He was not on his sofa when she went into his room.He was lying flat on his back in bed and he did not turn his head toward her as she came in.This was a bad beginning and Mary marched up to him with her stiff manner.
“Why didn’t you get up?” she said.
“I did get up this morning when I thought you were coming,” he answered, without looking at her.“I made them put me back in bed this afternoon. My back ached and my head ached and I was tired. Why didn’t you come?”
“I was working in the garden with Dickon,” said Mary.
Colin frowned and condescended to look at her.
“I won’t let that boy come here if you go and stay with him instead of coming to talk to me, ” he said.
Mary flew into a fine passion. She could fly into a passion without making a noise.She just grew sour and obstinate and did not care what happened.
“If you send Dickon away, I’ll never come into this room again!” she retorted.
“You’ll have to if I want you,” said Colin.
“I won’t!” said Mary.
“I’ll make you,” said Colin. “They shall drag you in.”
“Shall they, Mr. Rajah!” said Mary fiercely. “They may drag me in but they can’t make me talk when they get me here.I’ll sit and clench my teeth and never tell you one thing. I won’t even look at you. I’ll stare at the floor!”
They were a nice agreeable pair as they glared at each other.If they had been two little street boys they would have sprung at each other and had a rough-and-tumble fight.As it was, they did the next thing to it.
“You are a selfish thing!” cried Colin.
“What are you?” said Mary. “Selfish people always say that. Anyone is selfish who doesn’t do what they want.You’re more selfish than I am. You’re the most selfish boy I ever saw.”
“I’m not!” snapped Colin. “I’m not as selfish as your fine Dickon is!He keeps you playing in the dirt when he knows I am all by myself. He’s selfish, if you like!”
Mary’s eyes flashed fire.
“He’s nicer than any other boy that ever lived!” she said. “He’s—he’s like an angel!” It might sound rather silly to say that but she did not care.
“A nice angel!” Colin sneered ferociously. “He’s a common cottage boy off the moor!”
“He’s better than a common Rajah!” retorted Mary. “He’s a thousand times better!”
Because she was the stronger of the two she was beginning to get the better of him.The truth was that he had never had a fight with anyone like himself in his life and,upon the whole, it was rather good for him, though neither he nor Mary knew anything about that.He turned his head on his pillow and shut his eyes and a big tear was squeezed out and ran down his cheek.He was beginning to feel pathetic and sorry for himself—not for anyone else.
“I’m not as selfish as you, because I’m always ill, and I’m sure there is a lump coming on my back,” he said. “And I am going to die besides.”
“You’re not!” contradicted Mary unsympathetically.
He opened his eyes quite wide with indignation. He had never heard such a thing said before.He was at once furious and slightly pleased, if a person could be both at one time.
“I’m not?” he cried. “I am!You know I am!Everybody says so.”
“I don’t believe it!” said Mary sourly. “You just say that to make people sorry. I believe you’re proud of it. I don’t believe it!If you were a nice boy it might be true—but you’re too nasty!”
In spite of his invalid back Colin sat up in bed in quite a healthy rage.
“Get out of the room!” he shouted and he caught hold of his pillow and threw it at her.He was not strong enough to throw it far and it only fell at her feet,but Mary’s face looked as pinched as a nutcracker.
“I’m going,” she said. “And I won’t come back!”
She walked to the door and when she reached it she turned round and spoke again.
“I was going to tell you all sorts of nice things,” she said.“Dickon brought his fox and his rook and I was going to tell you all about them. Now I won’t tell you a single thing!”
She marched out of the door and closed it behind her,and there to her great astonishment she found the trained nurse standing as if she had been listening and,more amazing still—she was laughing. She was a big handsome young woman who ought not to have been a trained nurse at all,as she could not bear invalids and she was always making excuses to leave Colin to Martha or anyone else who would take her place.Mary had never liked her, and she simply stood and gazed up at her as she stood giggling into her handkerchief..
“What are you laughing at?” she asked her.
