The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett [learn to read books TXT] 📗

“How is he?” he asked Mrs. Medlock rather irritably when he arrived. “He will break a blood vessel in one of those fits some day. The boy is half insane with hysteria and self-indulgence.”

“Well, sir,” answered Mrs. Medlock, “you’ll scarcely believe your eyes when you see him. That plain sour-faced child that’s almost as bad as himself has just bewitched him. How she’s done it there’s no telling. The Lord knows she’s nothing to look at and you scarcely ever hear her speak, but she did what none of us dare do. She just flew at him like a little cat last night, and stamped her feet and ordered him to stop screaming, and somehow she startled him so that he actually did stop, and this afternoon⁠—well just come up and see, sir. It’s past crediting.”

The scene which Dr. Craven beheld when he entered his patient’s room was indeed rather astonishing to him. As Mrs. Medlock opened the door he heard laughing and chattering. Colin was on his sofa in his dressing-gown and he was sitting up quite straight looking at a picture in one of the garden books and talking to the plain child who at that moment could scarcely be called plain at all because her face was so glowing with enjoyment.

“Those long spires of blue ones⁠—we’ll have a lot of those,” Colin was announcing. “They’re called Del-phin-iums.”

“Dickon says they’re larkspurs made big and grand,” cried Mistress Mary. “There are clumps there already.”

Then they saw Dr. Craven and stopped. Mary became quite still and Colin looked fretful.

“I am sorry to hear you were ill last night, my boy,” Dr. Craven said a trifle nervously. He was rather a nervous man.

“I’m better now⁠—much better,” Colin answered, rather like a Rajah. “I’m going out in my chair in a day or two if it is fine. I want some fresh air.”

Dr. Craven sat down by him and felt his pulse and looked at him curiously.

“It must be a very fine day,” he said, “and you must be very careful not to tire yourself.”

“Fresh air won’t tire me,” said the young Rajah.

As there had been occasions when this same young gentleman had shrieked aloud with rage and had insisted that fresh air would give him cold and kill him, it is not to be wondered at that his doctor felt somewhat startled.

“I thought you did not like fresh air,” he said.

“I don’t when I am by myself,” replied the Rajah; “but my cousin is going out with me.”

“And the nurse, of course?” suggested Dr. Craven.

“No, I will not have the nurse,” so magnificently that Mary could not help remembering how the young native Prince had looked with his diamonds and emeralds and pearls stuck all over him and the great rubies on the small dark hand he had waved to command his servants to approach with salaams and receive his orders.

“My cousin knows how to take care of me. I am always better when she is with me. She made me better last night. A very strong boy I know will push my carriage.”

Dr. Craven felt rather alarmed. If this tiresome hysterical boy should chance to 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