in the garden. Even gray days pleased him. He
would lie on the grass "watching things growing,"
he said. If you watched long enough, he declared,
you could see buds unsheath themselves. Also
you could make the acquaintance of strange busy
insect things running about on various unknown
but evidently serious errands, sometimes carrying
tiny scraps of straw or feather or food, or
climbing blades of grass as if they were trees from
whose tops one could look out to explore the
country. A mole throwing up its mound at the
end of its burrow and making its way out at last
with the long-nailed paws which looked so like
elfish hands, had absorbed him one whole morning.
Ants' ways, beetles' ways, bees' ways, frogs'
ways, birds' ways, plants' ways, gave him a new
world to explore and when Dickon revealed them
all and added foxes' ways, otters' ways, ferrets'
ways, squirrels' ways, and trout's and water-rats'
and badgers' ways, there was no end to the things
to talk about and think over.

And this was not the half of the Magic. The
fact that he had really once stood on his feet had
set Colin thinking tremendously and when Mary
told him of the spell she had worked he was excited
and approved of it greatly. He talked of it
constantly.

"Of course there must be lots of Magic in the

[[297]]

p296 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p297w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p298

v?