y.

"'Forever and ever'! Does it make him feel like that?" he said, and he
did as she told him, drawing in long deep breaths over and over again
until he felt that something quite new and delightful was happening to
him.

Mary was at his bedside again.

"Things are crowding up out of the earth," she ran on in a hurry. "And
there are flowers uncurling and buds on everything and the green veil
has covered nearly all the gray and the birds are in such a hurry about
their nests for fear they may be too late that some of them are even
fighting for places in the secret garden. And the rose-bushes look as
wick as wick can be, and there are primroses in the lanes and woods,
and the seeds we planted are up, and Dickon has brought the fox and the
crow and the squirrels and a new-born lamb."

And then she paused for breath. The new-born lamb Dickon had found
three days before lying by its dead mother among the gorse bushes on
the moor. It was not the first motherless lamb he had found and he
knew what to do with it. He had taken it to the cottage wrapped in his
jacket and he had let it lie near the fire and had fed it with warm
milk. It was a soft thing with a darling silly baby face and legs
rather long for its body. Dickon had carried it over the moor in his
arms and its feeding bottle was in his pocket with a squirrel, and when
Mary had sat under a tree with its limp warmness huddled on her lap she
had felt as if she were too full of strange joy to speak. A lamb--a
lamb! A living lamb who lay on your lap like a baby!

She was describing it with great joy and Colin was listening and
drawing in long breaths of air when the nurse entered. She started a
little at the sight of the open window. She had sat stifling in the
room many a warm day because her patient was sure that open windows
gave people cold.

"Are you sure you are not chilly, Master Colin?" she inquired.

"No," was the answer. "I am breathing long breaths of fresh air. It
makes you strong. I am going to get up to the sofa for breakfast. My
cousin will have breakfast with me."

The nurse went away, concealing a smile, to give the order for two
breakfasts. She found the servants' hall a more amusing place than the
invalid's chamber and just now everybody wanted to hear the news from
upstairs. There was a great deal of joking about the unpopular young
recluse who, as the cook said, "had found his master, and good for
him." The servants' hall had