Dr. Craven felt rather alarmed.  If this tiresome hysterical boy should chance to get well he himself would lose all chance of inheriting Misselthwaite; but he was not an unscrupulous man, though he was a weak one, and he did not intend to let him run into actual danger.

“He must be a strong boy and a steady boy,” he said.  “And I must know something about him.  Who is he?  What is his name?”

“It’s Dickon,” Mary spoke up suddenly.  She felt somehow that everybody who knew the moor must know Dickon.  And she was right, too.  She saw that in a moment Dr. Craven’s serious face relaxed into a relieved smile.

“Oh, Dickon,” he said.  “If it is Dickon you will be safe enough.  He’s as strong as a moor pony, is Dickon.”

“And he’s trusty,” said Mary.  “He’s th’ trustiest lad i’ Yorkshire.”  She had been talking Yorkshire to Colin and she forgot herself.

“Did Dickon teach you that?” asked Dr. Craven, laughing outright.

“I’m learning it as if it was French,” said Mary rather coldly.  “It’s like a native dialect in India.  Very clever people try to learn them.  I like it and so does Colin.”

“Well, well,” he said.  “If it amuses you perhaps it won’t do you any harm.  Did you take your bromide last night, Colin?”

“No,” Colin answered.  “I wouldn’t take it at first and after Mary made me quiet she talked me to sleep—­in a low voice—­about the spring creeping into a garden.”

“That sounds soothing,” said Dr. Craven, more perplexed than ever and glancing sideways at Mistress Mary sitting on her stool and looking down silently at the carpet.  “You are evidently better, but you must remember—­”

“I don’t want to remember,” interrupted the Rajah, appearing again.  “When I lie by myself and remember I begin to have pains everywhere and I think of things that make me begin to scream because I hate them so.  If there was a doctor anywhere who could make you forget you were ill instead of remembering it I would have him brought here.”  And he waved a thin hand which ought really to have been covered with royal signet rings made of rubies.  “It is because my cousin makes me forget that she makes me better.”

Dr. Craven had never made such a short stay after a “tantrum”; usually he was obliged to remain a very long time and do a great many things.  This afternoon he did not give any medicine or leave any new orders and he was spared any disagreeable scenes.  When he went down-stairs he looked very thoughtful and when he talked to Mrs. Medlock in the library she felt that he was a much puzzled man.

“Well, sir,” she ventured, “could you have believed it?”

“It is certainly a new state of affairs,” said the doctor.  “And there’s no denying it is better than the old one.”

“I believe Susan Sowerby’s right—­I do that,” said Mrs. Medlock.  “I stopped in her cottage on my way to Thwaite yesterday and had a bit of talk with her.  And she says to me, ’Well, Sarah Ann, she mayn’t be a good child, an’ she mayn’t be a pretty one, but she’s a child, an’ children needs children.’  We went to school together, Susan Sowerby and me.”