“At you two young ones,” said the nurse.“It’s the best thing that could happen to the sickly pampered thing to have someone to stand up to him that’s as spoiled as himself;” and she laughed into her handkerchief again.“If he’d had a young vixen of a sister to fight with it would have been the saving of him.”
“Is he going to die?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said the nurse. “Hysterics and temper are half what ails him.”
“What are hysterics?” asked Mary.
“You’ll find out if you work him into a tantrum after this—but at any rate you’ve given him something to have hysterics about, and I’m glad of it.”
Mary went back to her room not feeling at all as she had felt when she had come in from the garden.She was cross and disappointed but not at all sorry for Colin.She had looked forward to telling him a great many things and she had meant to try to make up her mind whether it would be safe to trust him with the great secret. She had been beginning to think it would be, but now she had changed her mind entirely. She would never tell him and he could stay in his room and never get any fresh air and die if he liked!It would serve him right!She felt so sour and unrelenting that for a few minutes she almost forgot about Dickon and the green veil creeping over the world and the soft wind blowing down from the moor.
Martha was waiting for her and the trouble in her face had been temporarily replaced by interest and curiosity.There was a wooden box on the table and its cover had been removed and revealed that it was full of neat packages.
“Mr. Craven sent it to you,” said Martha. “It looks as if it had picture-books in it.”
Mary remembered what he had asked her the day she had gone to his room. “Do you want anything—dolls—toys—books?” She opened the package wondering if he had sent a doll,and also wondering what she should do with it if he had. But he had not sent one.There were several beautiful books such as Colin had,and two of them were about gardens and were full of pictures.There were two or three games and there was a beautiful little writing-case with a gold monogram on it and a gold pen and inkstand.
Everything was so nice that her pleasure began to crowd her anger out of her mind.She had not expected him to remember her at all and her hard little heart grew quite warm.
“I can write better than I can print,” she said,“and the first thing I shall write with that pen will be a letter to tell him I am much obliged.”
If she had been friends with Colin she would have run to show him her presents at once,and they would have looked at the pictures and read some of the gardening books and perhaps tried playing the games,and he would have enjoyed himself so much he would never once have thought he was going to die or have put his hand on his spine to see if there was a lump coming. He had a way of doing that which she could not bear. It gave her an uncomfortable frightened feeling because he always looked so frightened himself. He said that if he felt even quite a little lump some day he should know his hunch had begun to grow. Something he had heard Mrs. Medlock whispering to the nurse had given him the idea and he had thought over it in secret until it was quite firmly fixed in his mind. Mrs. Medlock had said his father’s back had begun to show its crookedness in that way when he was a child. He had never told anyone but Mary that most of his “tantrums” as they called them grew out of his hysterical hidden fear. Mary had been sorry for him when he had told her.
“He always began to think about it when he was cross or tired,” she said to herself.“And he has been cross today. Perhaps—perhaps he has been thinking about it all afternoon.”
She stood still, looking down at the carpet and thinking.
“I said I would never go back again—” she hesitated, knitting her brows—“but perhaps, just perhaps,I will go and see—if he wants me—in the morning. Perhaps he’ll try to throw his pillow at me again, but—I think—I’ll go.”
CHAPTER XVII. A TANTRUM
She had got up very early in the morning and had worked hard in the garden and she was tired and sleepy,so as soon as Martha had brought her supper and she had eaten it, she was glad to go to bed.As she laid her head on the pillow she murmured to herself:
“I’ll go out before breakfast and work with Dickon and then afterward—I believe—I’ll go to see him.”
She thought it was the middle of the night when she was awakened by such dreadful sounds that she jumped out of bed in an instant. What was it—what was it?The next minute she felt quite sure she knew.Doors were opened and shut and there were hurrying feet in the corridors and someone was crying and screaming at the same time, screaming and crying in a horrible way.
“It’s Colin,” she said. “He’s having one of those tantrums the nurse called hysterics. How awful it sounds.”
