"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

[[295]]

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