s ago. But I dared tell you. I dared because I was so afraid I couldn't trust you for sure. Of course Dr. Craven had been sent for the morning after Colin had had his tantrum. He was always sent for it once when such a thing occurred, and he always found when he arrived, a white, shaken boy lying on his bed, sulky and still so hysterical that he was ready to break into fresh sobbing at the least word. In fact, Dr. Craven dreaded and detested the difficulties of these visits. On this occasion he was away from Missalthwaite Manor until afternoon. How is he? he asked Mrs. Medlock rather irritably when he arrived. He will break a blood vessel in one of those fits some day.  Well, sir, answered Mrs. Medlock, you'll scarcely believe your eyes when you see him. That plain, sour-faced child that's almost as bad as himself has just bewitched him. How she's done it, there's no telling. The Lord knows she's nothing to look at, and you scarcely ever hear her speak. But she did what none of us dared do. She just flew at him like a little cat last night, and stamped her feet and ordered him to stop screaming, and somehow she startled him so that he actually did stop. And this afternoon—well, just come up and see sir. It's past crediting. The scene which Dr. Craven beheld when he entered his patient's room was indeed rather astonishing to him. As Mrs. Medlock opened the door, he heard laughing and chattering. Colin was on his sofa in his dressing-gown, and he was sitting up quite straight, looking at a picture in one of the garden-books, and talking to the plain child, who at that moment could scarcely be called plain at all, because her face was so glowing with enjoyment. Those long spires of blue ones will have a lot of those, Colin was announcing, they're called Delphiniums. Dickon says their lark spurs made big and grand, cried Mistress Mary, there are clumps there already. Then they saw Dr. Craven and stopped. Mary became quite still, and Colin looked fretful. I'm sorry to hear you were ill last night, my boy. Dr. Craven said a trifle nervously. He was rather a nervous man. I'm better now, much better. Colin answered rather like a raja. I'm going out in my chair in a day or two, if it is fine. I want some fresh air. Dr. Craven sat down by him, and felt his pulse, and looked at him curiously. It must be a very fine day, he said, and you must be very careful not to tire yourself. Fresh air won't tire me, to the young raja. As there had been occasions when this same young gentleman had shrieked aloud with rage, and had insisted that fresh air would give him cold and kill him, it is not to be wondered at that his doctor felt somewhat startled. I thought you did not like fresh air, he said. I don't when I by myself, replied the raja, but my cousin is going out with me. And the nurse, of course, suggested Dr. Craven. No, I will not have the nurse, so magnificently that Mary could not help remembering how the young native prince had looked with his diamonds and emeralds and pearls, stuck all over him, and the great rubies on the small dark hand he had waved to command his servants to approach with salance and receive his orders. My cousin knows how to take care of me. I am always better when she is with me. She made me better last night. A very strong boy I know will push my carriage. Dr. Craven felt rather alarmed. If this tiresome hysterical boy should chance to get well, he himself would lose all chance of inheriting misalphate. But he was not an unscrupulous man, though he was a weak one, and he did not intend to let him run into actual danger. He must be a strong and a steady boy, he said, and I must know something about him. Who is he? What is his name? It's Dickon! Mary spoke up suddenly. She felt somehow that everybody who knew the more must know Dickon, and she was right, too. She saw that in a moment Dr. Craven's serious face relaxed into a relieved smile. Oh, Dickon! he said. If it is Dickon, you will be safe enough. He's as strong as a morepony as Dickon. And he's trusty, said Mary. He's the trustiest lad of Yorkshire. She'd been talking Yorkshire to Colin, and she forgot herself. Did Dickon teach you that? asked Dr. Craven, laughing outright. I'm learning it as if it was French, said Mary rather coldly. It's like a native dialect in India. Very clever people try to learn them. I like it, and so does Colin. Well, well, he said.  Did you take your bromide last night, Colin? No, Colin answered. I wouldn't take it at first. And after Mary made me quiet, she talked me to sleep in a low voice, while the spring creeping into a garden. That sounds soothing, said Dr. Craven, more perplexed than ever, and glancing sideways at Mistress Mary sitting on her stool, and looking down silently at the carpet. You are evidently better, but you must remember. I don't want to remember, interrupted the raja appearing again. When I lie by myself and remember, I begin to have pains everywhere, and I think of things that make me begin to scream because I hate them so. If there was a doctor anywhere who could make you forget you were ill, instead of remembering it, I would have him brought here. And he waved a thin hand, which ought really to have been covered with royal signet-wings made of rubies. It is because my cousin makes me forget that she makes me better. Dr. Craven had never made such a short stay after a tantrum. Usually he was obliged to remain a very long time, and do a great many things. This afternoon he did not give any medicine, or leave any new orders, and he was spared any disagreeable scenes. When he went downstairs he looked very thoughtful, and when he talked to Mrs. Medlock in the library, she felt that he was a much puzzled man. Well, sir, she ventured. Could you have believed it? It is certainly a new state of affairs, said the doctor. I believe Susan Sowerby is right. I do that, said Mrs. Medlock. I stopped in her cottage on my way to Thwaite yesterday, and had a bit of talk with her. And she says to me, Well, Sarah Anne, she may be a good child, and she may be a pretty one, but she's a child, and children need children. We went to school together, Susan Sowerby and me. She's the best sickness I know, said Dr. Craven. When I find her in a cottage, I know the chances are that I shall save my patient. Mrs. Medlock smiled. She was fond of Susan Sowerby. She's got away with her, has Susan. She went on quite volubly. I have been thinking all morning of one thing she said yesterday. She says, Once, when I was given the children a bit of preach after they had been fighting, I said to them all, Where I was at school, my geography told us a world was shaped like an orange, and I found out before I was ten, that the whole orange doesn't belong to nobody. No one owns more than a bit of a quarter, and there's times it seems like there's not enough quarters to go round. But don't you, none of you, fingers you own the whole orange, or you'll find out you're mistaken, and you won't find it out without hard knocks. What children learns from children, she says, is that there's no sense in grabbing at the whole orange, peel and all. If you do, you'll likely not even get the pips, and then it's too bitter to eat. She's a shrewd woman, said Dr. Craven, putting on his coat. Well, she's got a way of saying things. Ended Mrs. Medlock much pleased. Sometimes I've said to her, hey, Susan, if he was a different woman and didn't talk such broad yorkshire, I've seen the times when I should have said you was clever. That night, Colin slept without once awakening, and when he opened his eyes in the morning, he lay still and smiled without knowing it. Smiled because he felt so curiously comfortable. It was actually nice to be awake, and he turned over and stretched his limbs luxuriously. He felt as if tight strings which had held him had loosened themselves and let him go. He did not know that Dr. Craven would have said that his nerves had relaxed and rested themselves. Instead of lying and staring at the wall and wishing he had not awakened, his mind was full of the plans he and Mary had made yesterday, of pictures of the garden and of Dickon and his wild creatures. It was so nice to have things to think about. And he had not been awake more than ten minutes when he heard feet running along the corridor, and Mary was at the door. The next minute he was in the room and had run across to his bed, bringing with her a waft of fresh air full of the scent of the morning. You've been out! You've been out! There's that nice smell of leaves, he cried. She had been running, and her hair was loose and blown, and she was bright with the air and pink cheeked, though he could not see it. It's so beautiful, she said, a little breathless with her speed. You never saw anything so beautiful. It is come. I thought it had come that other morning, but it was only coming. It is here now. It is come. The spring, Dickon said so. Has it? cried Colin, and though he really knew nothing about it, he felt his heart beat. He actually sat up in bed. Open the window, he added, laughing half with joyful excitement and half with his own fancy. Perhaps we may hear golden trumpets. And though he laughed, Mary was at the window in a moment, and in a moment more it was opened wide, and freshness and softness and scents and birdsongs were pouring through. That's fresh air, she said. Lie on your back and draw in long breaths of it. That's what Dickon does when he's lying on the moor. He says he feels it in his veins, and it makes him strong, and he feels as if he could live forever and ever. Breathe it and breathe it. She was only repeating what Dickon had told her, but she caught Colin's fancy. Forever and ever. Does it make him feel like that, he said? And he did as she told him, drawing in long, deep breaths over and over again, until he felt something quite new and delightful was happening to him. Mary was at his bedside again. Things are crowding up out of the earth, she ran on in a hurry, and there are flowers uncurling and buds on everything, and the green veil has covered nearly all the grey, and the birds are in such a hurry about their nests for fear they may be too late that some of them are even fighting for places in the secret garden. And the rose bushes look as wick as wick can be, and there are prim roses in the lanes and woods, and the seeds we planted are up, and Dickon has brought the fox and the crow and the squirrels in a newborn lamb. And then she paused for breath. The newborn lamb Dickon had found three days before lying by its dead mother among the gorse bushes on the moor. It was not the first motherless lamb he had found, and he knew what to do with it. He had taken it to the cottage wrapped in his jacket, and he had let it lie near the fire, and had fed it with warm milk. It was a soft thing with a darling, silly baby face, and legs rather long for its body. Dickon had carried it over the moor in his arms, and its feeding-bottle was in his pocket with a squirrel. And when Mary had sat under a tree with its limp warmness huddled on her lap, she had felt as if she were too full of strange joy to speak. A lamb! A lamb! A living lamb who lay on your lap like a baby. She was describing it with great joy, and Colin was listening and drawing in long breaths of air when the nurse entered. She started a little at the sight of the open window. She had sat stifling in the room many a warm day because her patient was sure that open windows gave people cold. Are you sure you're not chilly, Master Colin? she inquired. No, was the answer. I am breathing long breaths of fresh air. It makes you strong. I am going to get up to the sofa for breakfast. My cousin will have breakfast with me. The nurse went away, concealing a smile to give the order for two breakfasts. She found the servants all a more amusing place than the invalids chamber, and just now everybody wanted to hear the news from upstairs. There was a great deal of joking about the unpopular young recluse who, as the cook said, had found his master in good for him. The servants' hall had been very tired of the tantrums, and the butler, who was a man with a family, had more than once expressed his opinion that the invalid would be all the better for a good hiding. When Colin was on his sofa, and the breakfast for two was put upon the table, he made an announcement of the nurse in his most raja-like manner. A boy and a fox and a crow and two squirrels and a newborn lamb are coming to see me this morning. I want them brought upstairs as soon as they come," he said. You are not to begin playing with the animals in the servants' hall and keep them there. I want them here." The nurse gave a slight gasp and tried to conceal it with a cough. Yes, sir, she answered. I'll tell you what you can do," added Colin, waving his hand. You can tell Martha to bring them here. The boy is Martha's brother. His name is Dickon, and he is an animal charmer. I hope the animals won't bite, Master Colin, said the nurse. I told you he was a charmer, said Colin austerely. Charmers' animals never bite. There are snake charmers in India, said Mary, and they can put their snakes' heads in their mouths. Goodness! shuttered the nurse. They ate their breakfast with the morning air pouring in upon them. Colin's breakfast was a very good one, and Mary watched him with serious interest. You will begin to get fatter just as I did, she said. I never wanted my breakfast when I was in India, and now I always wanted. I wanted mine this morning, said Colin. Perhaps it was the fresh air. When do you think Dickon will come? He was not long in coming. In about ten minutes Mary held up her hand. Listen, she said. Did you hear a call? Colin listened and heard it. The oddest sound in the world here inside a house. A horse, car, car. Yes, he answered. That's soot, said Mary. Listen again.  Oh, yes! cried Colin, quite flushing. That's the newborn lamb, said Mary. He's coming. Dickon's maul and boots were thick and clumsy, and though he tried to walk quietly, they made a clumping sound as he walked through the long corridors. Mary and Colin heard him marching, marching, until he passed through the tapestry door unto the soft carpet of Colin's own passage.  Dickon came in smiling, his nicest, wide smile. The newborn lamb was in his arms, and the little red fox trotted by his side. Knut sat on his left shoulder and soot on his right, and Shell's head and paws peeped out of his coat pocket. Colin slowly sat up and stared and stared, as he had stared when he first saw Mary, but this was a stare of wonder and delight. The truth was that in spite of all he had heard, he had not in the least understood what this boy would be like, and that his fox and his crow and his squirrels and his lamb were so near to him and his friendliness that they seemed almost to be part of himself. Colin had never talked to a boy in his life, and he was so overwhelmed by his own pleasure and curiosity that he did not even think of speaking. But Dickon did not feel the least shy or awkward. He had not felt embarrassed because the crow had not known his language, and had only stared and had not spoken to him the first time they met. Creatures were always like that until they found out about you. He walked over to Colin's sofa and put the newborn lamb quietly on his lap, and immediately the little creature turned to the warm velvet dressing-gown and began to nuzzle and nuzzle into its folds, and but its tight-curled head with soft impatience against his side. Of course, no boy could have helped speaking then. What is it doing? cried Colin. What is it want? It wants to smother, said Dickon, smiling more and more. I brought it to thee a bit hungry because I know that I'd like to see it feed. He knelt down by the sofa and took a feeding-bottle from his pocket.  