As she listened to the sobbing screams she did not wonder that people were so frightened that they gave him his own way in everything rather than hear them.She put her hands over her ears and felt sick and shivering.
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do,” she kept saying. “I can’t bear it.”
Once she wondered if he would stop if she dared go to him and then she remembered how he had driven her out of the room and thought that perhaps the sight of her might make him worse. Even when she pressed her hands more tightly over her ears she could not keep the awful sounds out. She hated them so and was so terrified by them that suddenly they began to make her angry and she felt as if she should like to fly into a tantrum herself and frighten him as he was frightening her. She was not used to anyone’s tempers but her own. She took her hands from her ears and sprang up and stamped her foot.
“He ought to be stopped!Somebody ought to make him stop!Somebody ought to beat him!” she cried out.
Just then she heard feet almost running down the corridor and her door opened and the nurse came in.She was not laughing now by any means. She even looked rather pale.
“He’s worked himself into hysterics,” she said in a great hurry. “He’ll do himself harm.No one can do anything with him. You come and try, like a good child. He likes you.”
“He turned me out of the room this morning,” said Mary, stamping her foot with excitement.
The stamp rather pleased the nurse. The truth was that she had been afraid she might find Mary crying and hiding her head under the bed-clothes.
“That’s right,” she said. “You’re in the right humor. You go and scold him.Give him something new to think of. Do go, child, as quick as ever you can.”
It was not until afterward that Mary realized that the thing had been funny as well as dreadful—that it was funny that all the grown-up people were so frightened that they came to a little girl just because they guessed she was almost as bad as Colin himself.
She flew along the corridor and the nearer she got to the screams the higher her temper mounted.She felt quite wicked by the time she reached the door.She slapped it open with her hand and ran across the room to the four-posted bed.
“You stop!” she almost shouted. “You stop!I hate you!Everybody hates you!I wish everybody would run out of the house and let you scream yourself to death!You _will_ scream yourself to death in a minute, and I wish you would!”
A nice sympathetic child could neither have thought nor said such things,but it just happened that the shock of hearing them was the best possible thing for this hysterical boy whom no one had ever dared to restrain or contradict.
He had been lying on his face beating his pillow with his hands and he actually almost jumped around,he turned so quickly at the sound of the furious little voice. His face looked dreadful,white and red and swollen, and he was gasping and choking;but savage little Mary did not care an atom.
“If you scream another scream,” she said,“I’ll scream too—and I can scream louder than you can and I’ll frighten you, I’ll frighten you!”
He actually had stopped screaming because she had startled him so.The scream which had been coming almost choked him.The tears were streaming down his face and he shook all over.
“I can’t stop!” he gasped and sobbed. “I can’t—I can’t!”
“You can!” shouted Mary. “Half that ails you is hysterics and temper—just hysterics—hysterics—hysterics!” and she stamped each time she said it.
“I felt the lump—I felt it,” choked out Colin. “I knew I should.I shall have a hunch on my back and then I shall die,” and he began to writhe again and turned on his face and sobbed and wailed but he didn’t scream.
“You didn’t feel a lump!” contradicted Mary fiercely. “If you did it was only a hysterical lump. Hysterics makes lumps.There’s nothing the matter with your horrid back—nothing but hysterics!Turn over and let me look at it!”
She liked the word “hysterics” and felt somehow as if it had an effect on him.He was probably like herself and had never heard it before.
“Nurse,” she commanded, “come here and show me his back this minute!”
The nurse, Mrs. Medlock and Martha had been standing huddled together near the door staring at her,their mouths half open. All three had gasped with fright more than once.The nurse came forward as if she were half afraid. Colin was heaving with great breathless sobs.
“Perhaps he—he won’t let me,” she hesitated in a low voice.
Colin heard her, however, and he gasped out between two sobs:
“Sh-show her!She-she’ll see then!”
