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 falling.

"I can stand," he said, and his head was still held up and he said it
quite grandly.

"I told thee tha' could as soon as tha' stopped bein' afraid," answered
Dickon.  "An' tha's 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.

"Tha's doin' Magic thysel'," he said.  "It's same Magic as made these
'ere work out o' th' earth," and he touched with his thick boot a clump
of crocuses in the grass.  Colin looked down at them.

"Aye," he said slowly, "there couldna' be bigger Magic than that
there--there couldna' 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 art 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 tha'," he said.  "Nowt o' th' sort.  What's tha' been doin' with
thysel'--hidin' out o' sight an' lettin' folk think tha' was cripple
an' half-witted?"

"Half-witted!" said Colin angrily.  "Who thought that?"

"Lots o' fools," said Ben.  "Th' world's full o' jackasses brayin' an'
they never bray nowt but lies.  What did tha' shut thysel' 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.

"Tha' die!" he said with dry exultation.  "Nowt o' th' sort! Tha's got
too much pluck in thee.  When I seed thee put tha' legs on th' ground
in such a hurry I knowed tha' was all right.  Sit thee down on th' rug
a bit young Mester an' give me thy orders."

There was a queer mixture of crabbed tenderness and shrewd
understanding in his manner.  Mary had poured out speech as 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 Rajah condescended to seat himself on a rug under the tree.

"What work do you do in the gardens, Weatherstaff?" he inquired.

"Anythin' I'm told to do," answered old Ben.  "I'm kep' on by
favor--because she liked me."

"She?" said Colin.

"Tha' 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've come here before when no one saw me," he said.

"What!" exclaimed Colin.

"When?"

"Th' last time I was here," rubbing his chin and looking round, "was
about two year' 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.  "An' I didn't come through th' door.
I come over th' wall.  Th' rheumatics held me back th' last two year'."

"Tha' come an' did a bit o' prunin'!" cried Dickon.  "I couldn't make
out how it had been done."

"She was so fond of it--she was!" said Ben Weatherstaff slowly.  "An'
she was such a pretty young thing.  She says to me once, 'Ben,' says
she laughin', 'if ever I'm ill or if I go away you must take care of my
roses.' When she did go away th' orders was no one was ever to come
nigh.  But I come," with grumpy obstinacy.  "Over th' wall I
come--until th' rheumatics stopped me--an' I did a bit o' work once a
year.  She'd gave her order first."

"It wouldn't have been as wick as it is if tha' 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."

"Aye, I'll know, sir," answered Ben.  "An' it'll be easier for a man
wi' rheumatics to come in at th' door."

On the grass near the tree Mary had dropped her trowel.  Colin
stretched out his hand and took it up.  An odd 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.  "I tell you, you
can!"

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 Yorkshire.

"Tha' said as tha'd have me walkin' about here same as other folk--an'
tha' said tha'd have me diggin'. I thowt tha' was just leein' to please
me.  This is only th' first day an' I've walked--an' here I am diggin'."

Ben Weatherstaff's mouth fell open again when he heard him, but he
ended by chuckling.

"Eh!" he said, "that sounds as if tha'd got wits enow.  Tha'rt a
Yorkshire lad for sure.  An' tha'rt diggin', too.  How'd tha' like to
plant a bit o' somethin'? 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
forgetting 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
thysel' same as th' king does 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 chattered
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.

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
some one 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."

Even Mary had found out that one of Colin's chief peculiarities was
that he did not know in the least what a rude little brute he was with
his way of ordering people about.  He had lived on a sort of desert
island all his life and as he had been the king of it he had made his
own manners and had had no one to compare himself with.  Mary had
indeed been rather like him herself and since she had been at
Misselthwaite 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'm thinking that I am rather sorry for Dr. Craven."

"So am I," said Colin calmly, but not without an air of some
satisfaction.  "He won't get Misselthwaite at all now I'm not going to
die."

"I'm 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.

"If you had been his own boy and he had been a slapping sort of man,"
said Mary, "he would have slapped you."

"But he daren't," said Colin.

"No, he daren't," answered Mistress Mary, thinking the thing out quite
without prejudice.  "Nobody ever dared to do anything you didn't
like--because you were going to die and things like that.  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'm 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 is Ben 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 fond o' them--she was," Ben Weatherstaff said.  "She
liked them things as was allus pointin' up to th' blue sky, she used to
tell.  Not as she was one o' them as looked down on th' earth--not her.
She just loved it but she said as th' blue sky allus 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
round the sun-dial, wreathing 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 gray days pleased him.  He would lie on the
grass "watching things growing," he said.  If you 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 to explore the
country.  A mole 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.  Ants' ways,
beetles' ways, bees' ways, frogs' ways, birds' ways, plants' ways, gave
him a new world to explore and when Dickon revealed them all and added
foxes' ways, otters' ways, ferrets' ways, squirrels' ways, and trout'
and water-rats' and badgers' ways, there was no end to the things to
talk about and think over.

And this was not the 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 sent at once
for Ben Weatherstaff.  Ben came as quickly as he could and found the
Rajah standing on his feet under a tree and looking very grand but also
very beautifully smiling.

"Good morning, Ben Weatherstaff," 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 Ben Weatherstaff, touching his forehead.
(One of the long concealed charms of Ben Weatherstaff 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 Rajah.
"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 Ben Weatherstaff 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 any one
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 Weatherstaff became quite excited and
really could not keep still.  "Aye, aye, 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 sun rise 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've
looked up through the trees at 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, badgers 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 Dickon's. 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 Dickon, as strong as Dickon!' 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 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 forever 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 Jem Fettleworth's wife say th' same thing over thousands o'
times--callin' Jem a drunken brute," said Ben Weatherstaff dryly.
"Summat allus come o' that, sure enough.  He gave her a good hidin' an'
went to th' Blue Lion an' 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."

Ben Weatherstaff chuckled and there was shrewd admiration in his little
old eyes.

"Tha'rt a clever lad as well as a straight-legged one, Mester Colin,"
he said.  "Next time I see Bess Fettleworth I'll give her a bit of a
hint o' what Magic will do for her.  She'd be rare an' pleased if th'
sinetifik 'speriment worked--an' so 'ud Jem."

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.

"Aye," he answered, "that I do.  It'll work same as th' seeds do when
th' sun shines on 'em. It'll work for sure.  Shall us begin it now?"

Colin was delighted and so was Mary.  Fired by recollections of fakirs
and devotees in 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."

