iness for hours
and days and months and years. And now that an angry unsympathetic
little girl insisted obstinately that he was not as ill as he thought
he was he actually felt as if she might be speaking the truth.

"I didn't know," ventured the nurse, "that he thought he had a lump on
his spine. His back is weak because he won't try to sit up. I could
have told him there was no lump there." Colin gulped and turned his
face a little to look at her.

"C-could you?" he said pathetically.

"Yes, sir."

"There!" said Mary, and she gulped too.

Colin turned on his face again and but for his long-drawn broken
breaths, which were the dying down of his storm of sobbing, he lay
still for a minute, though great tears streamed down his face and wet
the pillow. Actually the tears meant that a curious great relief had
come to him. Presently he turned and looked at the nurse again and
strangely enough he was not like a Rajah at all as he spoke to her.

"Do you think--I could--live to grow up?" he said.

The nurse was neither clever nor soft-hearted but she could repeat some
of the London doctor's words.

"You probably will if you will do what you are told to do and not give
way to your temper, and stay out a great deal in the fresh air."

Colin's tantrum had passed and he was weak and worn out with crying and
this perhaps made him feel gentle. He put out his hand a little toward
Mary, and I am glad to say that, her own tantum having passed, she was
softened too and met him half-way with her hand, so that it was a sort
of making up.

"I'll--I'll go out with you, Mary," he said. "I shan't hate fresh air
if we can find--" He remembered just in time to stop himself from
saying "if we can find the secret garden" and he ended, "I shall like
to go out with you if Dickon will come and push my chair. I do so want
to see Dickon and the fox and the crow."

The nurse remade the tumbled bed and shook and straightened the
pillows. Then she made Colin a cup of beef tea and gave a cup to Mary,
who really was very glad to get it after her excitement. Mrs. Medlock
and Martha gladly slipped away, and after everything was neat and calm
and in order the nurse looked as if she would very gladly slip away
also. She was a healthy young woman who resented being robbed of her
sleep and she yawned quite openly as she looked at Mary, who had pushed
her big footstool close to the four-posted bed and was holding Colin's
hand.

"You mus