Aye, aye, sir! answered Ben Weatherstaff, touching his forehead. (One
of the long concealed charms of Ben Weatherstaff was that in his
boyhood he had once run away to sea and had made voyages. So he could
reply like a sailor.)
I am going to try a scientific experiment, explained the Rajah. When
I grow up I am going to make great scientific discoveries and I am
going to begin now with this experiment.
Aye, aye, sir! said Ben Weatherstaff promptly, though this was the
first time he had heard of great scientific discoveries.
It was the first time Mary had heard of them, either, but even at this
stage she had begun to realize that, queer as he was, Colin had read
about a great many singular things and was somehow a very convincing
sort of boy. When he held up his head and fixed his strange eyes on you
it seemed as if you believed him almost in spite of yourself though he
was only ten years old going on eleven. At this moment he was
especially convincing because he suddenly felt the fascination of
actually making a sort of speech like a grown-up person.
The great scientific discoveries I am going to make, he went on,
will be about Magic. Magic is a great thing and scarcely anyone knows
anything about it except a few people in old books and Mary a little,
because she was born in India where there are fakirs. I believe Dickon
knows some Magic, but perhaps he doesn t know he knows it. He charms
animals and people. I would never have let him come to see me if he had
not been an animal charmer which is a boy charmer, too, because a boy
is an animal. I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not
sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us like
electricity and horses and steam.
This sounded so imposing that Ben Weatherstaff became quite excited and
really could not keep still.
Aye, aye, sir, he said and he began to stand up quite straight.
When Mary found this garden it looked quite dead, the orator
proceeded. Then something began pushing things up out of the soil and
making things out of nothing. One day things weren t there and another
191