a slapping sort of man,"
said Mary, "he would have slapped you."

"But he daren't," said Colin.

"No, he daren't," answered Mistress Mary, thinking the thing out quite
without prejudice. "Nobody ever dared to do anything you didn't
like--because you were going to die and things like that. You were
such a poor thing."

"But," announced Colin stubbornly, "I am not going to be a poor thing.
I won't let people think I'm one. I stood on my feet this afternoon."

"It is always having your own way that has made you so queer," Mary
went on, thinking aloud.

Colin turned his head, frowning.

"Am I queer?" he demanded.

"Yes," answered Mary, "very. But you needn't be cross," she added
impartially, "because so am I queer--and so is Ben Weatherstaff. But I
am not as queer as I was before I began to like people and before I
found the garden."

"I don't want to be queer," said Colin. "I am not going to be," and he
frowned again with determination.

He was a very proud boy. He lay thinking for a while and then Mary saw
his beautiful smile begin and gradually change his whole face.

"I shall stop being queer," he said, "if I go every day to the garden.
There is Magic in there--good Magic, you know, Mary. I am sure there
is." "So am I," said Mary.

"Even if it isn't real Magic," Colin said, "we can pretend it is.
Something is there--something!"

"It's Magic," said Mary, "but not black. It's as white as snow."

They always called it Magic and indeed it seemed like it in the months
that followed--the wonderful months--the radiant months--the amazing
ones. Oh! the things which happened in that garden! If you have never
had a garden you cannot understand, and if you have had a garden you
will know that it would take a whole book to describe all that came to
pass there. At first it seemed that green things would never cease
pushing their way through the earth, in the grass, in the beds, even in
the crevices of the walls. Then the green things began to show buds
and the buds began to unfurl and show color, every shade of blue, every
shade of purple, every tint and hue of crimson. In its happy days
flowers had been tucked away into every inch and hole and corner. Ben
Weatherstaff had seen it done and had himself scraped out mortar from
between the bricks of the wall and made pockets of earth for lovely
clinging things to grow on. Iris and white lilies rose out of the
grass in sheaves, and the green alcoves fille