It was a poor thin back to look at when it was bared.Every rib could be counted and every joint of the spine,though Mistress Mary did not count them as she bent over and examined them with a solemn savage little face.She looked so sour and old-fashioned that the nurse turned her head aside to hide the twitching of her mouth.There was just a minute’s silence, for even Colin tried to hold his breath while Mary looked up and down his spine,and down and up, as intently as if she had been the great doctor from London.
“There’s not a single lump there!” she said at last. “There’s not a lump as big as a pin—except backbone lumps,and you can only feel them because you’re thin. I’ve got backbone lumps myself,and they used to stick out as much as yours do, until I began to get fatter,and I am not fat enough yet to hide them. There’s not a lump as big as a pin!If you ever say there is again, I shall laugh!”
No one but Colin himself knew what effect those crossly spoken childish words had on him.If he had ever had anyone to talk to about his secret terrors—if he had ever dared to let himself ask questions—if he had had childish companions and had not lain on his back in the huge closed house, breathing an atmosphere heavy with the fears of people who were most of them ignorant and tired of him, he would have found out that most of his fright and illness was created by himself. But he had lain and thought of himself and his aches and weariness 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 must go back and get your sleep out,” she said.“He’ll drop off after a while—if he’s not too upset. Then I’ll lie down myself in the next room.”
“Would you like me to sing you that song I learned from my Ayah?” Mary whispered to Colin.
His hand pulled hers gently and he turned his tired eyes on her appealingly.
“Oh, yes!” he answered. “It’s such a soft song. I shall go to sleep in a minute.”
“I will put him to sleep,” Mary said to the yawning nurse. “You can go if you like.”
“Well,” said the nurse, with an attempt at reluctance.“If he doesn’t go to sleep in half an hour you must call me.”
“Very well,” answered Mary.
The nurse was out of the room in a minute and as soon as she was gone Colin pulled Mary’s hand again.
“I almost told,” he said; “but I stopped myself in time. I won’t talk and I’ll go to sleep,but you said you had a whole lot of nice things to tell me.Have you—do you think you have found out anything at all about the way into the secret garden?”
Mary looked at his poor little tired face and swollen eyes and her heart relented.
“Ye-es,” she answered, “I think I have. And if you will go to sleep I will tell you tomorrow. ” His hand quite trembled.
“Oh, Mary!” he said. “Oh, Mary!If I could get into it I think I should live to grow up!Do you suppose that instead of singing the Ayah song—you could just tell me softly as you did that first day what you imagine it looks like inside?I am sure it will make me go to sleep.”
“Yes,” answered Mary. “Shut your eyes.”
He closed his eyes and lay quite still and she held his hand and began to speak very slowly and in a very low voice.
“I think it has been left alone so long—that it has grown all into a lovely tangle.I think the roses have climbed and climbed and climbed until they hang from the branches and walls and creep over the ground—almost like a strange gray mist.Some of them have died but many—are alive and when the summer comes there will be curtains and fountains of roses.I think the ground is full of daffodils and snowdrops and lilies and iris working their way out of the dark.Now the spring has begun—perhaps—perhaps—”
The soft drone of her voice was making him stiller and stiller and she saw it and went on.
“Perhaps they are coming up through the grass—perhaps there are clusters of purple crocuses and gold ones—even now.Perhaps the leaves are beginning to break out and uncurl—and perhaps—the gray is changing and a green gauze veil is creeping—and creeping over—everything.And the birds are coming to look at it—because it is—so safe and still.And perhaps—perhaps—perhaps—” very softly and slowly indeed,“the robin has found a mate—and is building a nest.”
And Colin was asleep.
CHAPTER XVIII. “THA’ MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME”
Of course Mary did not waken early the next morning. She slept late because she was tired,and when Martha brought her breakfast she told her that though Colin was quite quiet he was ill and feverish as he always was after he had worn himself out with a fit of crying. Mary ate her breakfast slowly as she listened.