This is what that's after. Thou'll get more out of this than thou will out of silk-velvet coats. There now.  After that there was no wondering what to say. By the time the lamb fell asleep, questions poured forth, and Dickon answered them all. He told them how he had found the lamb, just as the sun was rising three mornings ago. He had been standing on the moor, listening to a skylock, and watching him swing higher and higher into the sky until he was only a speck in heights of blue. I'd almost lost him but for a song, and I was wondering how a chap could hear it, when it seemed as if he'd get out of the world in a minute, and just then I heard something else far off among the gorse bushes. It was a weak bleaton, and I knowed it was a new lamb as was hungry, and I knowed it wouldn't be hungry if it hadn't lost its mother somehow. So I set off searching. Eh, I did have a look for it. A wind-out among the gorse bushes, and round and round, and I always seemed to take the wrong turning. But at last I seeed a bit of white by a rock on top of the moor, and I climbed up, and I found the little one half dead with cold and clement. While he talked, Soot flew sonomely in and out of the open window, and called remarks about the scenery, while Nat and Shell made excursions into the big trees outside, and ran up and down trunks and explored branches. Captain curled up near Dickon, who sat on the half-rug from preference. They looked at the pictures in the gardening books, and Dickon knew all the flowers by their country names, and knew exactly which ones were already growing in the secret garden. I couldn't say that their name, he said, pointing to one under which was written Aquilegia, but us calls that a Columbine, and that there one it's a snap dragon, and they both grow wild in hedges, but these is garden ones, and they're bigger and grander. There's some clumps of Columbine in the garden. They'll look like a better blue and white butterfly's flood-room when they're out. I'm going to see them," cried Colin. I am going to see them.  He had to wait more than a week, because first there came some very windy days, and then Colin was threatened with a cold, which two things happening one after the other would no doubt have thrown him into a rage, but that there was so much careful and mysterious planning to do, and almost every day Dickon came in, if only for a few minutes, to talk about what was happening on the moor, and in the lanes and hedges and on the borders of streams. The things he had to tell about otters and badges and water-rats houses, not to mention birth's nests and field mice in their burrows, were enough to make you almost tremble with excitement when you heard all the intimate details from an animal charmer and realized with what thrilling eagerness and anxiety the whole busy underworld was working. They're same as us, said Dickon, all know they have to build their homes every year, and it keeps them so busy they're fair scuffled again, Don. The most absorbing thing, however, was the preparations to be made before Colin could be transported with sufficient secrecy to the garden. No one must see the chair carriage and Dickon and Mary after they turned a certain corner of the shrubbery and entered upon the walk outside the ivy walls. As each day passed, Colin had become more and more fixed in his feeling that the mystery surrounding the garden was one of its greatest charms. Nothing must spoil that. No one must ever suspect that they had a secret. People must think that he was simply going out with Mary and Dickon because he liked them and did not object to their looking at him. They had long and quite delightful talks about their route. They would go up this path and down that one and cross the other and go round among the fountain-flower beds as if they were looking at the bedding-out plants the head gardener Mr. Roach had been having arranged. That would seem such a rational thing to do that no one would think it at all mysterious. They would turn into the shrubbery walks and lose themselves until they came to the long walls. It was almost as serious and elaborately thought out as the plans of March made by great generals in times of war. Rumours of the new and curious things which were occurring in the Invalid's apartments had, of course, filtered through the servant's hall into the stable yards and out among the gardeners. But notwithstanding this, Mr. Roach was startled one day when he received orders from Master Colin's room to the effect that he must report himself in the apartment no outsider had ever seen as the Invalid himself desired to speak to him. Well, well, he said to himself as he hurriedly changed his coat. What's to do now? His royal highness, that wasn't to be looked at, called napper man is never set eyes on. Mr. Roach was not without curiosity. He had never caught even a glimpse of the boy and had heard a dozen exaggerated stories about his uncanny looks and ways and his insane tempers. The thing he had heard oftenest was that he might die at any moment, and there had been numerous fanciful descriptions of a humped back and helpless limbs given by people who had never seen him. Things are changing in this house, Mr. Roach, said Mrs. Medlock as she led him up the back staircase to the corridor onto which opened the hitherto mysterious chamber. Let's hope they're changing for the better, Mrs. Medlock, he answered. They couldn't well change for the worse, she continued, and queer as it all is, as them as finds their duties made a lot easier to stand up on them. Don't you be surprised, Mr. Roach, if you find yourself in the middle of a menagerie, and Martha Sowerby's Dickon more at home than you or me could ever be. There really was a sort of magic about Dickon, as Mary always privately believed. When Mr. Roach heard his name, he smiled quite leniently. He'd be at home in Buckingham Palace or at the bottom of a cold mine, he said, and yet it's not impudence, either. He's just fine, is that lad. It was perhaps well he had been prepared, or he might have been startled. When the bedroom door was opened, a large crow, which seemed quite at home, perched on the high back of a caravan chair, announced the entrance of the visitor by saying, Gah! Gah! quite loudly. In spite of Mrs. Medlock's warning, Mr. Roach only just escaped being sufficiently undignified to jump backward. The young Raja was neither in bed nor on his sofa. He was sitting in an armchair, and a young lamb was standing by him shaking its tail in feeding lamb fashion as Dickon knelt giving it milk from its bottle. A squirrel was perched on Dickon's bent back, attentively nibbling a nut. The little girl from India was sitting on a big footstool looking on. Here is Mr. Roach, Master Colin, said Mrs. Medlock. The young Raja turned and looked to serve it or over. At least, that was what the headguard there felt happened. Oh! you are Roach, are you? he said. I sent for you to give you some very important orders. Very good sir, answered Roach, wondering if he was to receive instructions to fell all the oaks in the park or to transform the orchards into water gardens. I am going out in my chair this afternoon, said Colin. If the fresh air agrees with me, I may go out every day. When I go, none of the gardeners are to be anywhere near the long walk by the garden walls. No one is to be there. I shall go out about two o'clock, and every one must keep away until I send word that they may go back to their work. Very good sir, replied Mr. Roach, much relieved to hear that the oaks might remain and that the orchards were safe. Mary, said Colin, turning to her. What is that thing you say in India when you are finished talking and want people to go? You say, you have my permission to go, answered Mary. The Raja waved his hand. You have my permission to go, Roach, he said. But remember, this is very important. Ka, ka! remarked the crow hoarsely, but not impolitely. Very good, sir. Thank you, sir, said Mr. Roach, and Mrs. Medlock took him out of the room. Outside in the corridor, being a rather good natured man, he smiled until he almost laughed. My word, he said, he's got a fine lordly way with him, hasn't he? You'd think he was a whole royal family rolled into one, Prince Consort and all. Eh! protested Mrs. Medlock. We've had to let him trample over every one of us since he had feet, and he thinks that's what folks was born for. Perhaps he'll grow out of it, if he lives, suggested Mr. Roach. Well, there's one thing pretty sure, said Mrs. Medlock. If he does live, and that Indian child stays here, I'll warrant she teaches him that the whole orange does not belong to him, as Susan Sourby says, and he'll be likely to find out the size of his own quarter. Inside the room, Colin was leaning back on his cushions. It's all safe now, he said, and this afternoon I shall see it. This afternoon I shall be in it. Dickon went back to the garden with his creatures, and Mary stayed with Colin. She did not think he looked tired, but he was very quiet before their lunch came, and he was quiet while they were eating it. She wondered why and asked him about it. What big eyes you've got, Colin, she said. When you are thinking, they get as big as saucers. What are you thinking about now? I can't help thinking about what it will look like, he answered. The garden? asked Mary. The springtime, he said. I was thinking that I've really never seen it before. I scarcely ever went out, and when I did go I never looked at it. I didn't even think about it. I never saw it in India because there wasn't any, said Mary. Shut in and morbid as his life had been, Colin had more imagination than she had, and at least he had spent a good deal of time looking at wonderful books and pictures.  It sounded as if things were coming with a great procession and big bursts and wafts of music. I've a picture like it in one of my books, crowds of lovely people and children with garlands and branches with blossoms on them, everyone laughing and dancing and crowding and playing on pipes. That was why I said, Perhaps we shall hear golden trumpets and told you to throw open the window. How funny, said Mary, that's really just what it feels like, and if all the flowers and leaves and green things and birds and wild creatures danced past at once, what a crowd it would be. I'm sure they'd dance and sing and flute, and that would be the wafts of music. They both laughed, but it was not because the idea was laughable, but because they both so lighted. A little later the nurse made Colin ready. She noticed that instead of lying like a log while his clothes were put on, he sat up and made some efforts to help himself, and he talked and laughed with Mary all the time. This is one of his good days, sir, she said to Dr. Craven, who dropped in to inspect him. He's in such good spirits that it makes him stronger. I'll call in again later in the afternoon after he has come in, said Dr. Craven. I must see how the going-out agrees with him. I wish, in a very low voice, that he would let you go with him. I'd rather give up the case this moment, sir, than even stay here while it's suggested, answered the nurse with sudden firmness. I hadn't really decided to suggest it, said the doctor with slight nervousness. We'll try the experiment. Dickon's a lad I'd trust with a newborn child. The strongest footman in the house carried Colin downstairs, and put him in his wheeled chair near which Dickon waited outside. After the manservant had arranged his rugs and cushions, the Raja waved his hand to him and to the nurse. You have my permission to go, he said, and they both disappeared quickly, and it must be confessed giggled when they were safely inside the house. Dickon began to push the wheeled chair slowly and steadily. Mistress Mary walked beside it, and Colin leaned back and lifted his face to the sky. The arch of it looked very high, and the small snowy clouds seemed like white birds floating on outspread wings below its crystal blueness. The wind swept in soft, big breaths down from the moor, and were strange with a wild, clear, scented sweetness. Colin kept lifting his thin chest to draw it in, and his big eyes looked as if it were they which were listening, listening instead of his ears. There are so many sounds of singing and humming and calling out, he said. What is that scent the puffs of wind bring? It's the gorge on the moor that's opening out, answered Dickon. Ay, the bees are at it wonderful to-day. Not a human creature was to be caught sight of in the paths they took. In fact, every gardener or gardener's lad had been witched away. But they wound in and out among the shrubbery and out and around the fountain beds, following their carefully planned route, for the mere mysterious pleasure of it. But when at last they turned into the long walk by the ivory walls, the excited sense of an approaching thrill made them, for some curious reason they could not have explained, begin to speak and whispers. This is it. Breathed Mary. This is where I used to walk up and down in wonder and wonder. Is it? cried Colin, and his eyes began to search the ivy with eager curiousness. But I can see nothing, he whispered. There is no door. That's what I thought, said Mary. Then there was a lovely breathless silence, and the chair wheeled on. That is the garden where Ben Weatherstaff works, said Mary. Is it? said Colin. A few yards more, and Mary whispered again. This is where the robin flew over the wall, she said. Is it? cried Colin. Oh, I wish he'd come again. And that, said Mary with solemn delight, pointing under a big lilac bush, is where he perched on a little heap of earth and showed me the key. Then Colin sat up. Where? Where? There? He cried, and his eyes were as big as the wolfs in Red Riding Hood, when Red Riding Hood felt called upon to remark on them. Dickens stood still, and the wheeled chair stopped. And this, said Mary, stepping onto the bed close to the ivy, is where I went to talk to him when he chapped at me from the top of the wall. And this is the ivy, the wind blew back, and she took hold of the hanging green curtain. Oh, is it? Is it? gasped Colin. And here is the handle, and here is the door. Dickens, push him in, push him in quickly. And Dickens did it, with one strong, steady, splendid push.  