“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 of.

“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 girl and a sickly boy who believed that he was going to die.

They enjoyed themselves so much that they forgot the pictures and they forgot about the time.  They had been laughing quite loudly over Ben Weatherstaff and his robin and Colin was actually sitting up as if he had forgotten about his weak back when he suddenly remembered something.

“Do you know there is one thing we have never once thought of,” he said.  “We are cousins.”