“He says he wishes tha’ would please go and see him as soon as tha’ can,” Martha said.“It’s queer what a fancy he’s took to thee. Tha’ did give it him last night for sure—didn’t tha?Nobody else would have dared to do it. Eh!poor lad!He’s been spoiled till salt won’t save him.Mother says as th’ two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way—or always to have it.She doesn’t know which is th’ worst. Tha’ was in a fine temper tha’self, too.But he says to me when I went into his room,‘Please ask Miss Mary if she’ll please come an’ talk to me?’ Think o’ him saying please!Will you go, Miss?”
“I’ll run and see Dickon first,” said Mary. “No,I’ll go and see Colin first and tell him—I know what I’ll tell him,” with a sudden inspiration.
She had her hat on when she appeared in Colin’s room and for a second he looked disappointed.He was in bed. His face was pitifully white and there were dark circles round his eyes.
“I’m glad you came,” he said. “My head aches and I ache all over because I’m so tired. Are you going somewhere?”
Mary went and leaned against his bed.
“I won’t be long,” she said. “I’m going to Dickon, but I’ll come back. Colin, it’s—it’s something about the garden.”
His whole face brightened and a little color came into it.
“Oh!is it?” he cried out. “I dreamed about it all night.I heard you say something about gray changing into green,and I dreamed I was standing in a place all filled with trembling little green leaves—and there were birds on nests everywhere and they looked so soft and still. I’ll lie and think about it until you come back.”
In five minutes Mary was with Dickon in their garden.The fox and the crow were with him again and this time he had brought two tame squirrels.
“I came over on the pony this mornin’,” he said. “Eh!he is a good little chap—Jump is!I brought these two in my pockets. This here one he’s called Nut an’ this here other one’s called Shell. ”
When he said “Nut” one squirrel leaped on to his right shoulder and when he said “Shell” the other one leaped on to his left shoulder.
When they sat down on the grass with Captain curled at their feet,Soot solemnly listening on a tree and Nut and Shell nosing about close to them,it seemed to Mary that it would be scarcely bearable to leave such delightfulness,but when she began to tell her story somehow the look in Dickon’s funny face gradually changed her mind.She could see he felt sorrier for Colin than she did. He looked up at the sky and all about him.
“Just listen to them birds—th’ world seems full of ’em—all whistlin’ an’ pipin’,” he said.“Look at ’em dartin’ about, an’ hearken at ’em callin’ to each other.Come springtime seems like as if all th’ world’s callin’.The leaves is uncurlin’ so you can see ’em—an’, my word, th’ nice smells there is about!” sniffing with his happy turned-up nose.“An’ that poor lad lyin’ shut up an’ seein’ so little that he gets to thinkin’ o’ things as sets him screamin’. Eh!my!we mun get him out here—we mun get him watchin’ an listenin’ an’ sniffin’ up th’ air an’ get him just soaked through wi’ sunshine. An’ we munnot lose no time about it.”
When he was very much interested he often spoke quite broad Yorkshire though at other times he tried to modify his dialect so that Mary could better understand.But she loved his broad Yorkshire and had in fact been trying to learn to speak it herself. So she spoke a little now.
“Aye, that we mun,” she said (which meant “Yes, indeed, we must”).“I’ll tell thee what us’ll do first,” she proceeded, and Dickon grinned,because when the little wench tried to twist her tongue into speaking Yorkshire it amused him very much.“He’s took a graidely fancy to thee. He wants to see thee and he wants to see Soot an’ Captain.When I go back to the house to talk to him I’ll ax him if tha’ canna’ come an’ see him tomorrow mornin’—an’ bring tha’ creatures wi’ thee—an’ then—in a bit,when there’s more leaves out, an’ happen a bud or two,we’ll get him to come out an’ tha’ shall push him in his chair an’ we’ll bring him here an’ show him everything. ”
When she stopped she was quite proud of herself.She had never made a long speech in Yorkshire before and she had remembered very well.
“Tha’ mun talk a bit o’ Yorkshire like that to Mester Colin,” Dickon chuckled.“Tha’ll make him laugh an’ there’s nowt as good for ill folk as laughin’ is.Mother says she believes as half a hour’s good laugh every mornin’ ’ud cure a chap as was makin’ ready for typhus fever. ”
“I’m going to talk Yorkshire to him this very day,” said Mary, chuckling herself.
