too."

"I don't believe he does," said Mary quite obstinately.

That made Colin turn and look at her again.

"Don't you?" he said.

And then he lay back on his cushion and was still, as if he were
thinking. And there was quite a long silence. Perhaps they were both
of them thinking strange things children do not usually think. "I like
the grand doctor from London, because he made them take the iron thing
off," said Mary at last "Did he say you were going to die?"

"No.".

"What did he say?"

"He didn't whisper," Colin answered. "Perhaps he knew I hated
whispering. I heard him say one thing quite aloud. He said, 'The lad
might live if he would make up his mind to it. Put him in the humor.'
It sounded as if he was in a temper."

"I'll tell you who would put you in the humor, perhaps," said Mary
reflecting. She felt as if she would like this thing to be settled one
way or the other. "I believe Dickon would. He's always talking about
live things. He never talks about dead things or things that are ill.
He's always looking up in the sky to watch birds flying--or looking
down at the earth to see something growing. He has such round blue
eyes and they are so wide open with looking about. And he laughs such
a big laugh with his wide mouth--and his cheeks are as red--as red as
cherries." She pulled her stool nearer to the sofa and her expression
quite changed at the remembrance of the wide curving mouth and wide
open eyes.

"See here," she said. "Don't let us talk about dying; I don't like it.
Let us talk about living. Let us talk and talk about Dickon. And then
we will look at your pictures."

It was the best thing she could have said. To talk about Dickon meant
to talk about the moor and about the cottage and the fourteen people
who lived in it on sixteen shillings a week--and the children who got
fat on the moor grass like the wild ponies. And about Dickon's
mother--and the skipping-rope--and the moor with the sun on it--and
about pale green points sticking up out of the black sod. And it was
all so alive that Mary talked more than she had ever talked before--and
Colin both talked and listened as he had never done either before. And
they both began to laugh over nothings as children will when they are
happy together. And they laughed so that in the end they were making
as much noise as if they had been two ordinary healthy natural
ten-year-old creatures--instead of a hard, little, unloving g