Not till then did he take them away and look round and round and round as Dickens and Mary had done. And over the walls and earth and trees and swinging sprays and tendrils, the fair green veil of tender little leaves had crept, and in the grass under the trees and the grey urns and the alcoves, and here and there, everywhere, were touches or splashes of gold and purple and white, and the trees were showing pink and snow above his head, and there were fluttering of wings and faint sweet pipes and humming and scents and scents. And the sun fell warm upon his face, like a hand with a lovely touch, and in wonder Mary and Dickens stood and stared at him. He looked so strange and different, because a pink glow of colour had actually crept all over him, ivory face and neck and hands and all. I shall get well, I shall get well, he cried out, Mary, Dickens, I shall get well, and I shall live forever and ever and ever. End of Chapter 20 One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender, solemn dawn-time, and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back, and looks up, and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing, and marvellous unknown things happening, until the east almost makes one cry out, and one's heart stands still at the strange, unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun, which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so, and one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset, and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly, again and again, something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night, with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure, and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true, and sometimes a look in someone's eyes. And it was like that with Colin when he first saw and heard and felt the springtime inside the four high walls of a hidden garden. That afternoon the whole world seemed to devote itself to being perfect and radiantly beautiful and kind to one boy. Perhaps out of pure heavenly goodness the spring came and crowned everything it possibly could into that one place. More than once Dickon paused in what he was doing and stood still with a sort of growing wonder in his eyes, shaking his head softly. Hey, it is greatly, he said. I'm twelve going on thirteen, and there's a lot of afternoons in thirteen years. But it seems to me like I never see one as greatly as this year. Aye, it is a greatly one, said Mary, and she sighed for me a joy. I'll warrant it's the greatest one as ever was in this world. Does that think, said Colin, with dreamy carefulness, as happened it was made like this year all of a purpose for me? My word, cried Mary admiringly, that there is a bitter good Yorkshire, that shape in first rate, that thart, and delight reigned. They drew the chair under the plum tree, which was snow white with blossoms and musical with bees. It was like a king's canopy, a fairy king's. There were flowering cherry trees near, and apple trees whose buds were pink and white, and here and there one had burst open wide. Between the blossoming branches of the canopy bits of blue sky looked down like wonderful eyes. Mary and Dickon worked a little here and there, and Colin watched them. They brought in things to look at, buds which were opening, buds which were tight closed, bits of twig whose leaves were just showing green, the feather of a woodpecker which had dropped on the grass, the empty shell of some bird early hatched. Dickon pushed the chair slowly round and round the garden, stopping every other moment to let him look at wonders springing out of the earth, or trailing down from trees. It was like being taken in state round the country of a magic king and queen, and shown all the mysterious riches it contained. I wonder if we shall see the robin, said Colin. They'll see him often and now after a bit, answered Dickon. When the eggs hatches out, the little chap will be kept so busy it'll make his head swim. They'll see him flying backward and forward, carrying worms nigh as big as himself, and that much noise going on in the nest, when he gets there, as fair flusters him, so as he scarce knows which big mouth to drop the first piece in. And gaping beaks and squawks on every side. Mother says as when she sees the work a robin has to keep them gaping beaks filled, she feels like she was a lady with nothing to do. She says she's seen the little chaps when it seemed like the sweat must be dropping off them, though Fort can't see it. This made them giggle so delightedly that they were obliged to cover their mouths with their hands, remembering that they must not be heard. Colin had been instructed as to the law of whispers and low voices several days before. He liked the mysteriousness of it and did his best, but in the midst of excited enjoyment it is rather difficult never to laugh above a whisper. Every moment of the afternoon was full of new things, and every hour the sunshine grew more golden. The wheeled chair had been drawn back under the canopy, and Dickon sat down on the grass, and had just drawn out his pipe, when Colin saw something he had not had time to notice before. That's a very old tree over there, isn't it? he said. Dickon looked across the grass at the tree, and Mary looked, and there was a brief moment of stillness. Yes, answered Dickon after it, and his low voice had a very gentle sound. Mary gazed at the tree and thought. The branches are quite gray, and there's not a single leaf anywhere, Colin went on. It's quite dead, isn't it? I admitted Dickon, but them roses as has climbed all over it will near hide every bit of the dead wood when they're full of leaves and flowers. It won't look dead then. It'll be the prettiest of all. Mary still gazed at the tree and thought. It looks as if a big branch had been broken off, said Colin. I wonder how it was done? It's been dawn many a year, answered Dickon. Hey! with a sudden relieved start and laying his hand on Colin. Look at that robin! There he is! He's been foraging for his mate. Colin was almost too late, but he just caught sight of him. The flash of red-breasted bird with something in his beak. He darted through the greenness and into the close-grown corner, and was out of sight. Colin leaned back on his cushion again, laughing a little. He's taking her tea to her. Perhaps it's five o'clock. I think I'd like some tea myself. And so they were safe. It was magic which sent the robin, said Mary secretly to Dickon afterward. I know it was magic. For both she and Dickon had been afraid Colin might ask something about the tree whose branch had broken off ten years ago, and they had talked it over together, and Dickon had stood and rubbed his head in a troubled way. We won't look as if it wasn't no different from the other trees, he had said. We couldn't never tell him how it broke, poor lad. If he says anything about it, we won't—we won't try to look cheerful. Aye, that we won, had answered Mary. But she had not felt as if she looked cheerful when she gazed at the tree. She wandered and wandered in those few moments, if there was any reality in that other thing Dickon had said. He had gone on rubbing his rust red hair in a puzzled way, but a nice, comforted look had begun to grow in his blue eyes. Mrs. Craven was a very lovely young lady, he had gone on rather hesitatingly, and mother she thinks maybe she's about misalthuate many a time, looking after Mr. Colin, same as all mothers do when they're took out of the world. They have to come back, that sees. Happened she's been in the garden, and happened it was Urset us to work, and told us to bring him here. Mary had thought he meant something about magic. She was a great believer in magic. Secretly she quite believed that Dickon worked magic, of course good magic, on everything near him, and that was why people liked him so much, and wild creatures knew he was their friend. She wondered indeed if it were not possible that his gift had brought the robin just at the right moment, when Colin asked that dangerous question. She felt that his magic was working all the afternoon, and making Colin look like an entirely different boy. It did not seem possible that he could be the crazy creature who had screamed, and beaten, and bitten his pillow. Even his ivory whiteness seemed to change. The faint glow of color which had shown on his face, and neck, and hands, when he first got inside the garden, really never quite died away. He looked as if he were made of flesh, instead of ivory or wax. They saw the robin carry food to his mate two or three times, and it was so suggestive of afternoon tea, that Colin felt they must have some. Go and make one of the men's servants bring some in a basket to the Rhododendron Walk, he said, and then you and Dickon can bring it here. It was an agreeable idea, easily carried out, and when the white cloth was spread upon the grass, with hot tea and buttered toast and crumpets, a delightfully hungry meal was eaten, and several birds on domestic errands paused to inquire what was going on, and were led into investigating crumbs with great activity. Nut and shell whisked up trees with pieces of cake, and soot took the entire half of a buttered crumpet into a corner, and pecked at and examined and turned it over and made horse remarks about it, until he decided to swallow it all joyfully in one gulp. The afternoon was dragging towards its mellow hour. The sun was deepening the gold of its lances, the bees were going home, and the birds were flying past less often.  I don't want this afternoon to go, he said, but I shall come back tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, and the day after. You'll get plenty of fresh air, won't you? said Mary. I am going to get nothing else, he answered. I've seen the spring now, and I'm going to see the summer. I'm going to see everything grow here. I'm going to grow here myself. That, thou will, said Dickon, as I love thee, walking about here, digging, same as other folk have fallen on. Colin flushed tremendously. Walk, he said. Dig, shall I? Dickon's glance at him was delicately cautious. Neither he nor Mary had ever asked if anything was the matter with his legs. For sure, thou will, he said stoutly, that, that's got legs of thy own, same as other folks. Mary was rather frightened until she heard Colin's answer. Nothing really ails them, he said, but they're so thin and weak, they shake so that I'm afraid to try to stand on them. Both Mary and Dickon drew a relieved breath. When thou stops being afraid, thou'llt stand on them, Dickon said with renewed cheer, and thou'llt stop being afraid in a bit. I shall, said Colin, and he lay still, as if he were wondering about things. They were really very quiet for a little while. The sun was dropping lower. It was that hour when everything stills itself, and they really had had a busy and exciting afternoon. Colin looked as if he were resting luxuriously. Even the creatures had ceased moving about, and had drawn together and were resting near them. Soot had perched on a low branch and drawn up one leg, and dropped the gray film drowsily over his eyes. Mary privately thought he looked as if he might snore in a minute. In the midst of this stillness, it was rather startling when Colin half lifted his head and exclaimed in a loud, suddenly alarmed whisper, Who is that man? Dickon and Mary scrambled to their feet. Man! they both cried in low, quick voices. Colin pointed to the high wall. Look! he whispered excitedly. Just look! Mary and Dickon wheeled about and looked. There was Ben Wetherstaff's indignant face glaring at them over the wall from the top of a ladder. He actually shook his fist at Mary. If I wasn't a bachelder, and thou was a winch of mine, he cried, I'd give thee a hyden. He mounted another step threateningly, as if it were his energetic intention to jump down and deal with her. But as she came toward him, he evidently thought better of it, and stood on the top step of his ladder, shaking his fist down at her. I never thought much of thee, he harangued. I could now bide thee the first time as it eyes on thee. A scrawny, buttermilk-faced young bosom, all as asking questions and pork in thy nose where it wasn't a wanted. I never know'd how thou got so thick with me, if it hadn't a bin for the robin, drat him. Ben Wetherstaff, called out Mary finding her breath.  Ben Wetherstaff, it was the robin who showed me the way. Then it did seem, as if Ben really would scramble down on her side of the wall, he was so outraged. Thy young badden, he called down at her, lay in thy badness on a robin. Not but what he's impotent to know for anythin. Him showing thee the way, him, hey thy young note. She could see his next words burst out because he was overpowered by curiosity. How ever in the world did that get in? It was the robin who showed me the way, she protested obstinately. He didn't know he was doing it, but he did. And I can't tell you from here why you're shaking a fist at me. He stopped shaking his fist very suddenly at that very moment, and his jaw actually dropped as he stared over her head at something he saw coming over the grass toward him. At the first sound of his torrent of words, Colin had been so surprised that he had only sat up and listened as if he were spellbound. But in the midst of it, he had recovered himself and beckoned imperiously to dig him. Wheel me over there, he commanded, wheel me quite close and stop right in front of him. And this, if you please, this is what Ben Wetherstaff beheld and which made his jaw drop. A wheeled chair with luxurious cushions and robes which came toward him, looking rather like some sort of state coach, because a young Raja leaned back in it with royal command in his great black-rimmed eyes, and a thin white hand extended haughtily toward him. And it stopped right under Ben Wetherstaff's nose.  Do you know who I am? demanded the Raja. How Ben Wetherstaff stared. His red old eyes fixed themselves on what was before him, as if he were seeing a ghost. He gazed and gazed and gulped a lump down his throat, and did not say a word. Do you know who I am? demanded Colin still more imperiously. Answer. Ben Wetherstaff put his gnarled hand up and past it over his eyes and over his forehead, and then he did answer, in a queer, shaky voice. Who that? he said. I, that I do, with that mother's eyes staring at me out of that face. Lord knows how that come here, but there at the poor cripple. Colin forgot that he had ever had a back. His face flushed scarlet, and he sat bolt upright. I'm not a cripple! he cried out furiously. I'm not!  He's not got a lump as big as a pin. I looked, and there was none there, not one. Ben Wetherstaff passed his hand over his forehead again, and gazed as if he could never gaze enough.  He was an ignorant old man, a detactless old man, and he could only remember the things he had heard. That, that hasn't got a crooked back, he said hoarsely. No! shouted Colin. That, that hasn't got crooked legs! quavered Ben more hoarsely still. It was too much. The strength which Colin usually threw into his tantrums rushed through him now in a new way. Never yet had he been accused of crooked legs, even in whispers, and the perfectly simple belief in their existence which was revealed by Ben Wetherstaff's voice was more than raja, flesh, and blood could endure. His anger and insulted pride made him forget everything but this one moment, and filled him with a power he had never known before, an almost unnatural strength. Come here! he shouted to Dickon, and he actually began to tear the coverings off his lower limbs and disentangle himself. Come here! come here this minute! Dickon was by his side in a second. Mary caught her breath in a short gasp, and felt herself turn pale. He can do it, he can do it, he can do it, he can! She gabbled over to herself under her breath as fast as ever she could. There was a brief fierce scramble. The rugs were tossed on the ground. Dickon held Colin's arm. The thin legs were out. The thin feet were on the grass. Colin was standing upright, upright, as straight as an arrow, and looking strangely tall.  Look at me! he flung up at Ben Wetherstaff. Just look at me, you! Just look at me! He's as straight as I am! cried Dickon. He's as straight as any lad in Yorkshire. What Ben Wetherstaff did, Mary thought queer beyond measure. He choked and gulped, and suddenly tears ran down his weather-wrinkled cheeks as he struck his old hands together. Hey! he burst forth. The lies forked tells. They're just thin as a lath, and as white as a wreath, but there's not a knob on thee. I'll make a morn yet. God bless thee. Dickon held Colin's arm strongly, but the boy had not begun to falter. He stood straighter and straighter, and looked Ben Wetherstaff in the face. I'm your master, he said, when my father is away, and you are to obey me. This is my garden. Don't dare to say a word about it. You get down from that ladder, and go out to the long walk, and Miss Mary will meet you and bring you here. I want to talk to you. We did not want you, but now you will have to be in the secret. Be quick.  