“That’s what I thought,” said Mary.
Then there was a lovely breathless silence and the
chair wheeled on.
“That is the garden where Ben Weatherstaff works,”
said Mary.
“Is it?” said Colin.
A few yards more and Mary whispered again.
“This is where the robin flew over the wall,”
she said.
“Is it?” cried Colin. “Oh!
I wish he’d come again!”
“And that,” said Mary with solemn delight,
pointing under a big lilac bush, “is where he
perched on the little heap of earth and showed me the
key.”
Then Colin sat up.
“Where? Where? There?” he cried,
and his eyes were as big as the wolf’s in Red
Riding-Hood, when Red Riding-Hood felt called upon
to remark on them. Dickon stood still and the
wheeled chair stopped.
“And this,” said Mary, stepping on to
the bed close to the ivy, “is where I went to
talk to him when he chirped at me from the top of the
wall. And this is the ivy the wind blew back,”
and she took hold of the hanging green curtain.
“Oh! is it—is it!” gasped Colin.
“And here is the handle, and here is the door.
Dickon push him in—push him in quickly!”
And Dickon did it with one strong, steady, splendid
push.
But Colin had actually dropped back against his cushions,
even though he gasped with delight, and he had covered
his eyes with his hands and held them there shutting
out everything until they were inside and the chair
stopped as if by magic and the door was closed.
Not till then did he take them away and look round
and round and round as Dickon and Mary had done.
And over walls and earth and trees and swinging sprays
and tendrils the fair green veil of tender little
leaves had crept, and in the grass under the trees
and the gray urns in the alcoves and here and there
everywhere were touches or splashes of gold and purple
and white and the trees were showing pink and snow
above his head and there were fluttering of wings
and faint sweet pipes and humming and scents and scents.
And the sun fell warm upon his face like a hand with
a lovely touch. And in wonder Mary and Dickon
stood and stared at him. He looked so strange
and different because a pink glow of color had actually
crept all over him—ivory face and neck and
hands and all.
“I shall get well! I shall get well!”
he cried out. “Mary! Dickon! I
shall get well! And I shall live forever and ever
and ever!”
BEN WEATHERSTAFF
One of the strange things about living in the world
is that it is only now and then one is quite sure
one is going to live forever and ever and ever.
One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender
solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and
throws one’s head far back and looks up and
up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing
and marvelous unknown things happening until the East