"Eh!" said Dickon, "tha' mustn't begin by sayin' tha'rt tired.  Tha'
might spoil th' 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 Weatherstaff felt as if he had somehow been led into
appearing at a prayer-meeting. Ordinarily he was very fixed in being
what he called "agen' prayer-meetin's" but this being the Rajah's
affair he did not resent it 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.  He held his head
high as if he felt like a sort of priest and his strange eyes had a
wonderful look in them.  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 canna' do no swayin' back'ard and for'ard," said Ben Weatherstaff.
"I've got th' rheumatics."

"The Magic will take them away," said Colin in a High Priest tone, "but
we won't sway until it has done it.  We will only chant."

"I canna' do no chantin'" said Ben Weatherstaff a trifle testily.
"They turned me out o' th' church choir th' 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's in every one
of us.  It's 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 entranced.  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 in the blossoms mingled with the chanting voice
and drowsily melted into a doze.  Dickon sat cross-legged with his
rabbit asleep on his arm and a hand resting on the lamb's back.  Soot
had 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 round the garden," he announced.

Ben Weatherstaff's head had just dropped forward and he lifted it with
a jerk.

"You have been asleep," said Colin.

"Nowt o' th' sort," mumbled Ben.  "Th' sermon was good enow--but I'm
bound to get out afore th' 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 heard
every bit of it.  You said th' Magic was in my back.  Th' 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 round 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 in 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 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 seats 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 round 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 sometime when he comes back to Misselthwaite 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 been 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 fathers'
sons.  One of his darkest miseries in the unhealthy morbid past days
had been his hatred of being a sickly weak-backed boy whose father was
afraid to look at him.

"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 takin' to boxin' in a week or so," said Ben
Weatherstaff.  "Tha'lt end wi' winnin' th' Belt an' bein' champion
prize-fighter of all England."

Colin fixed his eyes on him sternly.

"Weatherstaff," 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."

"Ax pardon--ax pardon, sir" answered Ben, touching his forehead in
salute.  "I ought to have seed it wasn't a jokin' 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.

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. Sowerby said, "if it
wasn't for Dickon's garden.  Anything'll grow for him.  His 'taters and
cabbages is twice th' size of any one else's an' they've got a flavor
with 'em 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 sown bright sweet-scented things among
gooseberry bushes and even cabbages and he grew borders of mignonette
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 rock-cress and
hedgerow flowers into every crevice until only here and there glimpses
of the stones were to be seen.

"All a chap's got to do to make 'em thrive, mother," he would say, "is
to be friends with 'em for sure.  They're just like th' 'creatures.' If
they're thirsty give 'em drink and if they're hungry give 'em a bit o'
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. Sowerby heard of all that
happened at Misselthwaite Manor.  At first she was only told that
"Mester Colin" 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 robin and the gray haze
which had 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 Mester Colin 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 Mester Colin's sudden indignant
strength, made Mrs. Sowerby's nice-looking face quite change color
several times.

"My word!" she said.  "It was a good thing that little lass came to th'
Manor.  It's been th' makin' o' her an' th' savin, o' him.  Standin' on
his feet! An' us all thinkin' 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 th' Manor--him being so well an' cheerful
an' never complainin'?" she inquired.  "They don't know what to make of
it," answered Dickon.  "Every day as comes round his face looks
different.  It's fillin' out and doesn't look so sharp an' th' waxy
color is goin'.  But he has to do his bit o' complainin'," with a
highly entertained grin.

"What for, i' Mercy's name?" asked Mrs. Sowerby.

Dickon chuckled.

"He does it to keep them from guessin' what's happened.  If the doctor
knew he'd found out he could stand on his feet he'd likely write and
tell Mester Craven.  Mester Colin's savin' th' secret to tell himself.
He's goin' to practise his Magic on his legs every day till his father
comes back an' then he's goin' to march into his room an' show him he's
as straight as other lads.  But him an' Miss Mary thinks it's best plan
to do a bit o' groanin' an' frettin' now an' then to throw folk off th'
scent."

Mrs. Sowerby was laughing a low comfortable laugh long before he had
finished his last sentence.

"Eh!" she said, "that pair's enjoyin' their-selves I'll warrant.
They'll get a good bit o' actin' out of it an' there's nothin' children
likes as much as play actin'. 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.

"Mester Colin is carried down to his chair every time he goes out," he
explained.  "An' he flies out at John, th' footman, for not carryin'
him careful enough.  He makes himself as helpless lookin' as he can an'
never lifts his head until we're out o' sight o' th' house.  An' he
grunts an' frets a good bit when he's bein' settled into his chair.
Him an' Miss Mary's both got to enjoyin' it an' when he groans an'
complains she'll say, 'Poor Colin! Does it hurt you so much? Are you so
weak as that, poor Colin?'--but th' trouble is that sometimes they can
scarce keep from burstin' out laughin'. When we get safe into the
garden they laugh till they've no breath left to laugh with.  An' they
have to stuff their faces into Mester Colin's cushions to keep the
gardeners from hearin', if any of, 'em's about."

"Th' more they laugh th' better for 'em!" said Mrs. Sowerby, still
laughing herself.  "Good healthy child laughin's better than pills any
day o' th' year.  That pair'll plump up for sure."

"They are plumpin' up," said Dickon.  "They're that hungry they don't
know how to get enough to eat without makin' talk.  Mester Colin says
if he keeps sendin' 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 an' they mun both get fat at once."

Mrs. Sowerby 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. Sowerby said when she could speak.
"I've thought of a way to help 'em. When tha' goes to 'em in th'
mornin's tha' shall take a pail o' good new milk an' I'll bake 'em a
crusty cottage loaf or some buns wi' currants in 'em, same as you
children like.  Nothin's so good as fresh milk an' bread.  Then they
could take off th' edge o' their hunger while they were in their garden
an' th, fine food they get indoors 'ud polish off th' corners."

"Eh! mother!" said Dickon admiringly, "what a wonder tha' art! Tha'
always sees a way out o' things.  They was quite in a pother yesterday.
They didn't see how they was to manage without orderin' up more
food--they felt that empty inside."

"They're two young 'uns growin' fast, an' health's comin' back to both
of 'em. Children like that feels like young wolves an' food's flesh an'
blood to 'em," said Mrs. Sowerby.  Then she smiled Dickon's own curving
smile.  "Eh! but they're enjoyin' theirselves 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 actin'" 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 any one know where I go," he answered.  "I go to a
place I like.  Every one 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!  You are making me angry and you know that is bad for me.  I
feel hot already.  I hate being written about and being talked over as
much as I hate being stared at!"

"Hush-h! my boy," Dr. Craven soothed him.  "Nothing shall be written
without your permission.  You are too sensitive about things.  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 actin'."

"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 home-made 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 odors from under a hot silver
cover--they would look into each other's eyes in desperation.

