ng across the garden at something attracting his
attention and his expression had become a startled one.

"Who is coming in here?" he said quickly. "Who is it?"

The door in the ivied wall had been pushed gently open and a woman had
entered. She had come in with the last line of their song and she had
stood still listening and looking at them. With the ivy behind her,
the sunlight drifting through the trees and dappling her long blue
cloak, and her nice fresh face smiling across the greenery she was
rather like a softly colored illustration in one of Colin's books. She
had wonderful affectionate eyes which seemed to take everything in--all
of them, even Ben Weatherstaff and the "creatures" and every flower
that was in bloom. Unexpectedly as she had appeared, not one of them
felt that she was an intruder at all. Dickon's eyes lighted like lamps.

"It's mother--that's who it is!" he cried and went across the grass at
a run.

Colin began to move toward her, too, and Mary went with him. They both
felt their pulses beat faster.

"It's mother!" Dickon said again when they met halfway. "I knowed tha'
wanted to see her an' I told her where th' door was hid."

Colin held out his hand with a sort of flushed royal shyness but his
eyes quite devoured her face.

"Even when I was ill I wanted to see you," he said, "you and Dickon and
the secret garden. I'd never wanted to see any one or anything before."

The sight of his uplifted face brought about a sudden change in her
own. She flushed and the corners of her mouth shook and a mist seemed
to sweep over her eyes.

"Eh! dear lad!" she broke out tremulously. "Eh! dear lad!" as if she
had not known she were going to say it. She did not say, "Mester
Colin," but just "dear lad" quite suddenly. She might have said it to
Dickon in the same way if she had seen something in his face which
touched her. Colin liked it.

"Are you surprised because I am so well?" he asked. She put her hand
on his shoulder and smiled the mist out of her eyes. "Aye, that I am!"
she said; "but tha'rt so like thy mother tha' made my heart jump."

"Do you think," said Colin a little awkwardly, "that will make my
father like me?"

"Aye, for sure, dear lad," she answered and she gave his shoulder a
soft quick pat. "He mun come home--he mun come home."

"Susan Sowerby," said Ben Weatherstaff, getting close to her. "Look at
th' lad's legs, wilt tha'? They was like drumsticks i' stockin' t