tle stiffly because she felt rather shy.

"Did you get Martha's letter?" she asked.

He nodded his curly, rust-colored head.

"That's why I come."

He stooped to pick up something which had been lying on the ground
beside him when he piped.

"I've got th' garden tools. There's a little spade an' rake an' a fork
an' hoe. Eh! they are good 'uns. There's a trowel, too. An' th' woman in
th' shop threw in a packet o' white poppy an' one o' blue larkspur when
I bought th' other seeds."

"Will you show the seeds to me?" Mary said.

She wished she could talk as he did. His speech was so quick and easy.
It sounded as if he liked her and was not the least afraid she would not
like him, though he was only a common moor boy, in patched clothes and
with a funny face and a rough, rusty-red head. As she came closer to him
she noticed that there was a clean fresh scent of heather and grass and
leaves about him, almost as if he were made of them. She liked it very
much and when she looked into his funny face with the red cheeks and
round blue eyes she forgot that she had felt shy.

"Let us sit down on this log and look at them," she said.

They sat down and he took a clumsy little brown paper package out of his
coat pocket. He untied the string and inside there were ever so many
neater and smaller packages with a picture of a flower on each one.

"There's a lot o' mignonette an' poppies," he said. "Mignonette's th'
sweetest smellin' thing as grows, an' it'll grow wherever you cast it,
same as poppies will. Them as'll come up an' bloom if you just whistle
to 'em, them's th' nicest of all."

He stopped and turned his head quickly, his poppy-cheeked face lighting
up.

"Where's that robin as is callin' us?" he said.

The chirp came from a thick holly bush, bright with scarlet berries, and
Mary thought she knew whose it was.

"Is it really calling us?" she asked.

"Aye," said Dickon, as if it was the most natural thing in the world,
"he's callin' some one he's friends with. That's same as sayin' 'Here I
am. Look at me. I wants a bit of a chat.' There he is in the bush. Whose
is he?"

"He's Ben Weatherstaff's, but I think he knows me a little," answered
Mary.

"Aye, he knows thee," said Dickon in his low voice again. "An' he likes
thee. He's took thee on. He'll tell me all about thee in a minute."

He moved quite close to the bush with the slow movement Mary had noticed
before, and then he made a sound almost like the r