"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side-by-side
near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside your head and
a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the skin horse, "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time,
not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes,"said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are real, you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse, "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily,
or have sharp edges, or who live to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and
you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
"I suppose you are real?" asked the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin
Horse only smiled.
"The Boy's Uncle made me Real." he said. "That was a great many years ago, but once you are Real, you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."
The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like;
and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.
There was a person called Nana who ruled the nursery. Sometimes she took no notice of the playthings lying about, and sometimes, for no reason whatever,
she went swooping about like a great wind, and hustled them away in the cupboards. She called this "tidying up," and the playthings all hated it, especially the tin ones. The Rabbit didn't mind it
so much, for wherever he was thrown, he came down soft.
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