ught Colin's
fancy.

"'Forever and ever'! Does it make him feel like that?" he said, and he
did as she told him, drawing in long deep breaths over and over again
until he felt that something quite new and delightful was happening to
him.

Mary was at his bedside again.

"Things are crowding up out of the earth," she ran on in a hurry. "And
there are flowers uncurling and buds on everything and the green veil
has covered nearly all the gray and the birds are in such a hurry about
their nests for fear they may be too late that some of them are even
fighting for places in the secret garden. And the rose-bushes look as
wick as wick can be, and there are primroses in the lanes and woods, and
the seeds we planted are up, and Dickon has brought the fox and the crow
and the squirrels and a new-born lamb."

And then she paused for breath. The new-born lamb Dickon had found three
days before lying by its dead mother among the gorse bushes on the moor.
It was not the first motherless lamb he had found and he knew what to do
with it. He had taken it to the cottage wrapped in his jacket and he had
let it lie near the fire and had fed it with warm milk. It was a soft
thing with a darling silly baby face and legs rather long for its body.
Dickon had carried it over the moor in his arms and its feeding bottle
was in his pocket with a squirrel, and when Mary had sat under a tree
with its limp warmness huddled on her lap she had felt as if she were
too full of strange joy to speak. A lamb--a lamb! A living lamb who lay
on your lap like a baby!

She was describing it with great joy and Colin was listening and drawing
in long breaths of air when the nurse entered. She started a little at
the sight of the open window. She had sat stifling in the room many a
warm day because her patient was sure that open windows gave people
cold.

"Are you sure you are not chilly, Master Colin?" she inquired.

"No," was the answer. "I am breathing long breaths of fresh air. It
makes you strong. I am going to get up to the sofa for breakfast and my
cousin will have breakfast with me."

The nurse went away, concealing a smile, to give the order for two
breakfasts. She found the servants' hall a more amusing place than the
invalid's chamber and just now everybody wanted to hear the news from
up-stairs. There was a great deal of joking about the unpopular young
recluse who, as the cook said, "had found his master, and good for him."
The servants' hal