"I think we shall have to eat it 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 plates returned 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 gorse 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 rosebush and brought
forth two tin pails and revealed that one was full of rich new milk
with cream on the top of it, and that the other held cottage-made
currant 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. Sowerby 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 bounteous and our gratitude is extreme."

And then forgetting his grandeur he fell to and stuffed himself with
buns and drank milk out of the pail in copious draughts in the manner
of any hungry little boy who had been taking unusual exercise and
breathing in moorland 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. Sowerby 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 power at 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 Thwaite
for mother an' near th' Blue Cow Inn I seed Bob Haworth.  He's the
strongest chap on th' moor.  He's the champion wrestler an' he can jump
higher than any other chap an' throw th' hammer farther.  He's gone all
th' way to Scotland for th' sports some years.  He's knowed me ever
since I was a little 'un an' he's a friendly sort an' I axed him some
questions.  Th' gentry calls him a athlete and I thought o' thee,
Mester Colin, and I says, 'How did tha' make tha' muscles stick out
that way, Bob? Did tha' do anythin' extra to make thysel' so strong?'
An' he says 'Well, yes, lad, I did.  A strong man in a show that came
to Thwaite once showed me how to exercise my arms an' legs an' every
muscle in my body.  An' I says, 'Could a delicate chap make himself
stronger with 'em, Bob?' an' he laughed an' says, 'Art tha' th'
delicate chap?' an' I says, 'No, but I knows a young gentleman that's
gettin' well of a long illness an' I wish I knowed some o' them tricks
to tell him about.' I didn't say no names an' he didn't ask none.  He's
friendly same as I said an' he stood up an' showed me good-natured
like, an' I imitated what he did till I knowed it by heart."

Colin had been listening excitedly.

"Can you show me?" he cried.  "Will you?"

"Aye, to be sure," Dickon answered, getting up.  "But he says tha' mun
do 'em gentle at first an' be careful not to tire thysel'. Rest in
between times an' take deep breaths an' 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 up 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. Sowerby'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
oatcakes 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.  "Eh! I'm moithered to
death with them.  They're a pair of young Satans.  Bursting their
jackets one day and the next turning up their noses at the best meals
Cook can tempt them with.  Not a mouthful of that lovely young fowl and
bread sauce did they set a fork into yesterday--and the poor woman fair
invented a pudding for them--and back it's 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 waxen tinge had left, Colins 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 color.  In fact as an imitation of a boy who was
a confirmed invalid he was a disgraceful 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 grounds all day
and see no one but each other.  And if they want anything different to
eat from what's 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.  "She's begun to be downright
pretty since she's filled out and lost her ugly little sour look.  Her
hair's grown thick and healthy looking and she's got a bright color.
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."

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 soul of the little
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 dew-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 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 also
were 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 watch 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 derived 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 tree-tops.

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 tying 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 Haworth, and his
exercises for making the 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.

"Now that I am a real boy," Colin had said, "my legs and arms and all
my body are so full of Magic that I can't keep them still.  They want
to be doing things all the time.  Do you know that when I waken 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 send 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 I 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.  Wheel 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 is a little Indian room where there is a cabinet full
of 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 footman 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 am going to run from one end of the gallery to the other," he said,
"and then I am going to jump and then we will do Bob Haworth'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 are 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-colored 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
luncheon away untouched.

When the nurse carried the tray down-stairs 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 to-day as he did
a month ago.  I should have to give up my place in time, for fear of
doing my muscles an 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
mantel.  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 are 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."

Their belief in the Magic was an abiding thing.  After the morning's
incantations Colin sometimes gave them 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 practise.  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."

"Th' best thing about lecturin'," said Ben, "is that a chap can get up
an' say aught he pleases an' no other chap can answer him back.  I
wouldn't be agen' lecturin' a bit mysel' 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 thinkin'" answered Ben, "as I'd warrant tha's, gone up three or
four pound this week.  I was lookin' at tha' calves an' tha' shoulders.
I'd like to get thee on a pair o' 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
am going to read books about bones and muscles, but I am going to write
a book about Magic.  I am 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.  Color glowed in his face and his strange eyes widened with
joyfulness.  All at once he had realized something to the full.

"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.  "Aye, 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!"

"Aye, that th' art!" said Dickon.

"I'm well! I'm well!" said Colin again, and his face went quite red all
over.

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 forever 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.

"Tha' might sing th' Doxology," he suggested in his dryest 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 can sing it for thee, I'll warrant," replied Ben Weatherstaff.

Dickon answered with his all-perceiving animal charmer's smile.

"They sing it i' church," he said.  "Mother says she believes th'
skylarks sings it when they gets up i' th' mornin'."

"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.

"Tha' must take off tha' cap," he said to Colin, "an' so mun tha',
Ben--an' tha' mun stand up, tha' knows."

Colin took off his cap and the sun shone on and warmed his thick hair
as he watched Dickon intently.  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 are 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's swelled quite loud and
beautiful--and at the second line Ben Weatherstaff raspingly cleared
his throat and at the third line he joined in with such vigor that it
seemed almost savage and when the "Amen" 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 seed no sense in th' Doxology afore," he said hoarsely, "but I
may change my mind i' time.  I should say tha'd gone up five pound this
week Mester Colin--five on 'em!"

Colin was looking across the garden at something attracting his
attention and his expression had become a startled one.

"Who is 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 as she had 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 knowed tha'
wanted to see her an' I told her where th' door was hid."

Colin held out his hand with a sort of flushed royal shyness but his
eyes quite devoured her face.

"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.  She flushed and the corners of her mouth shook and a mist seemed
to sweep over her eyes.

"Eh! dear lad!" she broke out tremulously.  "Eh! 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 tha'rt so like thy mother tha' made my heart jump."

"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.  "He mun come home--he mun come home."

"Susan Sowerby," said Ben Weatherstaff, getting close to her.  "Look at
th' lad's legs, wilt tha'? They was like drumsticks i' stockin' two
month' ago--an' I heard folk tell as they was bandy an' knock-kneed
both at th' same time.  Look at 'em now!"

Susan Sowerby laughed a comfortable laugh.

"They're goin' to be fine strong lad's legs in a bit," she said.  "Let
him go on playin' an' workin' in the garden an' eatin' hearty an'
drinkin' plenty o' good sweet milk an' there'll not be a finer pair i'
Yorkshire, thank God for it."

She put both hands on Mistress Mary's shoulders and looked her little
face over in a motherly fashion.