It seemed as if he could not take his eyes from thin, straight Colin standing on his feet with his head thrown back. Hey, lad! he almost whispered. Hey, my lad! And then, remembering himself, he suddenly touched his hat, gardener fashion, and said, Yes sir, yes sir, and obediently disappeared as he descended the ladder. End of Chapter 21 Chapter 22 of The Secret Garden This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Karen Savage, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Chapter 22 When the Sun Went Down When his head was out of sight, Colin turned to Mary. Go and meet him, he said, and Mary flew across the grass to the door under the ivy. Dickon was watching him with sharp eyes. There were scarlet spots on his cheeks, and he looked amazing, but he showed no signs of spalling. I can stand, he said, and his head was still held up, and he said it quite grandly. I told thee thou could as soon as I stopped being afraid, answered Dickon, and thou stopped. Yes, I've stopped, said Colin. Then suddenly he remembered something Mary had said. Are you making magic? he asked sharply. Dickon's curly mouth spread in a cheerful grin. Thou's doin' magic thyself, he said, it's same magic as makes the easier work out of the earth, and he touched with this thick boot a clump of crocuses in the grass. Colin looked down at them. Aye, he said slowly, there couldn't be bigger magic than that there, there couldn't be. He drew himself up straighter than ever. I'm going to walk to that tree, he said, pointing to one a few feet away from him. I'm going to be standing when weatherstaff comes here. I can rest against the tree if I like. When I want to sit down, I will sit down, but not before. Bring a rug from the chair. He walked to the tree, and though Dickon held his arm, he was wonderfully steady. When he stood against the tree-trunk, it was not too plain that he supported himself against it, and he still held himself so straight that he looked tall. When Ben Weatherstaff came through the door in the wall, he saw him standing there, and he heard Mary muttering something under her breath. What I'd sayin', he asked rather testily, because he did not want his attention distracted from the long, thin, straight, boy-figure and proud face. But she did not tell him. What she was saying was this. You can do it! You can do it! I told you you could! You can do it! You can do it! You can! She was saying it to Colin, because she wanted to make magic and keep him on his feet, looking like that. She could not bear that he should give in before Ben Weatherstaff. He did not give in. She was uplifted by a sudden feeling that he looked quite beautiful in spite of his thinness. He fixed his eyes on Ben Weatherstaff in his funny, imperious way. Look at me, he commanded. Look at me all over! Am I a hunchback? Have I got crooked legs? Ben Weatherstaff had not quite got over his emotion, but he had recovered a little, and answered almost in his usual way. Not there, he said, now to the sort. What's that been doin' with thy cell, hidein' out a sight and letin' folk think thou was cripple and half-witted? Half-witted! said Colin angrily. Who thought that? Lots of fools, said Ben. The world's full of jackasses, brainy, and they never brained out, but lies. What did that shut thy self up for? Everyone thought I was going to die, said Colin shortly. I'm not. And he said it with such decision Ben Weatherstaff looked him over, up and down, down and up. Thou die, he said with dry exultation. Now to the sort. Thou's got too much pluck in thee. When I see thee, put thy legs on the ground in such a hurry, I know thou was all right. Sit thee down on the rug a bit, young master, and give me thy orders.  Mary had poured out speeches rapidly as she could as they had come down the long walk. The chief thing to be remembered, she had told him, was that Colin was getting well, getting well. The garden was doing it. No one must let him remember about having humps and dying. The Raja condescended to seat himself on a rug under the tree. What work do you do in the gardens, Weatherstaff? he inquired. Anything I'm told to do, answered old Ben. I'm kept on by favor, because she liked me. She, said Colin, Thou mother, answered Ben Weatherstaff. My mother, said Colin, and he looked about him quietly. This was her garden, wasn't it? Aye, it was that, and Ben Weatherstaff looked about him too. She were main fond of it. It is my garden now, I am fond of it. I shall come here every day, announced Colin, but it is to be a secret. My orders are that no one is to know that we come here. Dickon and my cousin have worked and made it come alive. I shall send for you sometimes to help, but you must come when no one can see you. Ben Weatherstaff's face twisted itself in a dry, old smile. I'd come here before when no one saw me, he said. What? exclaimed Colin. When? The last time I was here, rubbing his chin and looking around, was about two years ago. But no one has been in it for ten years, cried Colin. There was no door. I'm no one, said old Ben dryly, and I didn't come through the door. I come over the wall. The rheumatics held me back the last two years. That come, indeed, a bit of prune in, cried Dickon. I couldn't make out how it had been done. She was so fond of it she was, said Ben Weatherstaff slowly, and she was such a pretty young thing. She says to me once, Ben, says she, laughing, if ever I mill or if I go away, you must take care of my roses. When she did go away, though there was no one was ever to come nigh. But I come, with grumpy obstinacy, over the wall I come, until the rheumatics stopped me, and I did a bit of work once a year. She'd gave her order first. It wouldn't have been as weak as it is if I hadn't done it, said Dickon. I did wonder. I'm glad you did it, Weatherstaff, said Colin, you'll know how to keep the secret. I'll know, sir, answered Ben, and it'll be easier for a man with rheumatics to come in at the door. On the grass near the tree, Mary had dropped her trowel.  A nod expression came into his face, and he began to scratch at the earth. His thin hand was weak enough, but presently as they watched him, Mary with quite breathless interest, he drove the end of the trowel into the soil, and turned some over. You can do it, you can do it, said Mary to herself.  Dickon's round eyes were full of eager curiousness, but he said not a word. Ben Weatherstaff looked on with interested face. Colin persevered. After he had turned a few trowelfuls of soil, he spoke exultantly to Dickon in his best yawksha. Thou saidest that ab me walk in about here same as other folk, and thou said that ab me dig in. I thought that was just Leon to please me. This is only the first day, and I've walked, and here I am, Dickon. Ben Weatherstaff's mouth fell open again when he heard him, but he ended by chuckling. He said, that sounds as if that got wits in ow, that a yawksha lad for sure, and that Dickon too. How d thou like to plant a bit or something? I can get thee a rose in a pot. Go and get it, said Colin, digging excitedly. Quick, quick! It was done quickly enough indeed. Ben Weatherstaff went his way for getting rheumatics. Dickon took his spade and dug the hole deeper and wider than a new digger with thin white hands could make it. Mary slipped out to run and bring back a watering can. When Dickon had deepened the hole, Colin went on turning the soft earth over and over. He looked up at the sky, flushed and glowing with the strangely new exercise, slight as it was. I want to do it before the sun goes quite, quite down, he said. Mary thought that perhaps the sun held back a few minutes just on purpose. Ben Weatherstaff brought the rose in its pot from the greenhouse. He hobbled over the grass as fast as he could. He had begun to be excited too. He knelt down by the hole and broke the pot from the mould. Here, lad, he said, handing the plant to Colin, set it in the earth thyshell, same as the kingdors when he goes to a new place. The thin white hands shook a little and Colin's flush grew deeper as he set the rose in the mould and held it while old Ben made firm the earth. It was filled in and pressed down and made steady. Mary was leaning forward on her hands and knees. Soot had flown down and marched forward to see what was being done. Nut and shell chatted about it from a cherry tree. It's planted, said Colin at last, and the sun is only slipping over the edge. Help me up, Dickon! I want to be standing when it goes—that's part of the magic. And Dickon helped him, and the magic, or whatever it was, so gave him strength that when the sun did slip over the edge and end the strange lovely afternoon for them, there he actually stood, on his two feet, laughing. End of Chapter 22 Chapter 23 of The Secret Garden This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Karen Savage. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Chapter 23. Magic Dr. Craven had been waiting some time at the house when they returned to it. He had indeed begun to wonder if it might not be wise to send someone out to explore the garden paths. When Colin was brought back to his room, the poor man looked him over seriously. You should not have stayed so long, he said. You must not overexert yourself. I am not tired at all, said Colin. It has made me well. Tomorrow I am going out in the morning as well as in the afternoon. I am not sure that I can allow it, answered Dr. Craven. I am afraid it would not be wise. It would not be wise to try to stop me, said Colin quite seriously. I am going.   Mary had indeed been rather like him herself, and since she had been at misalthwaite, had gradually discovered that her own manners had not been of the kind which is usual or popular. Having made this discovery, she naturally thought it of enough interest to communicate to Colin. So she sat and looked at him curiously for a few minutes after Dr. Craven had gone. She wanted to make him ask her why she was doing it, and of course, she did. What are you looking at me for? he said. I am thinking that I am rather sorry for Dr. Craven. So am I, said Colin calmly, but not without an air of some satisfaction.  I am sorry for him because of that, of course, said Mary, but I was thinking just then that it must have been very horrid to have had to be polite for ten years to a boy who was always rude. I would never have done it. Am I rude? Colin inquired undisturbedly.  But he dared, said Colin. No, he dared, answered Mistress Mary, thinking the thing out quite without prejudice.  You were such a poor thing. But, announced Colin stubbornly, I am not going to be a poor thing. I won't let people think I am one. I stood on my feet this afternoon. It is always having your own way that has made you so queer. Mary went on thinking aloud. Colin turned his head, frowning. Am I queer? he demanded. Yes. Answered Mary, very. But you needn't be cross, she added impartially, because so am I queer, and so has been weatherstaff. But I am not as queer as I was before I began to like people, and before I found the garden. I don't want to be queer, said Colin. I am not going to be. And he frowned again with determination. He was a very proud boy. He lay thinking for a while, and then Mary saw his beautiful smile begin, and gradually change his whole face. I shall stop being queer, he said, if I go every day to the garden. There is magic in there. Good magic, you know, Mary. I am sure there is. So am I, said Mary. Even if it isn't real magic, Colin said, we can pretend it is. Something is there. Something. It's magic, said Mary, but not black. It's as white as snow. They always called it magic, and indeed it seemed like it in the months that followed, the wonderful months, the radiant months, the amazing ones. Oh, the things which happened in that garden. If you have never had a garden, you cannot understand. And if you have had a garden, you will know that it would take a whole book to describe all that came to pass there. At first it seemed that green things would never cease pushing their way through the earth, in the grass, in the beds, even in the crevices of the walls. Then the green things began to show buds, and the buds began to unfurl and show color, every shade of blue, every shade of purple, every tint and hue of crimson. In its happy days flowers had been tucked away into every inch and hole and corner. Ben Weatherstaff had seen it done, and had himself scraped out mortar from between the bricks of the wall, and made pockets of earth for lovely clinging things to grow on. Iris and white lilies rose out of the grass in sheaves, and the green alcoves filled themselves with amazing armies of the blue and white flower lances of tall delphiniums, or columbines, or campanulas. She was main fun to them she was, Ben Weatherstaff said. She liked them things as was all as pointing up to the blue sky, she used to tell. Not as she was one of them as looked down on earth—not her. She just loved it. But she said as the blue sky always looked so joyful. The seeds Dickon and Mary had planted grew as if fairies had tended them. Satiny poppies of all tints danced in the breeze by the score, gaily defying flowers which had lived in the garden for years, and which it might be confessed, seemed rather to wonder how such new people had got there. And the roses, the roses, rising out of the grass, tangled around the sundial, breathing the tree trunks and hanging from their branches, climbing up the walls and spreading over them with long garlands falling in cascades. They came alive day by day, hour by hour. Fair fresh leaves and buds, and buds, tiny at first, but swelling and working magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent, delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air. Colin saw it all, watching each change as it took place. Every morning he was brought out, and every hour of each day when it didn't rain, he spent in the garden. Even grey days pleased him. He would lie on the grass, watching things growing, he said. If he watched long enough, he declared, you could see buds unsheath themselves. Also you could make the acquaintance of strange, busy insect things running about on various unknown but evidently serious errands, sometimes carrying tiny scraps of straw or feather or food or climbing blades of grass as if they were trees from whose tops one could look out and explore the country. A mould throwing up its mound at the end of its burrow and making its way out at last with the long-nailed paws which looked so like elfish hands, had absorbed him one whole morning. Antsweighs, beetlesweighs, beesweighs, frogsweighs, birdsweighs, plantsweighs, gave him a new world to explore, and when Dickon revealed them all and added foxesweighs, ottersweighs, ferretsweighs, squirrelsweighs, and trout and water rats and badgersweighs, there was no end to the things to talk about and think over. And this was not half of the magic. The fact that he had really once stood on his feet had set Colin thinking tremendously, and when Mary told him of the spell she had worked, he was excited and approved of it greatly. He talked of it constantly. Of course there must be lots of magic in the world, he said wisely one day, but people don't know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment. The next morning when they went to the secret garden, he centred once for Benweatherstaff. Ben came as quickly as he could, and found the raja standing on his feet under a tree and looking very grand, but also very beautifully smiling. Good morning, Benweatherstaff, he said. I want you and Dickon and Miss Mary to stand in a row and listen to me, because I am going to tell you something very important. Aye, aye, sir! answered Benweatherstaff, touching us for it. One of the long concealed charms of Benweatherstaff was that in his boyhood he had once run away to sea and had made voyages, so he could reply like a sailor. I am going to try a scientific experiment, explained