But they were obliged to wait more than a week because first there came some very

windy days and then Colin was threatened with a cold, which two things happening one

after the other would no doubt have thrown

him into a rage but that there was so much careful and mysterious planning to do and

almost every day Dickon came in, if only for a few minutes, to talk about what was

happening on the moor and in the lanes and hedges and on the borders of streams.

The things he had to tell about otters' and badgers' and water-rats' houses, not to

mention birds' nests and field-mice and their burrows, were enough to make you

almost tremble with excitement when you

heard all the intimate details from an animal charmer and realized with what

thrilling eagerness and anxiety the whole busy underworld was working.

"They're same as us," said Dickon, "only they have to build their homes every year.

An' it keeps 'em so busy they fair scuffle to get 'em done."

The most absorbing thing, however, was the preparations to be made before Colin could

be transported with sufficient secrecy to the garden.

No one must see the chair-carriage and Dickon and Mary after they turned a certain

corner of the shrubbery and entered upon the walk outside the ivied walls.

As each day passed, Colin had become more and more fixed in his feeling that the

mystery surrounding the garden was one of its greatest charms.

Nothing must spoil that.

No one must ever suspect that they had a secret.

People must think that he was simply going out with Mary and Dickon because he liked

them and did not object to their looking at him.

They had long and quite delightful talks about their route.

They would go up this path and down that one and cross the other and go round among

the fountain flower-beds as if they were looking at the "bedding-out plants" the

head gardener, Mr. Roach, had been having arranged.

That would seem such a rational thing to do that no one would think it at all

mysterious.

They would turn into the shrubbery walks and lose themselves until they came to the

long walls.

It was almost as serious and elaborately thought out as the plans of march made by

great generals in time of war.

Rumors of the new and curious things which were occurring in the invalid's apartments

had of course filtered through the servants' hall into the stable yards and

out among the gardeners, but

notwithstanding this, Mr. Roach was startled one day when he received orders

from Master Colin's room to the effect that he must report himself in the apartment no

outsider had ever seen, as the invalid himself desired to speak to him.

"Well, well," he said to himself as he hurriedly changed his coat, "what's to do

now?

His Royal Highness that wasn't to be looked at calling up a man he's never set eyes

on." Mr. Roach was not without curiosity.

He had never caught even a glimpse of the boy and had heard a dozen exaggerated

stories about his uncanny looks and ways and his insane tempers.

The thing he had heard oftenest was that he might die at any moment and there had been

numerous fanciful descriptions of a humped back and helpless limbs, given by people

who had never seen him.

"Things are changing in this house, Mr. Roach," said Mrs. Medlock, as she led him

up the back staircase to the corridor on to which opened the hitherto mysterious

chamber.

"Let's hope they're changing for the better, Mrs. Medlock," he answered.

"They couldn't well change for the worse," she continued; "and queer as it all is

there's them as finds their duties made a lot easier to stand up under.

Don't you be surprised, Mr. Roach, if you find yourself in the middle of a menagerie

and Martha Sowerby's Dickon more at home than you or me could ever be."

There really was a sort of Magic about Dickon, as Mary always privately believed.

When Mr. Roach heard his name he smiled quite leniently.

"He'd be at home in Buckingham Palace or at the bottom of a coal mine," he said.

"And yet it's not impudence, either. He's just fine, is that lad."

It was perhaps well he had been prepared or he might have been startled.

When the bedroom door was opened a large crow, which seemed quite at home perched on

the high back of a carven chair, announced the entrance of a visitor by saying "Caw--

Caw" quite loudly.

In spite of Mrs. Medlock's warning, Mr. Roach only just escaped being sufficiently

undignified to jump backward. The young Rajah was neither in bed nor on

his sofa.

He was sitting in an armchair and a young lamb was standing by him shaking its tail

in feeding-lamb fashion as Dickon knelt giving it milk from its bottle.

A squirrel was perched on Dickon's bent back attentively nibbling a nut.

The little girl from India was sitting on a big footstool looking on.

"Here is Mr. Roach, Master Colin," said Mrs. Medlock.

The young Rajah turned and looked his servitor over--at least that was what the

head gardener felt happened.

"Oh, you are Roach, are you?" he said. "I sent for you to give you some very

important orders."

"Very good, sir," answered Roach, wondering if he was to receive instructions to fell

all the oaks in the park or to transform the orchards into water-gardens.

"I am going out in my chair this afternoon," said Colin.

"If the fresh air agrees with me I may go out every day.

When I go, none of the gardeners are to be anywhere near the Long Walk by the garden

walls. No one is to be there.

I shall go out about two o'clock and everyone must keep away until I send word

that they may go back to their work."

"Very good, sir," replied Mr. Roach, much relieved to hear that the oaks might remain

and that the orchards were safe.

"Mary," said Colin, turning to her, "what is that thing you say in India when you

have finished talking and want people to go?"

"You say, 'You have my permission to go,'" answered Mary.

