So am I, said Mary.
Even if it isn t real Magic, Colin said, we can pretend it is.
_Something_ is there _something!_
It s Magic, said Mary, but not black. It s as white as snow.
They always called it Magic and indeed it seemed like it in the months
that followed the wonderful months the radiant months the amazing ones.
Oh! the things which happened in that garden! If you have never had a
garden you cannot understand, and if you have had a garden you will
know that it would take a whole book to describe all that came to pass
there. At first it seemed that green things would never cease pushing
their way through the earth, in the grass, in the beds, even in the
crevices of the walls. Then the green things began to show buds and the
buds began to unfurl and show color, every shade of blue, every shade
of purple, every tint and hue of crimson. In its happy days flowers had
been tucked away into every inch and hole and corner. Ben Weatherstaff
had seen it done and had himself scraped out mortar from between the
bricks of the wall and made pockets of earth for lovely clinging things
to grow on. Iris and white lilies rose out of the grass in sheaves, and
the green alcoves filled themselves with amazing armies of the blue and
white flower lances of tall delphiniums or columbines or campanulas.
She was main fond o them she was, Ben Weatherstaff said. She liked
them things as was allus pointin up to th blue sky, she used to tell.
Not as she was one o them as looked down on th earth not her. She
just loved it but she said as th blue sky allus looked so joyful.
The seeds Dickon and Mary had planted grew as if fairies had tended
them. Satiny poppies of all tints danced in the breeze by the score,
gaily defying flowers which had lived in the garden for years and which
it might be confessed seemed rather to wonder how such new people had
got there. And the roses the roses! Rising out of the grass, tangled
round the sun-dial, wreathing the tree trunks and hanging from their
branches, climbing up the walls and spreading over them with long
garlands falling in cascades they came alive day by day, hour by hour.
Fair fresh leaves, and buds and buds tiny at first but swelling and
working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent
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