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The bird put his tiny head on one side and looked up at him with his soft bright eye which was like a black dewdrop. He seemed quite familiar and not the least afraid.
This was plain speaking, and Mary Lennox had never heard the truth about herself in her life.
A body ’as to move gentle an’ speak low when wild things is about.”
Mary had not known that she herself had been spoiled, but she could see quite plainly that this mysterious boy had been. He thought that the whole world belonged to him.
She knew nothing about the pitifulness of people who had been ill and nervous and who did not know that they could control their tempers and need not make other people ill and nervous, too.
The truth was that he had never had a fight with any one like himself in his life and, upon the whole, it was rather good for him,
“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 I am not as queer as I was before I began to like people and before I found the garden.”
“Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world,” he said wisely one day, “but people don’t know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment.”
“You are so like her now,” said Mary, “that sometimes I think perhaps you are her ghost made into a boy.” That idea seemed to impress Colin. He thought it over and then answered her slowly. “If I were her ghost—my father would be fond of me.”
He had not been courageous; he had never tried to put any other thoughts in the place of the dark ones.
