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healthy the boy is, Susan?' asked old Ben. 'Look how strong and straight his legs are now!'
    'Yes,' she laughed. 'Playing and working outside, and eating good Yorkshire food, has made him strong. And Miss Mary too,' she added, turning to Mary. 'Mrs Medlock heard that your mother was a pretty woman. You'll soon be as pretty as she was.'
    'Do you believe in magic?' Colin asked her.
    'I do,' she answered, 'but everybody gives it a different name. It makes the sun shine and the seeds grow - and it has made you healthy.'
    She sat down on the grass and stayed for a while, talking and laughing with the children in the quiet, sunny garden. When she stood up to leave, Colin suddenly put out a hand to her.
    'I wish - you were my mother!' he whispered. Mrs Sowerby put her arms round him and held him to her. 'Dear boy! You're as close to your mother as you could be, here in her garden. And your father will come back soon!'

 
    CHAPTER EIGHT
    Mr Craven comes home
     
    While the secret garden was returning to life, a man with high crooked shoulders was wandering round the most beautiful places in Europe. For ten years he had lived this lonely life his heart full of sadness and his head full of dark dreams. Everywhere he went, he carried his unhappiness with him like a black cloud. Other travelers thought he was half mad or a man who could not forget some terrible crime. His name was Archibald Craven.
    But one day, as he sat by a mountain stream, he actually looked at a flower, and for the first time in ten years he realized how beautiful something living could be. The valley seemed very quiet as he sat there, staring at the Mower. He felt strangely calm.
    'What is happening to me?' he whispered. 'I feel different -I almost feel I'm alive again!'
    At that moment, hundreds of miles away in Yorkshire, Colin was seeing the secret garden for the first time, and saying, 'I'm going to live for ever and ever and ever!' But Mr Craven did not know this.
    That night, in his hotel room, he slept better than usual. As the weeks passed, he even began to think a little about his home and his son. One evening in late summer, as he was sitting quietly beside a lake, he felt the strange calmness again. He fell asleep, and had a dream that seemed very real. He heard a voice calling him. It was sweet and clear and happy, the voice of his young wife.
    'Archie! Archie! Archie!'
    'My dear!' He jumped up. 'Where are you?'
    'In the garden!' called the beautiful voice.
    And then the dream ended. In the morning, when he woke, he remembered the dream.
    'She says she's in the garden!' he thought. 'But the door's locked and the key's buried.'
    That morning he received a letter from Susan Sowerby. In it she asked him to come home, but she did not give a reason. Mr Craven thought of his dream, and decided to return to England immediately. On the long journey back to Yorkshire, he was thinking about Colin.
    'I wonder how he is! I wanted to forget him, because he makes me think of his mother. He lived, and she died! But perhaps I've been wrong. Susan Sowerby says I should go home, so perhaps she thinks I can help him.'
    When he arrived home, he found the housekeeper very confused about Colin's health.
    'He's very strange, sir,' said Mrs Medlock. 'He looks better, it's true, but some days he eats nothing at all, and other days he eats just like a healthy boy. He used to scream even at the idea of fresh air, but now he spends all his time outside in his wheelchair, with Miss Mary and Dickon Sowerby. He's in the garden at the moment.'
    'In the garden!' repeated Mr Craven. Those were the words of the dream! He hurried out of the house and towards the place which he had not visited for so long. He found the door with the climbing plant over it, and stood outside, listening, for a moment.
    'Surely I can hear voices inside the garden?' he thought. 'Aren't there children whispering, laughing, running in there? Or am I going mad?'
    And then the moment came, when the children could