"An' thee, too!" she said.  "Tha'rt grown near as hearty as our
'Lisabeth Ellen.  I'll warrant tha'rt like thy mother too.  Our Martha
told me as Mrs. Medlock heard she was a pretty woman.  Tha'lt be like a
blush rose when tha' 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 th' mother o' such a fou' 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 Sahib in the past she was glad to hear
that she might some day look like her.

Susan Sowerby 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 his
"creatures." She stooped over the flowers and talked about them as if
they were children.  Soot followed her and once or twice cawed at 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 learnin' 'em to fly is like learnin' children to walk, but
I'm feared I should be all in a worrit if mine had wings instead o'
legs," she said.

It was because she seemed such a wonderful woman in her nice moorland
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 th' name matter? I warrant they call it a different name i'
France an' a different one i' Germany.  Th' same thing as set th' seeds
swellin' an' th' sun shinin' made thee a well lad an' it's th' Good
Thing.  It isn't like us poor fools as think it matters if us is called
out of our names.  Th' Big Good Thing doesn't stop to worrit, bless
thee.  It goes on makin' worlds by th' million--worlds like us.  Never
thee stop believin' in th' Big Good Thing an' knowin' th' world's full
of it--an' call it what tha' likes.  Tha' wert singin' to it when I
come into th' 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."

"Th' Magic listened when tha' sung th' Doxology.  It would ha' listened
to anything tha'd sung.  It was th' joy that mattered.  Eh! lad,
lad--what's names to th' 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 was
full of fun and made them laugh at all sorts of odd things.  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 are
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 he gets a tiny bit fatter every day--and suppose some
morning it should look like one--what should we do!"

"Bless us all, I can see tha' has a good bit o' play actin' to do,"
said Susan Sowerby.  "But tha' won't have to keep it up much longer.
Mester Craven'll come home."

"Do you think he will?" asked Colin.  "Why?"

Susan Sowerby chuckled softly.

"I suppose it 'ud nigh break thy heart if he found out before tha' told
him in tha' own way," she said.  "Tha's laid awake nights plannin' 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 Sowerby.  "I'd like
to see his face, lad.  I would that! He mun come back--that he mun."

One of the things they talked of was the visit they were to make to her
cottage.  They planned it all.  They were to drive over the moor and
lunch out of doors among the heather.  They would see all the twelve
children and Dickon's garden and would not come back until they were
tired.

Susan Sowerby 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 are just what I--what I wanted," he said.  "I wish you were my
mother--as well as Dickon's!"

All at once Susan Sowerby bent down and drew him with her warm arms
close against the bosom under the blue cloak--as if he had been
Dickon's brother.  The quick mist swept over her eyes.

"Eh! dear lad!" she said.  "Thy own mother's in this 'ere very garden,
I do believe.  She couldna' keep out of it.  Thy father mun come back
to thee--he mun!"

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 refuse
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 thoughts about
her dislikes and sour opinions of people and her determination not to
be pleased by or interested 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 housemaids, with springtime
and with secret gardens coming alive day by day, and also with a moor
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 hysterical
half-crazy little hypochondriac who knew nothing of the sunshine and
the spring and also did not know that he could get well and could stand
upon his feet if he tried to do it.  When new beautiful thoughts began
to push out the old hideous ones, life began to come back to him, his
blood ran healthily through his veins and strength poured into him like
a flood.  His scientific experiment was quite practical and simple and
there was nothing weird about it at all.  Much more surprising things
can happen to any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought
comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it
out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one.  Two things
cannot be in one place.

         "Where, you tend a rose, my lad,
         A thistle cannot grow."

While the secret garden was coming alive and two children were coming
alive with it, there was a man wandering about certain far-away
beautiful places in the Norwegian fiords and the valleys and mountains
of Switzerland and he was a man who for ten years had kept his mind
filled with dark and heart-broken thinking.  He had not been
courageous; he had never tried to put any other thoughts in the place
of the dark ones.  He had wandered by blue lakes and thought them; he
had lain on mountain-sides with sheets of deep blue gentians blooming
all about him and flower breaths filling all the air and he had thought
them.  A terrible sorrow had fallen upon him when he had been happy and
he had let his soul fill itself with blackness and had refused
obstinately to allow any rift of light to pierce through.  He had
forgotten and deserted his home and his duties.  When he traveled
about, darkness so brooded over him that the sight of him was a wrong
done to other people because it was as if he poisoned the air about him
with gloom.  Most strangers thought he must be either half mad or a man
with some hidden crime on his soul.  He, was a tall man with a drawn
face and crooked shoulders and the name he always entered on hotel
registers was, "Archibald Craven, Misselthwaite Manor, Yorkshire,
England."

He had traveled far and wide since the day he saw Mistress Mary in his
study and told her she might have her "bit of earth." He had been in
the most beautiful places in Europe, though he had remained nowhere
more than a few days.  He had chosen the quietest and remotest spots.
He had been on the tops of mountains whose heads were in the clouds and
had looked down on other mountains when the sun rose and touched them
with such light as made it seem as if the world were just being born.

But the light had never seemed to touch himself until one day when he
realized that for the first time in ten years a strange thing had
happened.  He was in a wonderful valley in the Austrian Tyrol and he
had been walking alone through such beauty as might have lifted, any
man's soul out of shadow.  He had walked a long way and it had not
lifted his.  But at last he had felt tired and had thrown himself down
to rest on a carpet of moss by a stream.  It was a clear little stream
which ran quite merrily along on its narrow way through the luscious
damp greenness.  Sometimes it made a sound rather like very low
laughter as it bubbled over and round stones.  He saw birds come and
dip their heads to drink in it and then flick their wings and fly away.
It seemed like a thing alive and yet its tiny voice made the stillness
seem deeper.  The valley was very, very still.

As he sat gazing into the clear running of the water, Archibald Craven
gradually felt his mind and body both grow quiet, as quiet as the
valley itself.  He wondered if he were going to sleep, but he was not.
He sat and gazed at the sunlit water and his eyes began to see things
growing at its edge.  There was one lovely mass of blue forget-me-nots
growing so close to the stream that its leaves were wet and at these he
found himself looking as he remembered he had looked at such things
years ago.  He was actually thinking tenderly how lovely it was and
what wonders of blue its hundreds of little blossoms were.  He did not
know that just that simple thought was slowly filling his mind--filling
and filling it until other things were softly pushed aside.  It was as
if a sweet clear spring had begun to rise in a stagnant pool and had
risen and risen until at last it swept the dark water away.  But of
course he did not think of this himself.  He only knew that the valley
seemed to grow quieter and quieter as he sat and stared at the bright
delicate blueness.  He did not know how long he sat there or what was
happening to him, but at last he moved as if he were awakening and he
got up slowly and stood on the moss carpet, drawing a long, deep, soft
breath and wondering at himself.  Something seemed to have been unbound
and released in him, very quietly.