the raja. When I grow up I am going to make great scientific discoveries, and I am going to begin now with this experiment. Aye, aye, sir! said Benweatherstaff promptly, though this was the first time he had heard of great scientific discoveries. It was the first time Mary had heard of them either, but even at this stage she had begun to realize that, queer as he was, Colin had read about a great many singular things, and was somehow a very convincing sort of boy. When he held up his head and fixed his strange eyes on you, it seemed as if you believed him almost in spite of yourself, though he was only ten years old, going on eleven. At this moment he was especially convincing, because he suddenly felt the fascination of actually making a sort of speech like a grown-up person. The great scientific discoveries I am going to make, he went on, will be about magic. Magic is a great thing, and scarcely anyone knows anything about it, except a few people in old books, and Mary a little because she was born in India where there are fakirs. I believe Dickon knows some magic, but perhaps he doesn't know he knows it. He charms animals and people. I would never have let him come to see me if he had not been an animal charmer, which is a boy-charmer too, because a boy is an animal. I am sure there is magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us, like electricity and horses and steam. This sounded so imposing that Ben Weatherstarr became quite excited and really could not keep still. I, I, sir, he said, and he began to stand up quite straight. When Mary found this garden it looked quite dead, the orator proceeded. Then something began pushing things up out of the soil and making things out of nothing. One day things weren't there, and another they were. I had never watched things before, and it made me feel very curious. Scientific people are always curious, and I am going to be scientific. I keep saying to myself, what is it? What is it? It's something, it can't be nothing. I don't know its name, so I call it magic. I have never seen the sunrise, but Mary and Dickon have, and from what they tell me, I am sure that is magic too. Something pushes it up and draws it. Sometimes, since I've been in the garden, I have looked up through the trees of the sky, and I have had a strange feeling of being happy, as if something were pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic—leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badges and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden, in all the places. The magic in this garden has made me stand up and know I am going to live to be a man. I am going to make the scientific experiment of trying to get some and put it in myself and make it push and draw me and make me strong. I don't know how to do it, but I think that if you keep thinking about it and calling it, perhaps it will come. Perhaps that is the first baby way to get it. When I was going to try to stand that first time, Mary kept saying to herself as fast as she could, you can do it, you can do it, and I did. I had to try myself at the same time, of course, but her magic helped me, and so did Dickens. Every morning and evening, and as often in the daytime as I can remember, I am going to say, magic is in me, magic is making me well, I am going to be as strong as Dicken, as strong as Dicken, and you must all do it too. That is my experiment. Will you help, Ben Weatherstaff? Aye aye, sir," said Ben Weatherstaff. Aye aye. If you keep doing it every single day as regularly as soldiers go through drill, we shall see what will happen and find out if the experiment succeeds. You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking about them until they stay in your mind for ever, and I think it will be the same with magic. If you keep calling it to come to you and help you, it will get to be part of you, and it will stay and do things. I once heard an officer in India tell my mother that there were Fakirs who said words over and over thousands of times, said Mary. I've heard Gem Fettleworth's wife say the same thing over thousands of times, calling Gem a drunken brute," said Ben Weatherstaff dryly. Some it always comes without sure enough. He gave her a good hyden, and went to the blue lion, and got as drunk as a lord. Colin drew his brows together and thought a few minutes. Then he cheered up. Well, he said, you see, something did come of it. She used the wrong magic until she made him beat her. If she'd used the right magic and had said something nice, perhaps he wouldn't have got as drunk as a lord, and perhaps—perhaps he might have bought her a new bonnet.  That a clever lad as well as a straight-legged one, Mr. Colin, he said. Next time I see best Fettleworth I'll give her a bit of hint to what magical do for her. She'd be rare and pleased if the scientific experiment worked, and so'd Gem. Dickon had stood listening to the lecture, his round eyes shining with curious delight. Nut and shell were on his shoulders, and he held a long-eared white rabbit in his arm, and stroked and stroked it softly while it laid its ears along its back and enjoyed itself. Do you think the experiment will work? Colin asked him, wondering what he was thinking. He so often wondered what Dickon was thinking when he saw him looking at him or at one of his creatures with his happy wide smile. He smiled now, and his smile was wider than usual. I, he answered, that I do. It'll work the same as the seeds do when the sun shines on him. It'll work for sure. Shall us begin it now? Colin was delighted, and so was Mary. Fired by recollections of facures and devotees and illustrations, Colin suggested that they should all sit cross-legged under the tree which made a canopy. It will be like sitting in a sort of temple, said Colin. I'm rather tired, and I want to sit down. Hey! said Dickon, I will shouldn't begin by saying that tired, thou must spoil the magic. Colin turned and looked at him into his innocent round eyes. That's true, he said slowly, I must only think of the magic. It all seemed most majestic and mysterious when they sat down in their circle. Ben Weatherstar felt as if he had somehow been led into appearing at a prayer meeting. Ordinarily he was very fixed in being what he called, again prayer meetings. But this being the Rajah's affair, he did not resented, and was indeed inclined to be gratified at being called upon to assist. Mistress Mary felt solemnly enraptured. Dickon held his rabbit in his arm, and perhaps he made some charmer's signal no one heard, for when he sat down cross-legged like the rest, the crow, the fox, the squirrels, and the lamb slowly drew near and made part of the circle, settling each into a place of rest as if of their own desire. The creatures have come, said Colin gravely. They want to help us. Colin really looked quite beautiful, Mary thought.  The light shone on him through the tree canopy. Now we will begin, he said. Shall we sway backward and forward, Mary, as if we were dervishes? I cannot do no swaying backward and forward, said Ben Weatherstaff. I have got the rheumatics. The magic will take them away, said Colin, in a high priest's tone. But we won't sway until it has done it. We will only chant. I cannot do no chanting, said Ben Weatherstaff, a trifle testily. They turned me out of the church choir the only time I ever tried it. No one smiled. They were all too much in earnest. Colin's face was not even crossed by a shadow. He was thinking only of the magic. Then I will chant, he said. And he began, looking like a strange boy spirit. The sun is shining. The sun is shining. That is the magic. The flowers are growing. The roots are stirring. That is the magic. Being alive is the magic. Being strong is the magic. The magic is in me. The magic is in me. It is in me. It is in me. It is in every one of us. It is in Ben Weatherstaff's back. Magic! Magic! Come and help! He said it a great many times. Not a thousand times, but quite a goodly number. Mary listened and tranced. She felt as if it were at once queer and beautiful, and she wanted him to go on and on. Ben Weatherstaff began to feel soothed into a sort of dream which was quite agreeable. The humming of the bees and the blossoms mingled with the chanting voice and drowsily melted into a dose. Dickon sat cross-legged with his rabbit asleep on his arm, and a hand resting on the lamb's back. Sir Ted pushed away a squirrel and huddled close to him on his shoulder, the gray film dropped over his eyes. At last Colin stopped. Now I am going to walk around the garden, he announced.  You have been asleep, said Colin. Now to the sort, mumbled Ben. The sermon was good now, but I am bound to get out for the collection. He was not quite awake yet. You're not in church, said Colin. Not me, said Ben, straightening himself. Who said I were? I owed every bit of it. You said the magic was in my back. The doctor calls it rheumatics. The rajah waved his hand. That was the wrong magic, he said. You will get better. You have my permission to go to your work, but come back tomorrow. I'd like to see thee walk around the garden, grunted Ben. It was not an unfriendly grunt, but it was a grunt. In fact, being a stubborn old party and not having entire faith and magic, he had made up his mind that if he were sent away he would climb his ladder and look over the wall so that he might be ready to hobble back if there were any stumbling. The rajah did not object to his staying, and so the procession was formed. It really did look like a procession. Colin was at its head with Dickon on one side and Mary on the other. Ben Weatherstaff walked behind, and the creatures trailed after them, the lamb and the fox-cub keeping close to Dickon, the white rabbit hopping along or stopping to nibble and soot following with the solemnity of a person who felt himself in charge. It was a procession which moved slowly but with dignity. Every few yards it stopped to rest. Colin leaned on Dickon's arm, and privately Ben Weatherstaff kept a sharp lookout. But now and then Colin took his hand away from its support and walked a few steps alone. His head was held up all the time and he looked very grand. The magic is in me, he kept saying. The magic is making me strong. I can feel it. I can feel it. It seemed very certain that something was upholding and uplifting him. He sat on the seeds in the alcoves, and once or twice he sat down on the grass, and several times he paused in the path and leaned on Dickon, but he would not give up until he had gone all around the garden. When he returned to the canopy-tree his cheeks were flushed, and he looked triumphant. I did it! The magic worked, he cried. That is my first scientific discovery. What will Dr. Craven say? broke out Mary. He won't say anything, Colin answered, because he will not be told. This is to be the biggest secret of all. No one is to know anything about it until I have grown so strong that I can walk and run like any other boy. I shall come here every day in my chair, and I shall be taken back in it. I won't have people whispering and asking questions, and I won't let my father hear about it until the experiment has quite succeeded. Then, some time when he comes back to Missalthwaite, I shall just walk into his study and say, Here I am! I am like any other boy. I am quite well, and I shall live to be a man. It has to be done by a scientific experiment. He will think he is in a dream, cried Mary. He won't believe his eyes. Colin flushed triumphantly. He had made himself believe that he was going to get well, which was really more than half the battle, if he had been aware of it. And the thought which stimulated him more than any other was this imagining what his father would look like when he saw that he had a son who was as straight and strong as other father's sons.  He'll be obliged to believe them, he said. One of the things I am going to do after the magic works, and before I begin to make scientific discoveries, is to be an athlete. We shall have thee taken to boxing in a week or so, said Benweather staff. Thaltend will win in the belt, and be in champion prize-fighter of all England. Colin fixed his eyes on him sternly. Weather staff, he said, that is disrespectful. You must not take liberties, because you are in the secret. However much the magic works, I shall not be a prize-fighter. I shall be a scientific discoverer. Asked pardon. Asked pardon, sir. Answered Ben, touching his forehead in salute. I ought to have seen it wasn't a joke in matter. But his eyes twinkled, and secretly he was immensely pleased. He really did not mind being snubbed, since the snubbing meant that the lad was gaining strength and spirit. End of Chapter 23 Chapter 24 of The Secret Garden This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Karen Savage. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Chapter 24 Let Them Laugh The Secret Garden was not the only one Dickon worked in. Round the cottage on the moor there was a piece of ground enclosed by a low wall of rough stones. Early in the morning, and late in the fading twilight, and on all the days Colin and Mary did not see him, Dickon worked there, planting or tending potatoes and cabbages, turnips and carrots and herbs for his mother. In the company of his creatures he did wonders there, and was never tired of doing them, it seemed. While he dug or weeded he whistled, or sang bits of Yorkshire moor songs, or talked to Soot or Captain or the brothers and sisters he had taught to help him. We'd never get on as comfortable as we do, Mrs. Sourby said, if it wasn't for Dickon's garden, anything will grow for him. His taters and cabbages is twice the size of anyone else's, and they've got a flavour with them as nobody's has. When she found a moment to spare she liked to go out and talk to him. After supper there was still a long clear twilight to work in, and that was her quiet time. She could sit upon the low rough wall and look on and hear stories of the day. She loved this time. There were not only vegetables in this garden. Dickon had bought penny packages of flower seeds now and then, and had sown bright, sweet-scented things among gooseberry bushes and even cabbages, and he grew borders of mignonnette and pinks and pansies and things whose seeds he could save year after year, or whose roots would bloom each spring and spread in time into fine clumps. The low wall was one of the prettiest things in Yorkshire, because he had tucked moorland foxglove and ferns and rockcrests and hedgerow flowers into every crevice, until only here and there glimpses of the stones were to be seen. All her chaps got to do to make them thrive, mother, he would say, is to be friends with them for sure. They're just like the creatures. If they're thirsty, give them drink, and if they're hungry, give them a bit of food. They want to live same as we do. If they died, I should feel as if I'd been a bad lad and somehow treated them heartless. It was in these twilight hours that Mrs. Sauer be heard of all that happened at Missle Thwaite Manor. At first she was only told that Mr. Collin had taken a fancy to going out into the grounds with Miss Mary, and that it was doing him good. But it was not long before it was agreed between the two children that Dickon's mother might come into the secret. Somehow it was not doubted that she was safe for sure. So one beautiful still evening Dickon told the whole story, with all the thrilling details of the buried key and the rumen, and the gray haze which it seemed like deadness, and the secret Mistress Mary had planned never to reveal. The coming of Dickon and how it had been told to him, the doubt of Mr. Collin, and the final drama of his introduction to the hidden domain, combined with the incident of Ben Weatherstaff's