hem 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's 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 kn