"What is it?" he said, almost in a whisper, and he passed his hand over
his forehead.  "I almost feel as if--I were alive!"

I do not know enough about the wonderfulness of undiscovered things to
be able to explain how this had happened to him.  Neither does any one
else yet.  He did not understand at all himself--but he remembered this
strange hour months afterward when he was at Misselthwaite again and he
found out quite by accident that on this very day Colin had cried out
as he went into the secret garden:

"I am going to live forever and ever and ever!"

The singular calmness remained with him the rest of the evening and he
slept a new reposeful sleep; but it was not with him very long.  He did
not know that it could be kept.  By the next night he had opened the
doors wide to his dark thoughts and they had come trooping and rushing
back.  He left the valley and went on his wandering way again.  But,
strange as it seemed to him, there were minutes--sometimes
half-hours--when, without his knowing why, the black burden seemed to
lift itself again and he knew he was a living man and not a dead one.
Slowly--slowly--for no reason that he knew of--he was "coming alive"
with the garden.

As the golden summer changed into the deep golden autumn he went to the
Lake of Como.  There he found the loveliness of a dream.  He spent his
days upon the crystal blueness of the lake or he walked back into the
soft thick verdure of the hills and tramped until he was tired so that
he might sleep.  But by this time he had begun to sleep better, he
knew, and his dreams had ceased to be a terror to him.

"Perhaps," he thought, "my body is growing stronger."

It was growing stronger but--because of the rare peaceful hours when
his thoughts were changed--his soul was slowly growing stronger, too.
He began to think of Misselthwaite and wonder if he should not go home.
Now and then he wondered vaguely about his boy and asked himself what
he should feel when he went and stood by the carved four-posted bed
again and looked down at the sharply chiseled ivory-white face while it
slept and, the black lashes rimmed so startlingly the close-shut eyes.
He shrank from it.

One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned the moon
was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and silver.  The
stillness of lake and shore and wood was so wonderful that he did not
go into the villa he lived in.  He walked down to a little bowered
terrace at the water's edge and sat upon a seat and breathed in all the
heavenly scents of the night.  He felt the strange calmness stealing
over him and it grew deeper and deeper until he fell asleep.

He did not know when he fell asleep and when he began to dream; his
dream was so real that he did not feel as if he were dreaming.  He
remembered afterward how intensely wide awake and alert he had thought
he was.  He thought that as he sat and breathed in the scent of the
late roses and listened to the lapping of the water at his feet he
heard a voice calling.  It was sweet and clear and happy and far away.
It seemed very far, but he heard it as distinctly as if it had been at
his very side.

"Archie! Archie! Archie!" it said, and then again, sweeter and clearer
than before, "Archie! Archie!"

He thought he sprang to his feet not even startled.  It was such a real
voice and it seemed so natural that he should hear it.

"Lilias! Lilias!" he answered.  "Lilias! where are you?"

"In the garden," it came back like a sound from a golden flute.  "In
the garden!"

And then the dream ended.  But he did not awaken.  He slept soundly and
sweetly all through the lovely night.  When he did awake at last it was
brilliant morning and a servant was standing staring at him.  He was an
Italian servant and was accustomed, as all the servants of the villa
were, to accepting without question any strange thing his foreign
master might do.  No one ever knew when he would go out or come in or
where he would choose to sleep or if he would roam about the garden or
lie in the boat on the lake all night.  The man held a salver with some
letters on it and he waited quietly until Mr. Craven took them.  When
he had gone away Mr. Craven sat a few moments holding them in his hand
and looking at the lake.  His strange calm was still upon him and
something more--a lightness as if the cruel thing which had been done
had not happened as he thought--as if something had changed.  He was
remembering the dream--the real--real dream.

"In the garden!" he said, wondering at himself.  "In the garden! But
the door is locked and the key is buried deep."

When he glanced at the letters a few minutes later he saw that the one
lying at the top of the rest was an English letter and came from
Yorkshire.  It was directed in a plain woman's hand but it was not a
hand he knew.  He opened it, scarcely thinking of the writer, but the
first words attracted his attention at once.

"Dear Sir:

I am Susan Sowerby that made bold to speak to you once on the moor.  It
was about Miss Mary I spoke.  I will make bold to speak again.  Please,
sir, I would come home if I was you.  I think you would be glad to come
and--if you will excuse me, sir--I think your lady would ask you to
come if she was here.

                      Your obedient servant,
                      Susan Sowerby."

Mr. Craven read the letter twice before he put it back in its envelope.
He kept thinking about the dream.

"I will go back to Misselthwaite," he said.  "Yes, I'll go at once."

And he went through the garden to the villa and ordered Pitcher to
prepare for his return to England.

In a few days he was in Yorkshire again, and on his long railroad
journey he found himself thinking of his boy as he had never thought in
all the ten years past.  During those years he had only wished to
forget him.  Now, though he did not intend to think about him, memories
of him constantly drifted into his mind.  He remembered the black days
when he had raved like a madman because the child was alive and the
mother was dead.  He had refused to see it, and when he had gone to
look at it at last it had been, such a weak wretched thing that
everyone had been sure it would die in a few days.  But to the surprise
of those who took care of it the days passed and it lived and then
everyone believed it would be a deformed and crippled creature.

He had not meant to be a bad father, but he had not felt like a father
at all.  He had supplied doctors and nurses and luxuries, but he had
shrunk from the mere thought of the boy and had buried himself in his
own misery.  The first time after a year's absence he returned to
Misselthwaite and the small miserable looking thing languidly and
indifferently lifted to his face the great gray eyes with black lashes
round them, so like and yet so horribly unlike the happy eyes he had
adored, he could not bear the sight of them and turned away pale as
death.  After that he scarcely ever saw him except when he was asleep,
and all he knew of him was that he was a confirmed invalid, with a
vicious, hysterical, half-insane temper.  He could only be kept from
furies dangerous to himself by being given his own way in every detail.

All this was not an uplifting thing to recall, but as the train whirled
him through mountain passes and golden plains the man who was "coming
alive" began to think in a new way and he thought long and steadily and
deeply.

"Perhaps I have been all wrong for ten years," he said to himself.
"Ten years is a long time.  It may be too late to do anything--quite
too late.  What have I been thinking of!"

Of course this was the wrong Magic--to begin by saying "too late." Even
Colin could have told him that.  But he knew nothing of Magic--either
black or white.  This he had yet to learn.  He wondered if Susan
Sowerby had taken courage and written to him only because the motherly
creature had realized that the boy was much worse--was fatally ill.  If
he had not been under the spell of the curious calmness which had taken
possession of him he would have been more wretched than ever.  But the
calm had brought a sort of courage and hope with it.  Instead of giving
way to thoughts of the worst he actually found he was trying to believe
in better things.