angry face peering over the wall and Mr. Collin's sudden indignant strength, made Mrs. Sauer be's nice-looking face quite changed colour several times. My word, she said, it was a good thing that little lass come to the manor. It's been them making up her and the saving of him, standing on his feet, and nor soul-thinking he was a poor half-witted lad with not a straight bone in him. She asked a great many questions, and her blue eyes were full of deep thinking. What do they make of it at the manor, him being so well and cheerful and never complaining? She inquired. They don't know what to make of it, answered Dickon. Every day as comes round, his face looks different. It's filling out, and doesn't look so sharp, and the waxy colour is going. But he has to do his bitter complaining, with a highly entertained grin. What for a mercy's name? asked Mrs. Sauer be. Dickon chuckled. He does it to keep them from guessing what's happened. If the doctor knew he'd found out he could stand on his feet, he'd likely write and tell Mr. Craven. Mr. Collins saven the secret to tell himself. He's going to practice his magic on his legs every day till his father comes back, and then he's going to march into his room, and show him he's as straight as other lads. But him and Miss Mary think it's the best plan to do a bit of groaning and fretting now and then to throw folk off the scent. Mrs. Sauer be was laughing a low, comfortable laugh, long before he had finished his last sentence. Eh, she said, that pears enjoying their selves, I'll warrant. They'll get a good bit acting out of it, and there's nothing children likes as much as play acting. Let's hear what they do, Dickon lad. Dickon stopped weeding and sat up on his heels to tell her. His eyes were twinkling with fun. Mr. Collins carried down in his chair every time he goes out, he explained, and he flies out at John the Footman, for not carrying him careful enough. He makes himself as helpless-looking as he can, and never lifts his head till we are out of sight of the house. And he grunts and frets a good bit when he's being settled into his chair. Him and Miss Mary's both got to enjoy in it, and when he groans and complains, she'll say, Poor Collin, does it hurt you so much? Are you so weak as that poor Collin? But the trouble is that sometimes they can scarce keep from bursting out laughing. When we get safe into the garden, they laugh till they've got no breath left to laugh with, and they have to stuff their faces into Mr. Collins' cushions to keep the gardeners from Ian, if any of them's about. The more they laugh, the better for him, said Mrs. Sauer, be still laughing herself. Good, healthy child, laugh and spitter them pills any day of the year. That peril plump up for sure. They are plumping up, said Dickon. They are that hungry they don't know how to get enough to eat without making talk. Mr. Collins says if he keeps sending for more food, they won't believe he's an invalid at all. Miss Mary says she'll let him eat her share, but he says that if she goes hungry she'll get thin, and they won't both get fat at once. Mrs. Sauer be laughed so heartily at the revelation of this difficulty that she quite rocked backward and forward in her blue cloak, and Dickon laughed with her. I'll tell thee what, lad, Mrs. Sauer be said when she could speak. I've thought of a way to help him. When that goes to him in the mornings, that shall take a pail of good new milk, and I'll bake him a crusty cottage loaf for some buns with currants in him, same as you children like. Nothing so good as fresh milk and bread. Then they could take off the edge of their hunger while they were in the garden, and the fine food they get indoors would polish off the corners. Hey, mother, said Dickon admiringly. What a wonder that! That always sees a way out of things. They was quite in a podder yesterday. They didn't see how they was to manage it without ordering up more food. They felt that empty inside. They're two youngens, growing fast, and else coming back to both of them. Children like that feel like young wolves, and foods flesh and blood to them, said Mrs. Sauer be. Then she smiled, Dickon's own curving smile. Hey, but they're enjoying themselves for sure, she said. She was quite right, the comfortable, wonderful mother creature, and she had never been more so than when she said their play-acting would be their joy. Colin and Mary found it one of their most thrilling sources of entertainment. The idea of protecting themselves from suspicion had been unconsciously suggested to them first by the puzzled nurse, and then by Dr. Craven himself. Your appetite is improving very much, Master Colin, the nurse had said one day, you used to eat nothing, and so many things disagreed with you. Nothing disagrees with me now, replied Colin, and then, seeing the nurse looking at him curiously, he suddenly remembered that perhaps he ought not to appear too well just yet. At least, things don't so often disagree with me. It's the fresh air. Perhaps it is, said the nurse, still looking at him with a mystified expression, but I must talk to Dr. Craven about it. How she stared at you, said Mary when she went away, as if she thought there must be something to find out. I won't have her finding out things, said Colin. No one must begin to find out yet. When Dr. Craven came that morning, he seemed puzzled also. He asked a number of questions to Colin's great annoyance. You stay out in the garden a great deal, he suggested. Where do you go? Colin put on his favorite air of dignified indifference to opinion. I will not let anyone know where I go, he answered. I go to a place I like. Everyone has orders to keep out of the way. I won't be watched and stared at. You know that. You seem to be out all day, but I do not think it has done you harm. I do not think so. The nurse says that you eat much more than you have ever done before. Perhaps, said Colin, prompted by a sudden inspiration, perhaps it is an unnatural appetite. I do not think so, as your food seems to agree with you, said Dr. Craven. You are gaining flesh rapidly, and your color is better. Perhaps— Perhaps I am bloated and feverish, said Colin, assuming a discouraging air of gloom. People who are not going to live are often different. Dr. Craven shook his head. He was holding Colin's wrist, and he pushed up his sleeve and felt his arm. You are not feverish, he said thoughtfully, and such flesh as you have gained is healthy. If you can keep this up, my boy, we need not talk of dying. Your father will be happy to hear of this remarkable improvement. I won't have him told, Colin broke forth fiercely. It will only disappoint him if I get worse again, and I may get worse this very night. I might have a raging fever. I feel as if I might be beginning to have one now. I won't have letters written to my father. I won't. I won't.  I feel hot already.  Hush, my boy! Dr. Craven soothed him. Nothing shall be written without your permission.  You must not undo the good which has been done. He said no more about writing to Mr. Craven, and when he saw the nurse he privately warned her that such a possibility must not be mentioned to the patient. The boy is extraordinarily better, he said. His advance seems almost abnormal. But of course he is doing now of his own free will what we could not make him do before. Still, he excites himself very easily, and nothing must be said to irritate him. Mary and Colin were much alarmed and talked together anxiously. From this time dated their plan of play-acting. I may be obliged to have a tantrum, said Colin regretfully. I don't want to have one, and I'm not miserable enough now to work myself into a big one. Perhaps I couldn't have one at all. That lump doesn't come in my throat now, and I keep thinking of nice things instead of horrible ones. But if they talk about writing to my father I shall have to do something. He made up his mind to eat less, but unfortunately it was not possible to carry out this brilliant idea when he wakened each morning with an amazing appetite, and the table near his sofa was set with a breakfast of homemade bread and fresh butter, snow-white eggs, raspberry jam and clotted cream. Mary always breakfasted with him, and when they found themselves at the table, particularly if there were delicate slices of sizzling ham sending forth tempting odours from under a hot silver cover, they would look into each other's eyes in desperation. I think we shall have to eat at all this morning, Mary, Colin always ended by saying, we can send away some of the lunch and a great deal of the dinner. But they never found they could send away anything, and the highly polished condition of the empty plate's return to the pantry awakened much comment. I do wish, Colin would say also, I do wish the slices of ham were thicker, and one muffin each is not enough for any one. It's enough for a person who is going to die, answered Mary when first she heard this, but it's not enough for a person who is going to live. I sometimes feel as if I could eat three when those nice fresh heather and gore smells from the moor come pouring in at the open window. The morning that Dickon, after they had been enjoying themselves in the garden for about two hours, went behind a big rose-bush and brought forth two tin pales, and revealed that one was full of rich new milk with cream on the top of it, and that the other held cottage-made current buns folded in a clean, blue and white napkin, buns so carefully tucked in that they were still hot. There was a riot of surprised joyfulness. What a wonderful thing for Mrs. Salby to think of! What a kind, clever woman she must be! How good the buns were! And what delicious fresh milk! Magic is in her just as it is in Dickon, said Colin. It makes her think of ways to do things, nice things. She is a magic person. Tell her we are grateful, Dickon, extremely grateful. He was given to using rather grown-up phrases at times. He enjoyed them. He liked this so much that he improved upon it. Tell her she has been most bountious, and our gratitude is extreme. And then, forgetting his grandeur, he fell to and stuffed himself with buns and drank milk out of the pale and copious draughts in the manner of any hungry little boy who had been taking unusual exercise and breathing in moreland air and whose breakfast was more than two hours behind him. This was the beginning of many agreeable incidents of the same kind. They actually awoke to the fact that, as Mrs. Salby had fourteen people to provide food for, she might not have enough to satisfy two extra appetites every day. So they asked her to let them send some of their shillings to buy things. Dickon made the stimulating discovery that in the wood in the park outside the garden, where Mary had first found him piping to the wild creatures, there was a deep little hollow where you could build a sort of tiny oven with stones and roast potatoes and eggs in it. Roasted eggs were a previously unknown luxury, and very hot potatoes with salt and fresh butter in them were fit for a woodland king, besides being deliciously satisfying. You could buy both potatoes and eggs and eat as many as you liked, without feeling as if you were taking food out of the mouths of fourteen people. Every beautiful morning the magic was worked by the mystic circle under the plum tree, which provided a canopy of thickening green leaves after its brief blossom time was ended. After the ceremony Colin always took his walking exercise, and throughout the day he exercised his newly found parrot intervals. Each day he grew stronger and could walk more steadily and cover more ground, and each day his belief in the magic grew stronger, as well it might. He tried one experiment after another as he felt himself gaining strength, and it was Dickon who showed him the best things of all. Yesterday, he said one morning after an absence, I went to thwait for mother, and near the blue cow in, I see Bob Howarth. He's the strongest chap on the moor. He's the champion wrestler, and he can jump higher than any other chap, and throw the hammer farther. He's gone all the way to Scotland for the sport some years. He's known me ever since I was a little one, and he's a friendly sort, and I asked him some questions. The gentry calls him an athlete, and I thought to the semester, Colin, and I said, How did I make that muscle stick out that way, Bob? Did that do anything extra to make thyself so strong? And he says, Well, yes, lad, I did. A strong man in a shoal that came to thwait once showed me how to exercise my arms and legs in every muscle in my body, and I says, Could a delicate chap make himself stronger with him, Bob? And he laughed, and he says, Aren't thou the delicate chap? And I says, No, but I know as a young gentleman that's getting well of a long illness, and I wish I'd known some of them tricks to tell him about. I didn't say no names, and he didn't ask none. He's friendly, same as I said, and he stood up, and showed me good-natured like, and I imitated what he did till I knowed it by heart. Colin had been listening excitedly. Can you show me, he cried, Will you? I, to be sure, Dickon answered, getting up, but he says, Thamondum gentle at first, and be careful not to tire thyself. Rest in between times, and take deep breaths, and don't overdo. I'll be careful, said Colin. Show me, show me, Dickon, you are the most magic boy in the world. Dickon stood on the grass, and slowly went through a carefully practical but simple series of muscle exercises. Colin watched them with widening eyes. He could do a few while he was sitting down. Presently he did a few gently while he stood upon his already steadied feet. Mary began to do them also. Soot, who was watching the performance, became much disturbed, and left his branch, and hopped about restlessly, because he could not do them too. From that time the exercises were part of the day's duties as much as the magic was. It became possible for both Colin and Mary to do more of them each time they tried, and such appetites were the results that but for the basket Dickon put down behind the bush each morning when he arrived, they would have been lost. But the little oven in the hollow, and Mrs. Sourbee's bounties were so satisfying, that Mrs. Medlock and the nurse and Dr. Craven became mystified again. You can trifle with your breakfast, and seem to disdain your dinner, if you are full to the brim with roasted eggs and potatoes, and richly frothed new milk, and oat-cakes and buns, and heather-honey and clotted cream. They are eating next to nothing, said the nurse. They'll die of starvation if they can't be persuaded to take some nourishment. And yet see how they look! Look! exclaimed Mrs. Medlock indignantly. Hey, I'm moitered to death with them. They're a pair of young sitans, burst in their jackets one day, and the next turning up their noses at the best meals the cook contempt them with. Not a mouthful of that lovely young foul and bread-sourced they they set a fork into yesterday, and the poor woman fair invented a pudding for them, and back it sent. She almost cried. She's afraid she'll be blamed if they starve themselves into their graves. Dr. Craven came and looked at Colin long and carefully. He wore an extremely worried expression when the nurse talked with him, and showed him the almost untouched tray of breakfast she had saved for him to look at. But it was even more worried when he sat down by Colin's sofa and examined him. He had been called to London on business, and had not seen the boy for nearly two weeks. When young things begin to gain health, they gain it rapidly. The wax and tinge had left Colin's skin, and a warm rose showed through it. His beautiful eyes were clear, and the hollows under them and in his cheeks and temples had filled out. His once dark, heavy locks had begun to look as if they sprang healthily from his forehead, and were soft and warm with life. His lips were fuller and of a normal colour. In fact, as an imitation of a boy who was a confirmed invalid, he was at his graceful sight. Dr. Craven held his chin in his hand and thought him over. I am sorry to hear that you do not eat anything, he said. That will not do. You will lose all you have gained, and you have gained amazingly. You ate so well a short time ago. I told you it was an unnatural appetite, answered Colin. Mary was sitting on her stool nearby, and she suddenly made a very queer sound, which she tried so violently to repress that she ended by almost choking. What is the matter? said Dr. Craven, turning to look at her. Mary became quite severe in her manner. It was something between a sneeze and a cough, she replied, with reproachful dignity, and it got into my throat. But, she said afterward to Colin, I couldn't stop myself. It just burst out, because all at once I couldn't help remembering that last big potato you ate, and the way your mouth stretched when you bit through that thick, lovely crust with jam and clotted cream on it. Is there any way in which those children can get food secretly? Dr. Craven inquired of Mrs. Medlock. There's no way unless they dig it out of the earth or pick it off the trees, Mrs. Medlock answered. They stay out in the gardens all day and see no one but each other. And if they want anything different to eat from what sent up to them, they need only ask for it. Well, said Dr. Craven, so long as going without food agrees with them, we need not disturb ourselves. The boy is a new creature. So is the girl, said Mrs. Medlock.  