“What are you laughing at?” she asked her.

“At you two young ones,” said the nurse.  “It’s the best thing that could happen to the sickly pampered thing to have some one to stand up to him that’s as spoiled as himself;” and she laughed into her handkerchief again.  “If he’d had a young vixen of a sister to fight with it would have been the saving of him.”

“Is he going to die?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said the nurse.  “Hysterics and temper are half what ails him.”

“What are hysterics?” asked Mary.

“You’ll find out if you work him into a tantrum after this—­but at any rate you’ve given him something to have hysterics about, and I’m glad of it.”

Mary went back to her room not feeling at all as she had felt when she had come in from the garden.  She was cross and disappointed but not at all sorry for Colin.  She had looked forward to telling him a great many things and she had meant to try to make up her mind whether it would be safe to trust him with the great secret.  She had been beginning to think it would be, but now she had changed her mind entirely.  She would never tell him and he could stay in his room and never get any fresh air and die if he liked!  It would serve him right!  She felt so sour and unrelenting that for a few minutes she almost forgot about Dickon and the green veil creeping over the world and the soft wind blowing down from the moor.

Martha was waiting for her and the trouble in her face had been temporarily replaced by interest and curiosity.  There was a wooden box on the table and its cover had been removed and revealed that it was full of neat packages.

“Mr. Craven sent it to you,” said Martha.  “It looks as if it had picture-books in it.”

Mary remembered what he had asked her the day she had gone to his room.  “Do you want anything—­dolls—­toys—­books?” She opened the package wondering if he had sent a doll, and also wondering what she should do with it if he had.  But he had not sent one.  There were several beautiful books such as Colin had, and two of them were about gardens and were full of pictures.  There were two or three games and there was a beautiful little writing-case with a gold monogram on it and a gold pen and inkstand.

Everything was so nice that her pleasure began to crowd her anger out of her mind.  She had not expected him to remember her at all and her hard little heart grew quite warm.

“I can write better than I can print,” she said, “and the first thing I shall write with that pen will be a letter to tell him I am much obliged.”