“I would make them,” said Colin.

“Could you?” Mary faltered, beginning to feel frightened.  If he could make people answer questions, who knew what might happen!

“Every one is obliged to please me.  I told you that,” he said.  “If I were to live, this place would sometime belong to me.  They all know that.  I would make them tell me.”

Mary had not known that she herself had been spoiled, but she could see quite plainly that this mysterious boy had been.  He thought that the whole world belonged to him.  How peculiar he was and how coolly he spoke of not living.

“Do you think you won’t live?” she asked, partly because she was curious and partly in hope of making him forget the garden.

“I don’t suppose I shall,” he answered as indifferently as he had spoken before.  “Ever since I remember anything I have heard people say I shan’t.  At first they thought I was too little to understand and now they think I don’t hear.  But I do.  My doctor is my father’s cousin.  He is quite poor and if I die he will have all Misselthwaite when my father is dead.  I should think he wouldn’t want me to live.”

“Do you want to live?” inquired Mary.

“No,” he answered, in a cross, tired fashion.  “But I don’t want to die.  When I feel ill I lie here and think about it until I cry and cry.”

“I have heard you crying three times,” Mary said, “but I did not know who it was.  Were you crying about that?” She did so want him to forget the garden.

“I dare say,” he answered.  “Let us talk about something else.  Talk about that garden.  Don’t you want to see it?”

“Yes,” answered Mary, in quite a low voice.

“I do,” he went on persistently.  “I don’t think I ever really wanted to see anything before, but I want to see that garden.  I want the key dug up.  I want the door unlocked.  I would let them take me there in my chair.  That would be getting fresh air.  I am going to make them open the door.”

He had become quite excited and his strange eyes began to shine like stars and looked more immense than ever.

“They have to please me,” he said.  “I will make them take me there and I will let you go, too.”

Mary’s hands clutched each other.  Everything would be spoiled—­everything!  Dickon would never come back.  She would never again feel like a missel thrush with a safe-hidden nest.

“Oh, don’t—­don’t—­don’t—­don’t do that!” she cried out.

He stared as if he thought she had gone crazy!

“Why?” he exclaimed.  “You said you wanted to see it.”

“I do,” she answered almost with a sob in her throat, “but if you make them open the door and take you in like that it will never be a secret again.”

He leaned still farther forward.

“A secret,” he said.  “What do you mean?  Tell me.”

Mary’s words almost tumbled over one another.