The Rajah waved his hand. "You have my permission to go, Roach," he

said.

"But, remember, this is very important." "Caw--Caw!" remarked the crow hoarsely but

not impolitely. "Very good, sir.

Thank you, sir," said Mr. Roach, and Mrs. Medlock took him out of the room.

Outside in the corridor, being a rather good-natured man, he smiled until he almost

laughed.

"My word!" he said, "he's got a fine lordly way with him, hasn't he?

You'd think he was a whole Royal Family rolled into one--Prince Consort and all.".

"Eh!" protested Mrs. Medlock, "we've had to let him trample all over every one of us

ever since he had feet and he thinks that's what folks was born for."

"Perhaps he'll grow out of it, if he lives," suggested Mr. Roach.

"Well, there's one thing pretty sure," said Mrs. Medlock.

"If he does live and that Indian child stays here I'll warrant she teaches him

that the whole orange does not belong to him, as Susan Sowerby says.

And he'll be likely to find out the size of his own quarter."

Inside the room Colin was leaning back on his cushions.

"It's all safe now," he said.

"And this afternoon I shall see it--this afternoon I shall be in it!"

Dickon went back to the garden with his creatures and Mary stayed with Colin.

She did not think he looked tired but he was very quiet before their lunch came and

he was quiet while they were eating it. She wondered why and asked him about it.

"What big eyes you've got, Colin," she said.

"When you are thinking they get as big as saucers.

What are you thinking about now?"

"I can't help thinking about what it will look like," he answered.

"The garden?" asked Mary. "The springtime," he said.

"I was thinking that I've really never seen it before.

I scarcely ever went out and when I did go I never looked at it.

I didn't even think about it."

"I never saw it in India because there wasn't any," said Mary.

Shut in and morbid as his life had been, Colin had more imagination than she had and

at least he had spent a good deal of time looking at wonderful books and pictures.

"That morning when you ran in and said 'It's come!

It's come!', you made me feel quite queer.

It sounded as if things were coming with a great procession and big bursts and wafts

of music.

I've a picture like it in one of my books-- crowds of lovely people and children with

garlands and branches with blossoms on them, everyone laughing and dancing and

crowding and playing on pipes.

That was why I said, 'Perhaps we shall hear golden trumpets' and told you to throw open

the window." "How funny!" said Mary.

"That's really just what it feels like.

And if all the flowers and leaves and green things and birds and wild creatures danced

past at once, what a crowd it would be! I'm sure they'd dance and sing and flute

and that would be the wafts of music."

They both laughed but it was not because the idea was laughable but because they

both so liked it. A little later the nurse made Colin ready.

She noticed that instead of lying like a log while his clothes were put on he sat up

and made some efforts to help himself, and he talked and laughed with Mary all the

time.

"This is one of his good days, sir," she said to Dr. Craven, who dropped in to

inspect him. "He's in such good spirits that it makes

him stronger."

"I'll call in again later in the afternoon, after he has come in," said Dr. Craven.

"I must see how the going out agrees with him.

I wish," in a very low voice, "that he would let you go with him."

"I'd rather give up the case this moment, sir, than even stay here while it's

suggested," answered the nurse.

With sudden firmness. "I hadn't really decided to suggest it,"

said the doctor, with his slight nervousness.

"We'll try the experiment.

Dickon's a lad I'd trust with a new-born child."

The strongest footman in the house carried Colin down stairs and put him in his

wheeled chair near which Dickon waited outside.

After the manservant had arranged his rugs and cushions the Rajah waved his hand to

him and to the nurse.

"You have my permission to go," he said, and they both disappeared quickly and it

must be confessed giggled when they were safely inside the house.

Dickon began to push the wheeled chair slowly and steadily.

Mistress Mary walked beside it and Colin leaned back and lifted his face to the sky.

The arch of it looked very high and the small snowy clouds seemed like white birds

floating on outspread wings below its crystal blueness.

The wind swept in soft big breaths down from the moor and was strange with a wild

clear scented sweetness.

Colin kept lifting his thin chest to draw it in, and his big eyes looked as if it

were they which were listening--listening, instead of his ears.

"There are so many sounds of singing and humming and calling out," he said.

"What is that scent the puffs of wind bring?"

"It's gorse on th' moor that's openin' out," answered Dickon.

"Eh! th' bees are at it wonderful today." Not a human creature was to be caught sight

of in the paths they took.

In fact every gardener or gardener's lad had been witched away.

But they wound in and out among the shrubbery and out and round the fountain

beds, following their carefully planned route for the mere mysterious pleasure of

it.

But when at last they turned into the Long Walk by the ivied walls the excited sense

of an approaching thrill made them, for some curious reason they could not have

explained, begin to speak in whispers.

"This is it," breathed Mary. "This is where I used to walk up and down

and wonder and wonder." "Is it?" cried Colin, and his eyes began to

search the ivy with eager curiousness.

"But I can see nothing," he whispered. "There is no door."

"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