The Frances Hodgson Burnett MEGAPACK ®. Frances Hodgson Burnett
extra to make thysel’ so strong?’ An’ he says ‘Well, yes, lad, I did. A strong man in a show that came to Thwaite once showed me how to exercise my arms an’ legs an’ every muscle in my body. An’ I says, ‘Could a delicate chap make himself stronger with ’em, Bob?’ an’ he laughed an’ says, ‘Art tha’ th’ delicate chap?’ an’ I says, ‘No, but I knows a young gentleman that’s gettin’ well of a long illness an’ I wish I knowed some o’ them tricks to tell him about.’ I didn’t say no names an’ he didn’t ask none. He’s friendly same as I said an’ he stood up an’ showed me good-natured like, an’ I imitated what he did till I knowed it by heart.”
Colin had been listening excitedly.
“Can you show me?” he cried. “Will you?”
“Aye, to be sure,” Dickon answered, getting up. “But he says tha’ mun do ’em gentle at first an’ be careful not to tire thysel’. Rest in between times an’ take deep breaths an’ don’t overdo.”
“I’ll be careful,” said Colin. “Show me! Show me! Dickon, you are the most Magic boy in the world!”
Dickon stood up on the grass and slowly went through a carefully practical but simple series of muscle exercises. Colin watched them with widening eyes. He could do a few while he was sitting down. Presently he did a few gently while he stood upon his already steadied feet. Mary began to do them also. Soot, who was watching the performance, became much disturbed and left his branch and hopped about restlessly because he could not do them too.
From that time the exercises were part of the day’s duties as much as the Magic was. It became possible for both Colin and Mary to do more of them each time they tried, and such appetites were the results that but for the basket Dickon put down behind the bush each morning when he arrived they would have been lost. But the little oven in the hollow and Mrs. Sowerby’s bounties were so satisfying that Mrs. Medlock and the nurse and Dr. Craven became mystified again. You can trifle with your breakfast and seem to disdain your dinner if you are full to the brim with roasted eggs and potatoes and richly frothed new milk and oatcakes and buns and heather honey and clotted cream.
“They are eating next to nothing,” said the nurse. “They’ll die of starvation if they can’t be persuaded to take some nourishment. And yet see how they look.”
“Look!” exclaimed Mrs. Medlock indignantly. “Eh! I’m moithered to death with them. They’re a pair of young Satans. Bursting their jackets one day and the next turning up their noses at the best meals Cook can tempt them with. Not a mouthful of that lovely young fowl and bread sauce did they set a fork into yesterday—and the poor woman fair invented a pudding for them—and back it’s sent. She almost cried. She’s afraid she’ll be blamed if they starve themselves into their graves.”
Dr. Craven came and looked at Colin long and carefully, He wore an extremely worried expression when the nurse talked with him and showed him the almost untouched tray of breakfast she had saved for him to look at—but it was even more worried when he sat down by Colin’s sofa and examined him. He had been called to London on business and had not seen the boy for nearly two weeks. When young things begin to gain health they gain it rapidly. The waxen tinge had left, Colins skin and a warm rose showed through it; his beautiful eyes were clear and the hollows under them and in his cheeks and temples had filled out. His once dark, heavy locks had begun to look as if they sprang healthily from his forehead and were soft and warm with life. His lips were fuller and of a normal color. In fact as an imitation of a boy who was a confirmed invalid he was a disgraceful sight. Dr. Craven held his chin in his hand and thought him over.
“I am sorry to hear that you do not eat anything,” he said. “That will not do. You will lose all you have gained—and you have gained amazingly. You ate so well a short time ago.”
“I told you it was an unnatural appetite,” answered Colin.
Mary was sitting on her stool nearby and she suddenly made a very queer sound which she tried so violently to repress that she ended by almost choking.
“What is the matter?” said Dr. Craven, turning to look at her.
Mary became quite severe in her manner.
“It was something between a sneeze and a cough,” she replied with reproachful dignity, “and it got into my throat.”
“But,” she said afterward to Colin, “I couldn’t stop myself. It just burst out because all at once I couldn’t help remembering that last big potato you ate and the way your mouth stretched when you bit through that thick lovely crust with jam and clotted cream on it.”
“Is there any way in which those children can get food secretly?” Dr. Craven inquired of Mrs. Medlock.
“There’s no way unless they dig it out of the earth or pick it off the trees,” Mrs. Medlock answered. “They stay out in the grounds all day and see no one but each other. And if they want anything different to eat from what’s sent up to them they need only ask for it.”
“Well,” said Dr. Craven, “so long as going without food agrees with them we need not disturb ourselves. The boy is a new creature.”
“So is the girl,” said Mrs. Medlock. “She’s begun to be downright pretty since she’s filled out and lost her ugly little sour look. Her hair’s grown thick and healthy looking and she’s got a bright color. The glummest, ill-natured little thing she used to be and now her and Master Colin laugh together like a pair of crazy young ones. Perhaps they’re growing fat on that.”
“Perhaps they are,” said Dr. Craven. “Let them laugh.”
CHAPTER XXV
THE CURTAIN
And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles. In the robin’s nest there were Eggs and the robin’s mate sat upon them keeping them warm with her feathery little breast and careful wings. At first she was very nervous and the robin himself was indignantly watchful. Even Dickon did not go near the close-grown corner in those days, but waited until by the quiet working of some mysterious spell he seemed to have conveyed to the soul of the little pair that in the garden there was nothing which was not quite like themselves—nothing which did not understand the wonderfulness of what was happening to them—the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking beauty and solemnity of Eggs. If there had been one person in that garden who had not known through all his or her innermost being that if an Egg were taken away or hurt the whole world would whirl round and crash through space and come to an end—if there had been even one who did not feel it and act accordingly there could have been no happiness even in that golden springtime air. But they all knew it and felt it and the robin and his mate knew they knew it.
At first the robin watched Mary and Colin with sharp anxiety. For some mysterious reason he knew he need not watch Dickon. The first moment he set his dew-bright black eye on Dickon he knew he was not a stranger but a sort of robin without beak or feathers. He could speak robin (which is a quite distinct language not to be mistaken for any other). To speak robin to a robin is like speaking French to a Frenchman. Dickon always spoke it to the robin himself, so the queer gibberish he used when he spoke to humans did not matter in the least. The robin thought he spoke this gibberish to them because they were not intelligent enough to understand feathered speech. His movements also were robin. They never startled one by being sudden enough to seem dangerous or threatening. Any robin could understand Dickon, so his presence was not even disturbing.
But at the outset it seemed necessary to be on guard against the other two. In the first place the boy creature did not come into the garden on his legs. He was pushed in on a thing with wheels and the skins of wild animals were thrown over him. That in itself was doubtful. Then when he began to stand up and move about he did it in a queer unaccustomed way and the others seemed to have to help him. The robin used to secrete himself in a bush and watch this anxiously, his head tilted first on one side and then on the other. He thought that the slow movements might mean that he was preparing to pounce, as cats do. When cats are preparing to pounce they creep over the ground very slowly. The robin talked