began, "whose waters run asleep, run run ever singing in the shallows, dumb in the hollow, sleeping so deep, and all the swallows that dip their feathers in the hollows or in the shallows are the merriest swallows of all..."

She read on and on. The ryhme never stopped. Diamond snuggled into his blanket in the sand, smiling, a faraway look in his eyes.

"It's all in the wind that blows from behind," continued his mother, "and all in the river that flows forever and all in the grasses and the white daisies and the merry sheep awake or asleep and the happy swallows skimming the shallows and it's all in the wind that blows from behind....."

"Why don't you go on, Mother?" said Diamond.

"It's such nonsense!" she said. "I believe it would go on forever."

"That's just what it did," Diamond said.

"What did?"

"The river. That's almost the same tune it sang at the back of north wind."

His mother let the book fall into her lap. She stared hard at Diamond, her mouth open, and deep worry in her eyes.

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