From that time the exercises were part of the day’s duties as much as the Magic was.  It became possible for both Colin and Mary to do more of them each time they tried, and such appetites were the results that but for the basket Dickon put down behind the bush each morning when he arrived they would have been lost.  But the little oven in the hollow and Mrs. Sowerby’s bounties were so satisfying that Mrs. Medlock and the nurse and Dr. Craven became mystified again.  You can trifle with your breakfast and seem to disdain your dinner if you are full to the brim with roasted eggs and potatoes and richly frothed new milk and oat-cakes and buns and heather honey and clotted cream.

“They are eating next to nothing,” said the nurse.  “They’ll die of starvation if they can’t be persuaded to take some nourishment.  And yet see how they look.”

“Look!” exclaimed Mrs. Medlock indignantly.  “Eh!  I’m moithered to death with them.  They’re a pair of young Satans.  Bursting their jackets one day and the next turning up their noses at the best meals Cook can tempt them with.  Not a mouthful of that lovely young fowl and bread sauce did they set a fork into yesterday—­and the poor woman fair invented a pudding for them—­and back it’s sent.  She almost cried.  She’s afraid she’ll be blamed if they starve themselves into their graves.”

Dr. Craven came and looked at Colin long and carefully.  He wore an extremely worried expression when the nurse talked with him and showed him the almost untouched tray of breakfast she had saved for him to look at—­but it was even more worried when he sat down by Colin’s sofa and examined him.  He had been called to London on business and had not seen the boy for nearly two weeks.  When young things begin to gain health they gain it rapidly.  The waxen tinge had left Colin’s skin and a warm rose showed through it; his beautiful eyes were clear and the hollows under them and in his cheeks and temples had filled out.  His once dark, heavy locks had begun to look as if they sprang healthily from his forehead and were soft and warm with life.  His lips were fuller and of a normal color.  In fact as an imitation of a boy who was a confirmed invalid he was a disgraceful sight.  Dr. Craven held his chin in his hand and thought him over.

“I am sorry to hear that you do not eat anything,” he said.  “That will not do.  You will lose all you have gained—­and you have gained amazingly.  You ate so well a short time ago.”

“I told you it was an unnatural appetite,” answered Colin.

Mary was sitting on her stool nearby and she suddenly made a very queer sound which she tried so violently to repress that she ended by almost choking.

“What is the matter?” said Dr. Craven, turning to look at her.

Mary became quite severe in her manner.

“It was something between a sneeze and a cough,” she replied with reproachful dignity, “and it got into my throat.”