thinking just then that it must have been very horrid to have had to be
polite for ten years to a boy who was always rude. I would never have
done it.
Am I rude? Colin inquired undisturbedly.
If you had been his own boy and he had been a slapping sort of man,
said Mary, he would have slapped you.
But he daren t, said Colin.
No, he daren t, answered Mistress Mary, thinking the thing out quite
without prejudice. Nobody ever dared to do anything you didn t
like because you were going to die and things like that. You were such
a poor thing.
But, announced Colin stubbornly, I am not going to be a poor thing.
I won t let people think I m one. I stood on my feet this afternoon.
It is always having your own way that has made you so queer, Mary
went on, thinking aloud.
Colin turned his head, frowning.
Am I queer? he demanded.
Yes, answered Mary, very. But you needn t be cross, she added
impartially, because so am I queer and so is Ben Weatherstaff. But I
am not as queer as I was before I began to like people and before I
found the garden.
I don t want to be queer, said Colin. I am not going to be, and he
frowned again with determination.
He was a very proud boy. He lay thinking for a while and then Mary saw
his beautiful smile begin and gradually change his whole face.
I shall stop being queer, he said, if I go every day to the garden.
There is Magic in there good Magic, you know, Mary. I am sure there
is.
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