"Could it be possible that she sees that I may be able to do him good
and control him?" he thought.  "I will go and see her on my way to
Misselthwaite."

But when on his way across the moor he stopped the carriage at the
cottage, seven or eight children who were playing about gathered in a
group and bobbing seven or eight friendly and polite curtsies told him
that their mother had gone to the other side of the moor early in the
morning to help a woman who had a new baby.  "Our Dickon," they
volunteered, was over at the Manor working in one of the gardens where
he went several days each week.

Mr. Craven looked over the collection of sturdy little bodies and round
red-cheeked faces, each one grinning in its own particular way, and he
awoke to the fact that they were a healthy likable lot.  He smiled at
their friendly grins and took a golden sovereign from his pocket and
gave it to "our 'Lizabeth Ellen" who was the oldest.

"If you divide that into eight parts there will be half a crown for
each of, you," he said.

Then amid grins and chuckles and bobbing of curtsies he drove away,
leaving ecstasy and nudging elbows and little jumps of joy behind.

The drive across the wonderfulness of the moor was a soothing thing.
Why did it seem to give him a sense of homecoming which he had been
sure he could never feel again--that sense of the beauty of land and
sky and purple bloom of distance and a warming of the heart at drawing,
nearer to the great old house which had held those of his blood for six
hundred years? How he had driven away from it the last time, shuddering
to think of its closed rooms and the boy lying in the four-posted bed
with the brocaded hangings.  Was it possible that perhaps he might find
him changed a little for the better and that he might overcome his
shrinking from him?  How real that dream had been--how wonderful and
clear the voice which called back to him, "In the garden--In the
garden!"

"I will try to find the key," he said.  "I will try to open the door.
I must--though I don't know why."

When he arrived at the Manor the servants who received him with the
usual ceremony noticed that he looked better and that he did not go to
the remote rooms where he usually lived attended by Pitcher.  He went
into the library and sent for Mrs. Medlock.  She came to him somewhat
excited and curious and flustered.

"How is Master Colin, Medlock?" he inquired.  "Well, sir," Mrs. Medlock
answered, "he's--he's different, in a manner of speaking."

"Worse?" he suggested.

Mrs. Medlock really was flushed.

"Well, you see, sir," she tried to explain, "neither Dr. Craven, nor
the nurse, nor me can exactly make him out."

"Why is that?"

"To tell the truth, sir, Master Colin might be better and he might be
changing for the worse.  His appetite, sir, is past understanding--and
his ways--"

"Has he become more--more peculiar?" her master, asked, knitting his
brows anxiously.

"That's it, sir.  He's growing very peculiar--when you compare him with
what he used to be.  He used to eat nothing and then suddenly he began
to eat something enormous--and then he stopped again all at once and
the meals were sent back just as they used to be.  You never knew, sir,
perhaps, that out of doors he never would let himself be taken.  The
things we've gone through to get him to go out in his chair would leave
a body trembling like a leaf.  He'd throw himself into such a state
that Dr. Craven said he couldn't be responsible for forcing him.  Well,
sir, just without warning--not long after one of his worst tantrums he
suddenly insisted on being taken out every day by Miss Mary and Susan
Sowerby's boy Dickon that could push his chair.  He took a fancy to
both Miss Mary and Dickon, and Dickon brought his tame animals, and, if
you'll credit it, sir, out of doors he will stay from morning until
night."

"How does he look?" was the next question.

"If he took his food natural, sir, you'd think he was putting on
flesh--but we're afraid it may be a sort of bloat.  He laughs sometimes
in a queer way when he's alone with Miss Mary.  He never used to laugh
at all.  Dr. Craven is coming to see you at once, if you'll allow him.
He never was as puzzled in his life."

"Where is Master Colin now?" Mr. Craven asked.

"In the garden, sir.  He's always in the garden--though not a human
creature is allowed to go near for fear they'll look at him."

Mr. Craven scarcely heard her last words.

"In the garden," he said, and after he had sent Mrs. Medlock away he
stood and repeated it again and again.  "In the garden!"

He had to make an effort to bring himself back to the place he was
standing in and when he felt he was on earth again he turned and went
out of the room.  He took his way, as Mary had done, through the door
in the shrubbery and among the laurels and the fountain beds.  The
fountain was playing now and was encircled by beds of brilliant autumn
flowers.  He crossed the lawn and turned into the Long Walk by the
ivied walls.  He did not walk quickly, but slowly, and his eyes were on
the path.  He felt as if he were being drawn back to the place he had
so long forsaken, and he did not know why.  As he drew near to it his
step became still more slow.  He knew where the door was even though
the ivy hung thick over it--but he did not know exactly where it
lay--that buried key.

So he stopped and stood still, looking about him, and almost the moment
after he had paused he started and listened--asking himself if he were
walking in a dream.

The ivy hung thick over the door, the key was buried under the shrubs,
no human being had passed that portal for ten lonely years--and yet
inside the garden there were sounds.  They were the sounds of running
scuffling feet seeming to chase round and round under the trees, they
were strange sounds of lowered suppressed voices--exclamations and
smothered joyous cries.  It seemed actually like the laughter of young
things, the uncontrollable laughter of children who were trying not to
be heard but who in a moment or so--as their excitement mounted--would
burst forth.  What in heaven's name was he dreaming of--what in
heaven's name did he hear? Was he losing his reason and thinking he
heard things which were not for human ears? Was it that the far clear
voice had meant?

And then the moment came, the uncontrollable moment when the sounds
forgot to hush themselves.  The feet ran faster and faster--they were
nearing the garden door--there was quick strong young breathing and a
wild outbreak of laughing shows which could not be contained--and the
door in the wall was flung wide open, the sheet of ivy swinging back,
and a boy burst through it at full speed and, without seeing the
outsider, dashed almost into his arms.

Mr. Craven had extended them just in time to save him from falling as a
result of his unseeing dash against him, and when he held him away to
look at him in amazement at his being there he truly gasped for breath.

He was a tall boy and a handsome one.  He was glowing with life and his
running had sent splendid color leaping to his face.  He threw the
thick hair back from his forehead and lifted a pair of strange gray
eyes--eyes full of boyish laughter and rimmed with black lashes like a
fringe.  It was the eyes which made Mr. Craven gasp for breath.
"Who--What? Who!" he stammered.

