“They’re goin’ to be fine strong lad’s legs in a bit,” she said.  “Let him go on playin’ an’ workin’ in th’ garden an’ eatin’ hearty an’ drinkin’ plenty o’ good sweet milk an’ there’ll not be a finer pair i’ Yorkshire, thank God for it.”

She put both hands on Mistress Mary’s shoulders and looked her little face over in a motherly fashion.

“An’ thee, too!” she said.  “Tha’rt grown near as hearty as our ’Lizabeth Ellen.  I’ll warrant tha’rt like thy mother too.  Our Martha told me as Mrs. Medlock heard she was a pretty woman.  Tha’lt be like a blush rose when tha’ grows up, my little lass, bless thee.”

She did not mention that when Martha came home on her “day out” and described the plain sallow child she had said that she had no confidence whatever in what Mrs. Medlock had heard.  “It doesn’t stand to reason that a pretty woman could be th’ mother o’ such a fou’ little lass,” she had added obstinately.

Mary had not had time to pay much attention to her changing face.  She had only known that she looked “different” and seemed to have a great deal more hair and that it was growing very fast.  But remembering her pleasure in looking at the Mem Sahib in the past she was glad to hear that she might some day look like her.

Susan Sowerby went round their garden with them and was told the whole story of it and shown every bush and tree which had come alive.  Colin walked on one side of her and Mary on the other.  Each of them kept looking up at her comfortable rosy face, secretly curious about the delightful feeling she gave them—­a sort of warm, supported feeling.  It seemed as if she understood them as Dickon understood his “creatures.”  She stooped over the flowers and talked about them as if they were children.  Soot followed her and once or twice cawed at her and flew upon her shoulder as if it were Dickon’s.  When they told her about the robin and the first flight of the young ones she laughed a motherly little mellow laugh in her throat.

“I suppose learnin’ ’em to fly is like learnin’ children to walk, but I’m feared I should be all in a worrit if mine had wings instead o’ legs,” she said.

It was because she seemed such a wonderful woman in her nice moorland cottage way that at last she was told about the Magic.

“Do you believe in Magic?” asked Colin after he had explained about Indian fakirs.  “I do hope you do.”

“That I do, lad,” she answered.  “I never knowed it by that name but what does th’ name matter?  I warrant they call it a different name i’ France an’ a different one i’ Germany.  Th’ same thing as set th’ seeds swellin’ an’ th’ sun shinin’ made thee a well lad an’ it’s th’ Good Thing.  It isn’t like us poor fools as think it matters if us is called out of our names.  Th’ Big Good Thing doesn’t stop to worrit, bless thee.  It goes on makin’ worlds by th’ million—­worlds like us.  Never thee stop believin’ in th’ Big Good Thing an’ knowin’ th’ world’s full of it—­an’ call it what tha’ likes.  Tha’ wert singin’ to it when I come into th’ garden.”