The garden had reached the time when every day and every night it seemed as if Magicians were passing through it drawing loveliness out of the earth and the boughs with wands. It was hard to go away and leave it all, particularly as Nut had actually crept on to her dress and Shell had scrambled down the trunk of the apple-tree they sat under and stayed there looking at her with inquiring eyes. But she went back to the house and when she sat down close to Colin’s bed he began to sniff as Dickon did though not in such an experienced way.
“You smell like flowers and—and fresh things,” he cried out quite joyously. “What is it you smell of?It’s cool and warm and sweet all at the same time.”
“It’s th’ wind from th’ moor,” said Mary.“It comes o’ sittin’ on th’ grass under a tree wi’ Dickon an’ wi’ Captain an’ Soot an’ Nut an’ Shell.It’s th’ springtime an’ out o’ doors an’ sunshine as smells so graidely.”
She said it as broadly as she could, and you do not know how broadly Yorkshire sounds until you have heard someone speak it. Colin began to laugh.
“What are you doing?” he said. “I never heard you talk like that before. How funny it sounds.”
“I’m givin’ thee a bit o’ Yorkshire,” answered Mary triumphantly.“I canna’ talk as graidely as Dickon an’ Martha can but tha’ sees I can shape a bit.Doesn’t tha’ understand a bit o’ Yorkshire when tha’ hears it?An’ tha’ a Yorkshire lad thysel’ bred an’ born!Eh!I wonder tha’rt not ashamed o’ thy face.”
And then she began to laugh too and they both laughed until they could not stop themselves and they laughed until the room echoed and Mrs.Medlock opening the door to come in drew back into the corridor and stood listening amazed.
“Well, upon my word!” she said, speaking rather broad Yorkshire herself because there was no one to hear her and she was so astonished. “Whoever heard th’ like!Whoever on earth would ha’ thought it!”
There was so much to talk about. It seemed as if Colin could never hear enough of Dickon and Captain and Soot and Nut and Shell and the pony whose name was Jump. Mary had run round into the wood with Dickon to see Jump. He was a tiny little shaggy moor pony with thick locks hanging over his eyes and with a pretty face and a nuzzling velvet nose. He was rather thin with living on moor grass but he was as tough and wiry as if the muscle in his little legs had been made of steel springs. He had lifted his head and whinnied softly the moment he saw Dickon and he had trotted up to him and put his head across his shoulder and then Dickon had talked into his ear and Jump had talked back in odd little whinnies and puffs and snorts. Dickon had made him give Mary his small front hoof and kiss her on her cheek with his velvet muzzle.
“Does he really understand everything Dickon says?” Colin asked.
“It seems as if he does,” answered Mary.“Dickon says anything will understand if you’re friends with it for sure, but you have to be friends for sure.”
Colin lay quiet a little while and his strange gray eyes seemed to be staring at the wall, but Mary saw he was thinking.
“I wish I was friends with things,” he said at last, “but I’m not.I never had anything to be friends with, and I can’t bear people.”
“Can’t you bear me?” asked Mary.
“Yes, I can,” he answered. “It’s funny but I even like you.”
“Ben Weatherstaff said I was like him,” said Mary.“He said he’d warrant we’d both got the same nasty tempers. I think you are like him too.We are all three alike—you and I and Ben Weatherstaff.He said we were neither of us much to look at and we were as sour as we looked.But I don’t feel as sour as I used to before I knew the robin and Dickon.”
“Did you feel as if you hated people?”
“Yes,” answered Mary without any affectation.“I should have detested you if I had seen you before I saw the robin and Dickon.”
Colin put out his thin hand and touched her.
“Mary,” he said, “I wish I hadn’t said what I did about sending Dickon away.I hated you when you said he was like an angel and I laughed at you but—but perhaps he is.”