“Would you hate it if⁠—if a boy looked at you?” Mary asked uncertainly.

He lay back on his cushion and paused thoughtfully.

“There’s one boy,” he said quite slowly, as if he were thinking over every word, “there’s one boy I believe I shouldn’t mind. It’s that boy who knows where the foxes live⁠—Dickon.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t mind him,” said Mary.

“The birds don’t and other animals,” he said, still thinking it over, “perhaps that’s why I shouldn’t. He’s a sort of animal charmer and I am a boy animal.”

Then he laughed and she laughed too; in fact it ended in their both laughing a great deal and finding the idea of a boy animal hiding in his hole very funny indeed.

What Mary felt afterward was that she need not fear about Dickon.