Then there was a lovely breathless silence and the chair wheeled on.
“That is the garden where Ben Weatherstaff works,” said Mary.
“Is it?” said Colin.
A few yards more and Mary whispered again.
“This is where the robin flew over the wall,” she said.
“Is it?” cried Colin. “Oh! I wish he’d come again!”
“And that,” said Mary with solemn delight, pointing under a big lilac bush, “is where he perched on the little heap of earth and showed me the key.”
Then Colin sat up.
“Where? Where? There?” he cried, and his eyes were as big as the wolf’s in Red Riding Hood, when Red Riding Hood felt called upon to remark on them. Dickon stood still and the wheeled chair stopped.
“And this,” said Mary, stepping on to the bed close to the ivy, “is where I went to talk to him when he chirped at me from the top of the wall. And this is the ivy the wind blew back,” and she took hold of the hanging green curtain.
“Oh! is it—is it!” gasped Colin.
“And here is the handle, and here is the door. Dickon push him in—push him in quickly!”
And Dickon did it with one strong, steady, splendid push.
But Colin had actually dropped back against his cushions, even though he gasped with delight, and he had covered his eyes with his hands and