Her hair's grown thick and healthy looking, and she's got a bright colour. The glummest, ill-natured little thing she used to be, and now her and Master Colin laugh together like a pair of crazy young ones. Perhaps they're growing fat on that. Perhaps they are, said Dr. Craven. Let them laugh. End of Chapter Twenty-Four. Chapter Twenty-Five of the Secret Garden. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Karen Savage. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Chapter Twenty-Five, The Curtain. And the Secret Garden bloomed and bloomed, and every morning revealed new miracles. In the robin's nest there were eggs, and the robin's mate sat upon them, keeping them warm with her feathery little breast and careful wings. At first she was very nervous, and the robin himself was indignantly watchful. Even Dickon did not go near the close-grown corner in those days, but waited until by the quiet working of some mysterious spell he seemed to have conveyed to the little soul of the pair that in the garden there was nothing which was not quite like themselves, nothing which did not understand the wonderfulness of what was happening to them, the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking beauty and solemnity of eggs. If there had been one person in that garden who had not known through all his or her innermost being that if an egg were taken away or hurt the whole world would whirl round and crash through space and come to an end, if there had been even one who did not feel it and act accordingly, there could have been no happiness even in that golden springtime air. But they all knew it, and felt it, and the robin and his mate knew they knew it. At first the robin watched Mary and Colin with sharp anxiety. For some mysterious reason he knew he need not watch Dickon. The first moment he set his due bright black eye on Dickon, he knew he was not a stranger, but a sort of robin without beak or feathers. He could speak robin, which is a quite distinct language and not to be mistaken for any other. To speak robin to a robin is like speaking French to a Frenchman. Dickon always spoke it to the robin himself, so the queer gibberish he used when he spoke to humans did not matter in the least. The robin thought he spoke this gibberish to them because they were not intelligent enough to understand feathered speech. His movements were also robin. They never startled one by being sudden enough to seem dangerous or threatening. Any robin could understand Dickon, so his presence was not even disturbing. But at the outset it seemed necessary to be on guard against the other two. In the first place the boy-creature did not come into the garden on his legs. He was pushed in on a thing with wheels and the skins of wild animals were thrown over him. That in itself was doubtful. Then, when he began to stand up and move about, he did it in a queer, unaccustomed way, and the others seemed to have to help him. The robin used to secrete himself in a bush and watched this anxiously. His head tilted first on one side and then on the other. He thought that the slow movements might mean that he was preparing to pounce, as cats do. When cats are preparing to pounce, they creep over the ground very slowly. The robin talked this over with his mate a great deal for a few days, but after that he decided not to speak of the subject, because her terror was so great that he was afraid it might be injurious to the eggs. When the boy began to walk by himself, and even to move more quickly, it was an immense relief. But for a long time—or it seemed a long time to the robin—he was a source of some anxiety. He did not act as the other humans did. He seemed very fond of walking, but he had a way of sitting or lying down for a while and then getting up in a disconcerting manner to begin again. One day, the robin remembered that when he himself had been made to learn to fly by his parents, he had done much the same sort of thing. He had taken short flights of a few yards and then had been obliged to rest. So it occurred to him that this boy was learning to fly, or rather to walk. He mentioned this to his mate, and when he told her that the eggs would probably conduct themselves in the same way after they were fledged, she was quite comforted, and even became eagerly interested, and arrived great pleasure from watching the boy over the edge of her nest, though she always thought that the eggs would be much cleverer and learn more quickly. But then she said indulgently that humans were always more clumsy and slow than eggs, and most of them never seemed really to learn to fly at all. You never met them in the air or on treetops. After a while, the boy began to move about as the others did, but all three of the children at times did unusual things. They would stand under the trees and move their arms and legs and heads about in a way which was neither walking nor running nor sitting down. They went through these movements at intervals every day, and the robin was never able to explain to his mate what they were doing or trying to do. He could only say that he was sure that the eggs would never flap about in such a manner. But as the boy who could speak robin so fluently was doing the thing with them, birds could be quite sure that the actions were not of a dangerous nature. Of course, neither the robin nor his mate had ever heard of the champion wrestler Bob Howarth and his exercises for making muscles stand out like lumps. Robins are not like human beings. Their muscles are always exercised from the first, and so they develop themselves in a natural manner. If you have to fly about to find every meal you eat, your muscles do not become atrophied. Atrophied means wasted away through want of use. When the boy was walking and running about and digging and weeding like the others, the nest in the corner was brooded over by a great peace and content. Fears for the eggs became things of the past. Knowing that your eggs were as safe as if they were locked in a bank vault and the fact that you could watch so many curious things going on made setting a most entertaining occupation. On wet days the eggs mother sometimes felt even a little dull because the children did not come into the garden. But even on wet days it could not be said that Mary and Colin were dull. One morning when the rain streamed down unceasingly and Colin was beginning to feel a little restive as he was obliged to remain on his sofa because it was not safe to get up and walk about, Mary had an inspiration.  They want to be doing things all the time. Do you know that when I wake in the morning, Mary, when it's quite early and the birds are just shouting outside and everything seems just shouting for joy, even the trees and things we can't really hear, I feel as if I must jump out of bed and shout myself. If I did it, just think what would happen. Mary giggled inordinately. The nurse would come running and Mrs. Medlock would come running and they would be sure you had gone crazy and they'd sent for the doctor, she said. Colin giggled himself. He could see how they would all look, how horrified by his outbreak and how amazed to see him standing upright. I wish my father would come home, he said. I want to tell him myself. I'm always thinking about it. But we couldn't go on like this much longer. I can't stand lying still and pretending and besides I look too different. I wish it wasn't raining today. It was then Mistress Mary had her inspiration. Colin, she began mysteriously, do you know how many rooms there are in this house? About a thousand, I suppose, he answered. There's about a hundred no one ever goes into, said Mary, and one rainy day I went and looked into ever so many of them. No one ever knew, though Mrs. Medlock nearly found me out. I lost my way when I was coming back and stopped at the end of your corridor. That was the second time I heard you crying. Colin started up on his sofa. A hundred rooms no one goes into, he said. It sounds almost like a secret garden. Suppose we go and look at them. Weal me in my chair and nobody would know we went. That's what I was thinking, said Mary. No one would dare to follow us. There are galleries where you could run. We could do our exercises. There's a little Indian room where there is a cabinet for the ivory elephants. There are all sorts of rooms. Ring the bell, said Colin. When the nurse came in he gave his orders. I want my chair, he said. Miss Mary and I are going to look at the part of the house which is not used. John can push me as far as the picture gallery because there are some stairs. Then he must go away and leave us alone until I send for him again. Rainy days lost their terrors that morning. When the footmen had wheeled the chair into the picture gallery and left the two together in obedience to orders, Colin and Mary looked at each other delighted. As soon as Mary had made sure that John was really on his way back to his own quarters below stairs, Colin got out of his chair. I'm going to run from one end of the gallery to the other, he said, and then I'm going to jump and then we will do Bob Hallworth's exercises. And they did all these things and many others. They looked at the portraits and found the plain little girl dressed in green brocade and holding the parrot on her finger. All these, said Colin, must be my relations. They lived a long time ago. That parrot one, I believe, is one of my great, great, great, great aunts. She looks rather like you, Mary, not as you look now, but as you looked when you came here. Now you're a great deal fatter and better looking. So are you, said Mary, and they both laughed. They went to the Indian room and amused themselves with the ivory elephants. They found the rose-coloured brocade Boudoir and the hole in the cushion the mouse had left, but the mice had grown up and run away and the hole was empty. They saw more rooms and made more discoveries than Mary had made on her first pilgrimage. They found new corridors and corners and flights of steps and new old pictures they liked and weird old things they did not know the use of. It was a curiously entertaining morning and the feeling of wandering about in the same house with other people but at the same time feeling as if one were miles away from them was a fascinating thing. I'm glad we came, Colin said. I never knew I lived in such a big, queer old place. I like it. We will ramble about every rainy day. We shall always be finding new queer corners and things. That morning they had found, among other things, such good appetites, that when they returned to Colin's room it was not possible to send the lunch in a way untouched. When the nurse carried the tray downstairs, she slapped it down on the kitchen dresser so that Mrs. Loomis, the cook, could see the highly polished dishes and plates. Look at that, she said. This is a house of mystery and those two children are the greatest mysteries in it. If they keep that up every day, said the strong young footman, John, there'd be small wonder that he weighs twice as much today as he did a month ago. I should have to give up my place in time for fear of doing my muscles in injury. That afternoon Mary noticed that something new had happened in Colin's room. She had noticed it the day before, but had said nothing because she thought the change might have been made by chance. She said nothing today, but she sat and looked fixedly at the picture over the mantle. She could look at it because the curtain had been drawn aside. That was the change she noticed. I know what you want me to tell you, said Colin, after she had stared a few minutes. I always know when you want me to tell you something. You are wondering why the curtain is drawn back. I am going to keep it like that. Why? asked Mary. Because it doesn't make me angry any more to see her laughing. I wakened when it was bright moonlight two nights ago and felt as if the magic was filling the room and making everything so splendid that I couldn't lie still. I got up and looked out of the window. The room was quite light, and there was a patch of moonlight on the curtain, and somehow that made me go and pull the cord. She looked right down at me as if she were laughing because she was glad I was standing there. It made me like to look at her. I want to see her laughing like that all the time. I think she must have been a sort of magic person, perhaps. You're so like her now, said Mary, that sometimes I think perhaps you are her ghost made into a boy. That idea seemed to impress Colin. He thought it over and then answered her slowly. If I were her ghost, my father would be fond of me. Do you want him to be fond of you? inquired Mary. I used to hate it because he was not fond of me. If he grew fond of me, I think I should tell him about the magic. It might make him more cheerful. End of Chapter 25 Their belief in the magic was an abiding thing. After the morning's incantations, Colin sometimes gave the magic lectures. I like to do it, he explained, because when I grow up and make great scientific discoveries, I shall be obliged to lecture about them, and so this is practice. I can only give short lectures now because I am very young, and besides, Ben Weatherstaff would feel as if he were in church and he would go to sleep. The best thing about lecturing, said Ben, is that chap can get up and say all the pleases, and no other chap can answer him back. I wouldn't be again lecturing a bit myself sometimes. But when Colin held forth under his tree, old Ben fixed devouring eyes on him and kept them there. He looked him over with critical affection. It was not so much the lecture which interested him, as the legs which looked straighter and stronger each day, the boyish head which held itself up so well, the once sharp chin and hollow cheeks which had filled and rounded out, and the eyes which had begun to hold the light he remembered in another pair. Sometimes when Colin felt Ben's earnest gaze meant that he was much impressed, he wondered what he was reflecting on, and once, when he had seemed quite entranced, he questioned him. What are you thinking about, Ben Weatherstaff? he asked. I was thinking, answered Ben, as I had warranted that I had gone up three or four pounds this week. I was looking at that calves and that shoulders. I'd like to get the on a pair of scales. It's the magic, and—and Mrs. Sowerby's buns and milk and things, said Colin. You see, the scientific experiment has succeeded. That morning Dickon was too late to hear the lecture. When he came he was ruddy with running, and his funny face looked more twinkling than usual. As they had a good deal of weeding to do after the rains, they fell to work. They always had plenty to do after a warm, deep sinking rain. The moisture which was good for the flowers was also good for the weeds which thrust up tiny blades of grass and points of leaves which must be pulled up before their roots took too firm hold. Colin was as good at weeding as any one in these days, and he could lecture while he was doing it. The magic works best when you work yourself, he said this morning. You can feel it in your bones and muscles. I'm going to read books about bones and muscles, but I'm going to write a book about magic. I'm making it up now. I keep finding out things. It was not very long after he had said this, that he laid down his trowel and stood up on his feet. He had been silent for several minutes, and they had seen that he was thinking out lectures as he often did. When he dropped his trowel and stood upright, it seemed to Mary and Dickon as if a sudden strong thought had made him do it. He stretched himself out to his tallest height, and he threw out his arms exultantly.  