and I used to lie in my carriage
everybody used to stare and ladies would stop and talk to my nurse and
then they would begin to whisper and I knew then they were saying I
shouldn't live to grow up. Then sometimes the ladies would pat my
cheeks and say 'Poor child!' Once when a lady did that I screamed out
loud and bit her hand. She was so frightened she ran away."

"She thought you had gone mad like a dog," said Mary, not at all
admiringly.

"I don't care what she thought," said Colin, frowning.

"I wonder why you didn't scream and bite me when I came into your room?"
said Mary. Then she began to smile slowly.

"I thought you were a ghost or a dream," he said. "You can't bite a
ghost or a dream, and if you scream they don't care."

"Would you hate it if--if a boy looked at you?" Mary asked uncertainly.

He lay back on his cushion and paused thoughtfully.

"There's one boy," he said quite slowly, as if he were thinking over
every word, "there's one boy I believe I shouldn't mind. It's that boy
who knows where the foxes live--Dickon."

"I'm sure you wouldn't mind him," said Mary.

"The birds don't and other animals," he said, still thinking it over,
"perhaps that's why I shouldn't. He's a sort of animal charmer and I am
a boy animal."

Then he laughed and she laughed too; in fact it ended in their both
laughing a great deal and finding the idea of a boy animal hiding in
his hole very funny indeed.

What Mary felt afterward was that she need not fear about Dickon.

* * * * *

On that first morning when the sky was blue again Mary wakened very
early. The sun was pouring in slanting rays through the blinds and there
was something so joyous in the sight of it that she jumped out of bed
and ran to the window. She drew up the blinds and opened the window
itself and a great waft of fresh, scented air blew in upon her. The moor
was blue and the whole world looked as if something Magic had happened
to it. There were tender little fluting sounds here and there and
everywhere, as if scores of birds were beginning to tune up for a
concert. Mary put her hand out of the window and held it in the sun.

"It's warm--warm!" she said. "It will make the green points push up and
up and up, and it will make the bulbs and roots work and struggle with
all their might under the earth."

She kneeled down and leaned out of the window as far as she could,
breathing big breaths and sniffing the air u