red, "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.

CHAPTER XXIV

"LET THEM LAUGH"

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, turnip