The Complete Works of Frances Hodgson Burnett. Frances Hodgson Burnett

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      CHAPTER XX

       “I SHALL LIVE FOREVER—AND EVER—AND EVER!”

      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 flowerbeds 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 goodnatured 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 СКАЧАТЬ