That afternoon Mary noticed that something new had
happened in Colin’s room. She had noticed
it the day before but had said nothing because she
thought the change might have been made by chance.
She said nothing to-day but she sat and looked fixedly
at the picture over the mantel. She could look
at it because the curtain had been drawn aside.
That was the change she noticed.
“I know what you want me to tell you,”
said Colin, after she had stared a few minutes.
“I always know when you want me to tell you something.
You are wondering why the curtain is drawn back.
I am going to keep it like that.”
“Why?” asked Mary.
“Because it doesn’t make me angry any
more to see her laughing. I wakened when it was
bright moonlight two nights ago and felt as if the
Magic was filling the room and making everything so
splendid that I couldn’t lie still. I got
up and looked out of the window. The room was
quite light and there was a patch of moonlight on the
curtain and somehow that made me go and pull the cord.
She looked right down at me as if she were laughing
because she was glad I was standing there. It
made me like to look at her. I want to see her
laughing like that all the time. I think she
must have been a sort of Magic person perhaps.”
“You are so like her now,” said Mary,
“that sometimes I think perhaps you are her
ghost made into a boy.”
That idea seemed to impress Colin. He thought
it over and then answered her slowly.
“If I were her ghost—my father would
be fond of me,” he said.
“Do you want him to be fond of you?” inquired
Mary.
“I used to hate it because he was not fond of
me. If he grew fond of me I think I should tell
him about the Magic. It might make him more cheerful.”
“IT’S MOTHER!”
Their belief in the Magic was an abiding thing.
After the morning’s incantations Colin sometimes
gave them Magic lectures.
“I like to do it,” he explained, “because
when I grow up and make great scientific discoveries
I shall be obliged to lecture about them and so this
is practise. I can only give short lectures now
because I am very young, and besides Ben Weatherstaff
would feel as if he was in church and he would go
to sleep.”
“Th’ best thing about lecturin’,”
said Ben, “is that a chap can get up an’
say aught he pleases an’ no other chap can answer
him back. I wouldn’t be agen’ lecturin’
a bit mysel’ sometimes.”
But when Colin held forth under his tree old Ben fixed
devouring eyes on him and kept them there. He
looked him over with critical affection. It was
not so much the lecture which interested him as the
legs which looked straighter and stronger each day,
the boyish head which held itself up so well, the
once sharp chin and hollow cheeks which had filled
and rounded out and the eyes which had begun to hold
the light he remembered in another pair. Sometimes
when Colin felt Ben’s earnest gaze meant that
he was much impressed he wondered what he was reflecting
on and once when he had seemed quite entranced he
questioned him.