This was not what Colin had expected--this was not what he had planned.
He had never thought of such a meeting.  And yet to come dashing
out--winning a race--perhaps it was even better.  He drew himself up to
his very tallest.  Mary, who had been running with him and had dashed
through the door too, believed that he managed to make himself look
taller than he had ever looked before--inches taller.

"Father," he said, "I'm Colin.  You can't believe it.  I scarcely can
myself.  I'm Colin."

Like Mrs. Medlock, he did not understand what his father meant when he
said hurriedly:

"In the garden! In the garden!"

"Yes," hurried on Colin.  "It was the garden that did it--and Mary and
Dickon and the creatures--and the Magic.  No one knows.  We kept it to
tell you when you came.  I'm well, I can beat Mary in a race.  I'm
going to be an athlete."

He said it all so like a healthy boy--his face flushed, his words
tumbling over each other in his eagerness--that Mr. Craven's soul shook
with unbelieving joy.

Colin put out his hand and laid it on his father's arm.

"Aren't you glad, Father?" he ended.  "Aren't you glad?  I'm going to
live forever and ever and ever!"

Mr. Craven put his hands on both the boy's shoulders and held him
still.  He knew he dared not even try to speak for a moment.

"Take me into the garden, my boy," he said at last.  "And tell me all
about it."

And so they led him in.

The place was a wilderness of autumn gold and purple and violet blue
and flaming scarlet and on every side were sheaves of late lilies
standing together--lilies which were white or white and ruby.  He
remembered well when the first of them had been planted that just at
this season of the year their late glories should reveal themselves.
Late roses climbed and hung and clustered and the sunshine deepening
the hue of the yellowing trees made one feel that one, stood in an
embowered temple of gold.  The newcomer stood silent just as the
children had done when they came into its grayness.  He looked round
and round.

"I thought it would be dead," he said.

"Mary thought so at first," said Colin.  "But it came alive."

Then they sat down under their tree--all but Colin, who wanted to stand
while he told the story.

It was the strangest thing he had ever heard, Archibald Craven thought,
as it was poured forth in headlong boy fashion.  Mystery and Magic and
wild creatures, the weird midnight meeting--the coming of the
spring--the passion of insulted pride which had dragged the young Rajah
to his feet to defy old Ben Weatherstaff to his face.  The odd
companionship, the play acting, the great secret so carefully kept.
The listener laughed until tears came into his eyes and sometimes tears
came into his eyes when he was not laughing.  The Athlete, the
Lecturer, the Scientific Discoverer was a laughable, lovable, healthy
young human thing.

"Now," he said at the end of the story, "it need not be a secret any
more.  I dare say it will frighten them nearly into fits when they see
me--but I am never going to get into the chair again.  I shall walk
back with you, Father--to the house."

Ben Weatherstaff's duties rarely took him away from the gardens, but on
this occasion he made an excuse to carry some vegetables to the kitchen
and being invited into the servants' hall by Mrs. Medlock to drink a
glass of beer he was on the spot--as he had hoped to be--when the most
dramatic event Misselthwaite Manor had seen during the present
generation actually took place.  One of the windows looking upon the
courtyard gave also a glimpse of the lawn.  Mrs. Medlock, knowing Ben
had come from the gardens, hoped that he might have caught sight of his
master and even by chance of his meeting with Master Colin.

"Did you see either of them, Weatherstaff?" she asked.

Ben took his beer-mug from his mouth and wiped his lips with the back
of his hand.

"Aye, that I did," he answered with a shrewdly significant air.

"Both of them?" suggested Mrs. Medlock.

"Both of 'em," returned Ben Weatherstaff.  "Thank ye kindly, ma'am, I
could sup up another mug of it."

"Together?" said Mrs. Medlock, hastily overfilling his beer-mug in her
excitement.

"Together, ma'am," and Ben gulped down half of his new mug at one gulp.

"Where was Master Colin? How did he look? What did they say to each
other?"

"I didna' hear that," said Ben, "along o' only bein' on th' stepladder
lookin, over th' wall.  But I'll tell thee this.  There's been things
goin' on outside as you house people knows nowt about.  An' what tha'll
find out tha'll find out soon."

And it was not two minutes before he swallowed the last of his beer and
waved his mug solemnly toward the window which took in through the
shrubbery a piece of the lawn.

"Look there," he said, "if tha's curious.  Look what's comin' across
th' grass."

When Mrs. Medlock looked she threw up her hands and gave a little
shriek and every man and woman servant within hearing bolted across the
servants' hall and stood looking through the window with their eyes
almost starting out of their heads.

Across the lawn came the Master of Misselthwaite and he looked as many
of them had never seen him.  And by his, side with his head up in the
air and his eyes full of laughter walked as strongly and steadily as
any boy in Yorkshire--Master Colin.

