The Complete Works of Frances Hodgson Burnett. Frances Hodgson Burnett

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СКАЧАТЬ get well he himself would lose all chance of inheriting Misselthwaite; but he was not an unscrupulous man, though he was a weak one, and he did not intend to let him run into actual danger.

      “He must be a strong boy and a steady boy,” he said. “And I must know something about him. Who is he? What is his name?”

      “It’s Dickon,” Mary spoke up suddenly. She felt somehow that everybody who knew the moor must know Dickon. And she was right, too. She saw that in a moment Dr. Craven’s serious face relaxed into a relieved smile.

      “Oh, Dickon,” he said. “If it is Dickon you will be safe enough. He’s as strong as a moor pony, is Dickon.”

      “And he’s trusty,” said Mary. “He’s th’ trustiest lad i’ Yorkshire.” She had been talking Yorkshire to Colin and she forgot herself.

      “Did Dickon teach you that?” asked Dr. Craven, laughing outright.

      “I’m learning it as if it was French,” said Mary rather coldly. “It’s like a native dialect in India. Very clever people try to learn them. I like it and so does Colin.” “Well, well,” he said. “If it amuses you perhaps it won’t do you any harm. Did you take your bromide last night, Colin?”

      “No,” Colin answered. “I wouldn’t take it at first and after Mary made me quiet she talked me to sleep—in a low voice—about the spring creeping into a garden.”

      “That sounds soothing,” said Dr. Craven, more perplexed than ever and glancing sideways at Mistress Mary sitting on her stool and looking down silently at the carpet. “You are evidently better, but you must remember—”

      “I don’t want to remember,” interrupted the Rajah, appearing again. “When I lie by myself and remember I begin to have pains everywhere and I think of things that make me begin to scream because I hate them so. If there was a doctor anywhere who could make you forget you were ill instead of remembering it I would have him brought here.” And he waved a thin hand which ought really to have been covered with royal signet rings made of rubies. “It is because my cousin makes me forget that she makes me better.”

      Dr. Craven had never made such a short stay after a “tantrum”; usually he was obliged to remain a very long time and do a great many things. This afternoon he did not give any medicine or leave any new orders and he was spared any disagreeable scenes. When he went downstairs he looked very thoughtful and when he talked to Mrs. Medlock in the library she felt that he was a much puzzled man.

      “Well, sir,” she ventured, “could you have believed it?”

      “It is certainly a new state of affairs,” said the doctor. “And there’s no denying it is better than the old one.”

      “I believe Susan Sowerby’s right—I do that,” said Mrs. Medlock. “I stopped in her cottage on my way to Thwaite yesterday and had a bit of talk with her. And she says to me, ‘Well, Sarah Ann, she mayn’t be a good child, an’ she mayn’t be a pretty one, but she’s a child, an’ children needs children.’ We went to school together, Susan Sowerby and me.”

      “She’s the best sick nurse I know,” said Dr. Craven. “When I find her in a cottage I know the chances are that I shall save my patient.”

      Mrs. Medlock smiled. She was fond of Susan Sowerby.

      “She’s got a way with her, has Susan,” she went on quite volubly. “I’ve been thinking all morning of one thing she said yesterday. She says, ‘Once when I was givin’ th’ children a bit of a preach after they’d been fightin’ I ses to ‘em all, “When I was at school my jography told as th’ world was shaped like a orange an’ I found out before I was ten that th’ whole orange doesn’t belong to nobody. No one owns more than his bit of a quarter an’ there’s times it seems like there’s not enow quarters to go round. But don’t you—none o’ you—think as you own th’ whole orange or you’ll find out you’re mistaken, an’ you won’t find it out without hard knocks.” ‘What children learns from children,’ she says, ‘is that there’s no sense in grabbin’ at th’ whole orange—peel an’ all. If you do you’ll likely not get even th’ pips, an’ them’s too bitter to eat.’”

      “She’s a shrewd woman,” said Dr. Craven, putting on his coat.

      “Well, she’s got a way of saying things,” ended Mrs. Medlock, much pleased. “Sometimes I’ve said to her, ‘Eh! Susan, if you was a different woman an’ didn’t talk such broad Yorkshire I’ve seen the times when I should have said you was clever.’”

      That night Colin slept without once awakening and when he opened his eyes in the morning he lay still and smiled without knowing it—smiled because he felt so curiously comfortable. It was actually nice to be awake, and he turned over and stretched his limbs luxuriously. He felt as if tight strings which had held him had loosened themselves and let him go. He did not know that Dr. Craven would have said that his nerves had relaxed and rested themselves. Instead of lying and staring at the wall and wishing he had not awakened, his mind was full of the plans he and Mary had made yesterday, of pictures of the garden and of Dickon and his wild creatures. It was so nice to have things to think about. And he had not been awake more than ten minutes when he heard feet running along the corridor and Mary was at the door. The next minute she was in the room and had run across to his bed, bringing with her a waft of fresh air full of the scent of the morning.

      “You’ve been out! You’ve been out! There’s that nice smell of leaves!” he cried.

      She had been running and her hair was loose and blown and she was bright with the air and pink-cheeked, though he could not see it.

      “It’s so beautiful!” she said, a little breathless with her speed. “You never saw anything so beautiful! It has come! I thought it had come that other morning, but it was only coming. It is here now! It has come, the Spring! Dickon says so!”

      “Has it?” cried Colin, and though he really knew nothing about it he felt his heart beat. He actually sat up in bed.

      “Open the window!” he added, laughing half with joyful excitement and half at his own fancy. “Perhaps we may hear golden trumpets!”

      And though he laughed, Mary was at the window in a moment and in a moment more it was opened wide and freshness and softness and scents and birds’ songs were pouring through.

      “That’s fresh air,” she said. “Lie on your back and draw in long breaths of it. That’s what Dickon does when he’s lying on the moor. He says he feels it in his veins and it makes him strong and he feels as if he could live forever and ever. Breathe it and breathe it.”

      She was only repeating what Dickon had told her, but she caught Colin’s fancy.

      “‘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 rosebushes 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 СКАЧАТЬ