All at once he had realized something to the fall. Mary! Dickon! he cried. Just look at me! They stopped their weeding and looked at him. Do you remember that first morning you brought me in here? he demanded. Dickon was looking at him very hard. Being an animal charmer he could see more things than most people could, and many of them were things he never talked about. He saw some of them now in this boy. I—that we do! he answered. Mary looked hard too, but she said nothing. Just this minute, said Colin, all at once I remembered it myself. When I looked at my hand digging with the trowel, and I had to stand up on my feet to see if it was real. And it is real! I'm well! I'm well! I—that dart! said Dickon. I'm well!  He had known it before in a way. He had hoped it and felt it and thought about it, but just at that minute something had rushed all through him, a sort of rapturous belief and realization, and it had been so strong that he could not help calling out. I shall live for ever and ever and ever, he cried grandly. I shall find out thousands and thousands of things. I shall find out about people and creatures and everything that grows, like Dickon. And I shall never stop making magic. I'm well! I'm well! I feel—I feel as if I want to shout out something—something thankful, joyful. Ben Weatherstaff, who had been working near a rose-bush, glanced round at him. They might sing the doxology, he suggested in his driest grunt. He had no opinion of the doxology, and he did not make the suggestion with any particular reverence. But Colin was of an exploring mind, and he knew nothing about the doxology. What is that? he inquired. Dickon, cunting it for the alwarant, replied Ben Weatherstaff. Dickon answered with his all-perceiving animal-charmous smile. They sing it in church, he said. Mother says she believes the skylark sings it when they get up in the morning. If she says that it must be a nice song, Colin answered, I've never been in a church myself, I was always too ill. Sing it, Dickon, I want to hear it. Dickon was quite simple and unaffected about it. He understood what Colin felt better than Colin did himself. He understood by a sort of instinct so natural that he did not know it was understanding. He pulled off his cap and looked round, still smiling. Thou must take off thy cap, he said to Colin, and so man thou, Ben, and thou man stand up thanos.  Ben Weatherstaff scrambled up from his knees and bared his head, too, with a sort of puzzled, half-resentful look on his old face, as if he didn't know exactly why he was doing this remarkable thing. Dickon stood out among the trees and rose-bushes and began to sing in quite a simple, matter-of-fact way, and in a nice, strong boy voice. Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him all creatures here below, Praise Him above ye heavenly host, Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen. When he had finished, Ben Weatherstaff was standing quite still, with his jaws set obstinately, but with a disturbed look in his eyes fixed on Colin. Colin's face was thoughtful and appreciative. It is a very nice song, he said. I like it. Perhaps it means just what I mean when I want to shout out that I am thankful to the magic. He stopped and thought in a puzzled way. Perhaps they're both the same thing. How can we know the exact names of everything? Sing it again, Dickon. Let us try, Mary. I want to sing it, too. It's my song. How does it begin? Praise God from whom all blessings flow? And they sang it again. And Mary and Colin lifted their voices as musically as they could, and Dickon swelled quite loud and beautiful. And at the second line, Ben Weatherstaff raspingly cleared his throat, and at the third line he joined him with such vigor that it seemed almost savage. And when the armen came to an end, Mary observed that the very same thing had happened to him, which had happened when he found out that Colin was not a cripple. His chin was twitching, and he was staring and winking, and his leathery old cheeks were wet. I never seen nor sense in the doxology of four, he said hoarsely, but I may change my mind in time. I should say that gone up five pound this week, Mr. Colin, five on him. Colin was looking across the garden at something attracting his attention, and his expression had become a startled one. Who's coming in here? he said quickly. Who is it? The door in the ivied wall had been pushed gently open, and a woman had entered. She had come in with the last line of their song, and she had stood still listening and looking at them. With the ivy behind her, the sunlight drifting through the trees and dappling her long blue cloak, and her nice fresh face smiling across the greenery, she was rather like a softly colored illustration in one of Colin's books. She had wonderful, affectionate eyes which seemed to take everything in, all of them, even Ben Weatherstaff, and the creatures, and every flower that was in bloom. Unexpectedly a sheared appeared, not one of them felt that she was an intruder at all. Dickon's eyes lighted like lamps. It's mother, that's who it is, he cried, and went across the grass at a run. Colin began to move toward her too, and Mary went with him. They both felt their pulses beat faster. It's mother, Dickon said again when they met halfway. I gnawed thou wanted to see her, and I told her where the door was hid.  Even when I was ill I wanted to see you, he said. You and Dickon and the secret garden? I'd never wanted to see any one or anything before. The sight of his uplifted face brought about a sudden change in her own.  Hey, dear lad! she broke out tremulously. Hey, dear lad! as if she had not known she were going to say it. She did not say, Mester Colin, but just, dear lad, quite suddenly. She might have said it to Dickon in the same way if she had seen something in his face which touched her. Colin liked it. Are you surprised because I am so well, he asked. She put her hand on his shoulder and smiled the mist out of her eyes. Aye, that I am, she said, but thou art sore like thy mother, that made my heart trump. Do you think, said Colin a little awkwardly, that will make my father like me? Aye, for sure, dear lad, she answered, and she gave his shoulder a soft, quick pat, and he won't come home. He won't come home. Susan Sowerby, said Ben Weatherstaff, getting close to her, look at the lad's legs, will thou? They was like drumsticks in stocking two months ago, and I heard folk tellers they was bandy and knock-kneed both at the same time. Look at him now! Susan Sowerby laughed a comfortable laugh. They are going to be fine, strong lad's legs in a bit, she said. Let him go on playing and working in the garden, and eating hearty and drinking plenty of good sweet milk, and there'll not be a finer pair of Yorkshire, thank God for it. She put both hands on Mistress Mary's shoulders and looked her little face over in a motherly fashion, and thee too, she said, that grow near as hearty as Elizabeth Ellen, I'll warrant that like thy mother too. Our Martha told me as Mrs. Medlock heard she was a pretty woman, that be like a blush rose when thou grows up, my little lass, bless thee. She did not mention that when Martha came home on her day out, and described the plain, sallow child, she had said that she had no confidence whatever in what Mrs. Medlock had heard. It doesn't stand to reason that a pretty woman could be the mother of such a foul little lass, she had added obstinately. Mary had not had time to pay much attention to her changing face. She had only known that she looked different, and seemed to have a great deal more hair, and that it was growing very fast. But remembering her pleasure in looking at the mem Saib in the past, she was glad to hear that she might some day look like her. Susan Saabi went round their garden with them, and was told the whole story of it, and shown every bush and tree which had come alive. Colin walked on one side of her, and Mary on the other. Each of them kept looking up at her comfortable, rosy face, secretly curious about the delightful feeling she gave them. A sort of warm, supported feeling. It seemed as if she understood them as Dickon understood about his creatures. She stooped over the flowers and talked about them as if they were children. Soot followed her, and once or twice corded her, and flew upon her shoulder as if it were Dickon's. When they told her about the robin and the first flight of the young ones, she laughed a motherly little mellow laugh in her throat. I suppose learning him to fly is like learning children to walk, but I am afraid I would be all in a worry if mine had wings instead of legs, she said. It was because she seemed such a wonderful woman in her nice small and cottage way that at last she was told about the magic. Do you believe in magic? asked Colin, after he had explained about Indian fakirs. I do hope you do. That I do, lad, she answered. I never knowed it by that name. But what does the name matter? I'll warrant they call it a different name in France and a different one in Germany. The same thing as set the seed swelling and the sun shining may they are well lad. And it is the good thing. It isn't like us poor fools as think it matters if us is called out of our names. The big good thing doesn't stop to worry to bless thee. It goes on making worlds by the million, worlds like us. Never these stop believing in the big good thing and knowing the worlds full of it, and call it what thou likes. Thou walt sing unto it when I come into the garden. I felt so joyful, said Colin, opening his beautiful strange eyes at her. Suddenly I felt how different I was, how strong my arms and legs were, you know, and how I could dig and stand, and I jumped up and wanted to shout out something to anything that would listen. The magic listened when thou sung the doxology. It would have listened to anything that song. It was the joy that mattered. Hey, lad, lad, what's names to the joy-maker? And she gave his shoulders a quick, soft pat again. She had packed a basket which held a regular feast this morning, and when the hungry hour came and Dickon brought it out from its hiding place, she sat down with them under their tree and watched them devour their food, laughing and quite gloating over their appetites.  She told them stories in broad Yorkshire and taught them new words. She laughed as if she could not help it when they told her of the increasing difficulty there was in pretending that Colin was still a fretful invalid. You see, we can't help laughing nearly all the time when we're together, explained Colin, and it doesn't sound ill at all. We try to choke it back, but it will burst out, and that sounds worse than ever. There's one thing that comes into my mind so often, said Mary, and I can scarcely ever hold in when I think of it suddenly. I keep thinking suppose Colin's face should get to look like a full moon. It isn't like one yet, but it gets a tiny bit fatter every day. And suppose one morning it should look like one. What should we do? Bless us all, I can see there's a good bit of play-acting to do, said Susan Sourby, but thou won't have to keep it up much longer. Best of Craven will come home. Do you think he will? asked Colin, why? Susan Sourby chuckled softly. I suppose it'd nighbreak thy art if he found out before thou told him in thy own way, she said. Thou hast laid awake night's plan in it. I couldn't bear any one else to tell him, said Colin. I think about different ways every day. I think now I just want to run into his room. That'd be a fine start for him, said Susan Sourby. I'd like to see his face lad. I would that. He won't come back. That he won't. One of the things they talked off was the visit they were to make to her cottage. They planned it all. They were to drive over the moor, and lunge out of doors among the heather. They would see all the twelve children and Dickens' garden, and would not come back until they retired. Susan Sourby got up at last to return to the house and Mrs. Medlock. It was time for Colin to be wheeled back also. But before he got into his chair he stood quite close to Susan, and fixed his eyes on her with a kind of bewildered adoration, and he suddenly caught hold of the fold of her blue cloak and held it fast. You're just what I—what I wanted, he said. I wish you were my mother as well as Dickens. All at once Susan Sourby bent down, and drew him with her warm arms close against the bosom under her blue cloak, as if he had been Dickens' brother. The quick mist swept over her eyes. Hey, dear lad, she said, thy own mother's in the seer very garden I do believe. She couldn't keep out of it. Thy father Munn come back to thee. He Munn. CHAPTER XXVII In each century since the beginning of the world wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any century before. In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refused to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done, then it is done, and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts, just mere thoughts, are as powerful as electric batteries, as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in, you may never get over it as long as you live. So long as Mistress Mary's mind was full of disagreeable things about her dislikes and sour opinions of people, and her determination not to be pleased by your interest in anything, she was a yellow-faced, sickly, bored and wretched child. Circumstances, however, were very kind to her, though she was not at all aware of it. They began to push her about for her own good. When her mind gradually filled itself with robins and moorland cottages crowded with children, with queer, crabbed old gardeners and common little Yorkshire housemates, with springtime and with secret gardens coming alive day by day, and also with a more boy and his creatures, there was no room left for the disagreeable thoughts which affected her liver and her digestion, and made her yellow and tired. So long as Colin shut himself up in his room, and thought only of his fears and weakness and his detestation of people who looked at him, and reflected hourly on humps and early death, he was a hyster