In the secret garden, Colin continues to stand up straight and can even walk. Ben Weatherstaff enters the garden and Colin draws attention to himself, demanding to know from Ben if he sees him as a hunchback. Ben responds that he is not, and that everyone has been a fool to believe that Colin would die. Ben tells Colin about how the garden belonged to Mrs. Craven, his mother. Colin declares that now it is his and that it must be left a secret. Ben reveals that he has been in the secret garden before by climbing over the wall, which explains how the roses in the garden look pruned. As the sun goes down, Ben Weatherstaff presents Colin with a potted rose, which Colin plants in the soil himself. When Colin returns for the night, Dr. Craven warns him to minimize his time spent outside, and Colin responds defiantly that he will be going out every day and that he can't be stopped. Mary notices Colin's rude way of ordering around people and tells him directly that he could have better manners. Colin is surprised to hear that he behaves in this strange way, but he vows to keep visiting the garden, where he will be transformed by Magic. In the following months, many magical things take place in the garden as the flowers start budding. Colin continues to spend time there every day, watching things grow. Colin believes that it is the Magic that allowed him to stand for the first time in the garden. One day, Colin calls over Ben Weatherstaff, Mary, and Dickon to declare that when he grows up he will be a scientist who studies Magic. He proposes they do an experiment where every day they each affirm that Magic is inside of them and is making them well and to observe the results. They then sit cross-legged in a circle under the tree to start the experiment. Colin repeats a chant about how Magic lives through all of life, including in them. They then form a procession through the garden where Colin continues to declare that Magic is making him strong. He has made himself believe that he is not sick anymore and imagines what his father would think when he sees him well. The children continue to do these ceremonies regularly. Dickon starts working at another garden near his cottage. His mother, Mrs. Sowerby, enjoys going out to this garden and talking to the boy. There, Dickon divulges to her all the things that have been happening at Misselthwaite Manor and she becomes in on the secret. Mrs. Sowerby offers to prepare the children milk and bread to enjoy during their days in the garden, in order to help Colin and Mary fatten up. Dr. Craven and the nurses are beginning to notice Colin's increased appetite, so he can't ask for more food. He tries to not make himself seem too healthy, as he doesn't want anyone to find out about the secret garden and interfere with the children's daily routine. When the doctor proposes writing to Colin's father to tell him of his improving health, Colin panics and considers he might have to start eating less in order to discourage Dr. Craven. Mary and Colin find it difficult to eat less, however, because their appetites are growing each day. Thus they are delighted to receive the food from Mrs. Sowerby. Not wanting to put too much pressure on Dickon's mother to feed them, they also create a tiny oven in a hollow near the garden, in which the children cook potatoes and eggs. Becoming stronger, Colin is able to stand and walk more and more. The manor staff are perplexed at how the children can grow so strong and look so healthy while eating so little. The garden is blooming more and more and the robins are hatching eggs, which is described as a miracle. The robin's perspective is given, where he reveals that he trusts Dickon around the eggs but not necessarily Colin and Mary. The robins observe Colin learning to walk and conclude that the boy is learning to fly. On a rainy day, Mary and Colin amuse themselves by exploring the unused rooms in the mansion. Their playing causes them to have a great appetite and they both finish their lunches for the first time in awhile, much to the happiness of the staff. Later, Mary notices that Colin has removed the curtain from his mother's portrait in his room. Colin continues to lecture the children and Ben Weatherstaff about Magic, even while they are at work weeding in the garden. One day, Ben suggests Dickon sing the "Doxology," a hymn which praises God and all His creatures. As the children sing the hymn, a woman with affectionate eyes and a long blue cloak enters. It is Dickon's mother. She is surprised and happy to see Colin so well. She is also shocked because of the uncanny resemblance Colin bears to his own mother. She also notices how much Mary has grown healthier. The children ask her if she believes in Magic, to which she says yes, calling it the "Big Good Thing" in which they must always put their faith. The last chapter starts with narration about how the power of thoughts will be discovered and better understood in the 20th century. For instance, a bad thought can negatively affect the body just as much as a disease. This is shown through the characters of Mary and Colin. The narrator speaks of Mr. Craven, who for 10 years has thought only negatively and has not had the courage to be more positive, even while traveling throughout beautiful places in Europe. One day, while sitting by a stream in Austria, he starts thinking of the site's beauty and he suddenly feels alive for the first time in years. He can't maintain this new hope all the time, but he feels over the next few days that his usual sense of burden periodically lifts. One night, Mr. Craven dreams of hearing Mrs. Craven's voice calling to him, telling him that she is in their special garden. The next day, he receives a letter from Mrs. Sowerby advising him to come home, and that Mrs. Craven would want him to come if she were alive. Mr. Craven makes the journey back, thinking of Colin in a way he hasn't in years. He reflects on how he has not been the best father to Colin, avoiding him because of his resemblance to his wife. As he arrives back at the manor, he thinks about how he will find the key to the secret garden. Mrs. Medlock updates Mr. Craven on Colin's new behaviors and habit of going outdoors every single day. Mr. Craven hurriedly goes to the secret garden. Outside its walls he is surprised to hear commotion and laughter of children. All of a sudden, Colin bursts out of the garden door and bumps directly into his father. Mr. Craven is astonished yet happy to see Colin standing, looking healthy and vibrant. Colin takes him into the garden and tells him everything: about the Magic, the creatures, and his new friends. Mr. Craven laughs and cries with joy at hearing his son's story. The manor servants are completely shocked when they see out the window a healthy-looking Colin and his father walking together towards the house.

In the last sections of The Secret Garden, author Frances Hodgson Burnett masterfully ties together the different aspects of the plot to create the ultimate happily-ever-after resolution. No character in this story is left unaccounted for, as evident in the way each one makes some sort of appearance and finds their own sense of peace after experiencing great challenges and struggles. For instance, when the groundskeeper Ben Weatherstaff catches the children in the garden, his initial dismay transforms into happy astonishment at seeing the once crippled Colin standing and playing like a normal child. Through witnessing this, Ben can at last feel a sort of closure after many years of tending to the garden in secret. In the final chapters, Ben ultimately finds himself participating alongside Mary, Dickon, and Colin in the care taking of the garden and the magical ceremonies they create. There is a great deal of symbolism in Colin's presence in the garden, especially at the moment he plants a rose, the favorite flower of his mother. In this act, we are shown how despite the tragic passing of Mrs. Craven, life always continues, even after what seems like a final death. Her continuation is both literally through her son and more metaphysically through the joy and hope of the children who are determined to nurture and revive a garden on the verge of decay. In this way, the spirit of Mrs. Craven is truly honored and kept alive, as those things she loved most are not forgotten. Finally, Colin is willing to remove the curtain that long covered his mother's portrait, as he is now able to see her happy expression not as a threat, but as an invitation to cultivate his own happiness. The importance of nature in maintaining health and happiness is a theme emphasized over and over again. When Colin finds the strength to stand for the first time in ages, it is attributed to the magic of the secret garden, and on a deeper level, the magic of life. While Colin was once resigned to the role of perpetually sick patient, being outside has awakened in him a recognition of his own innate power as a human being embedded in nature. This is demonstrated in his chanting about how Magic is within him and within all of life. In direct contact with sunlight and soil, no longer does he, nor Mary for that matter, feel a sense of separation between themselves and the world at large. The most significant moment of resolution occurs in the final chapter, when Archibald Craven returns to his manor to find the children in what he had believed was a locked up and neglected garden. The transformation of Mr. Craven occurs in a mystical way: first, while sitting by a river, he miraculously experiences a profound sense of peace that stands in stark contrast to his habitual malaise. Next, he dreams that his wife calls to him to come into the garden. Then, the following day he receives a letter from Mrs. Sowerby urging him to return home. It is as if life itself is guiding the grieving man out of his deadened state, to embrace the possibility that not all has failed; that his son is not actually dying, but increasingly healthy; that his wife is not forever gone but living on through her reborn garden. Stylistically, there are certain moments in the narrative when the usual, intimate third-person narration is interrupted with a more direct address to the reader, such as in the beginning of Chapter 27, or in Chapter 23. Here, the author seems to zoom out in her focus on Mary, Colin, and Dickon to instead discuss issues of belief and magic in a wider context. In this way, the reader is asked to contemplate these philosophical themes and make more powerful conclusions about why the characters behave in the way they do. For example, when we see that Mr. Craven has denied his own magical ability to heal from grief, we can better comprehend his neglectful mode of parenting or his tendency for seclusion. In this way, the reader is truly encouraged to hold compassion for all characters and recognize the possibility for anyone to transform into a better person.