“You stay out in the garden a great deal,” he suggested.  “Where do you go?”

Colin put on his favorite air of dignified indifference to opinion.

“I will not let any one know where I go,” he answered.  “I go to a place I like.  Every one has orders to keep out of the way.  I won’t be watched and stared at.  You know that!”

“You seem to be out all day but I do not think it has done you harm—­I do not think so.  The nurse says that you eat much more than you have ever done before.”

“Perhaps,” said Colin, prompted by a sudden inspiration, “perhaps it is an unnatural appetite.”

“I do not think so, as your food seems to agree with you,” said Dr. Craven.  “You are gaining flesh rapidly and your color is better.”

“Perhaps—­perhaps I am bloated and feverish,” said Colin, assuming a discouraging air of gloom.  “People who are not going to live are often—­different.”

Dr. Craven shook his head.  He was holding Colin’s wrist and he pushed up his sleeve and felt his arm.

“You are not feverish,” he said thoughtfully, “and such flesh as you have gained is healthy.  If we can keep this up, my boy, we need not talk of dying.  Your father will be very happy to hear of this remarkable improvement.”

“I won’t have him told!” Colin broke forth fiercely.  “It will only disappoint him if I get worse again—­and I may get worse this very night.  I might have a raging fever.  I feel as if I might be beginning to have one now.  I won’t have letters written to my father—­I won’t—­I won’t!  You are making me angry and you know that is bad for me.  I feel hot already.  I hate being written about and being talked over as much as I hate being stared at!”

“Hush-h! my boy,” Dr. Craven soothed him.  “Nothing shall be written without your permission.  You are too sensitive about things.  You must not undo the good which has been done.”

He said no more about writing to Mr. Craven and when he saw the nurse he privately warned her that such a possibility must not be mentioned to the patient.

“The boy is extraordinarily better,” he said.  “His advance seems almost abnormal.  But of course he is doing now of his own free will what we could not make him do before.  Still, he excites himself very easily and nothing must be said to irritate him.”

Mary and Colin were much alarmed and talked together anxiously.  From this time dated their plan of “play actin’.”

“I may be obliged to have a tantrum,” said Colin regretfully.  “I don’t want to have one and I’m not miserable enough now to work myself into a big one.  Perhaps I couldn’t have one at all.  That lump doesn’t come in my throat now and I keep thinking of nice things instead of horrible ones.  But if they talk about writing to my father I shall have to do something.”