“When Mary found this garden it looked quite dead,” the orator [Colin] 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 they were. I have never watched things before and it made me feel very curious. Scientific people are always curious and I am going to be scientific. I keep saying to myself, ‘What is it? What is it?’ It’s something. It can’t be nothing! I don’t know its name so i call it Magic. I have never seen the sun rise but Mary and Dickon have and from what they tell me I am sure that is Magic too. Something pushed it up and draws it. Sometimes since I’ve been in the garden I’ve looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something were pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of Magic; leaves antress, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden-- in all the places. The Magic in this garden has made me stand up and know I am going to live to be a man. I am going to make the scientific experiment of trying to get some and put it in myself and make it push and raw me and make me strong. I don’t know how to do it but I think that if you keep thinking about it and calling it perhaps it will come. Perhaps that is the first baby way to get it. When I was going to try to stand that first time Mary kept saying to herself as fast as she could, ‘You can do it! You can do it!’ and I did. I had to try myself at the same time, of course, but her Magic helped me-- and so did Dickon’s. Every morning and evening and as often in the daytime as I can remember I am going to say, ‘Magic is in me! Magic is making me well! I am going to be as strong as Dickon, as strong as Dickon!’ And you must all do it, too. That is my experiment. Will you help, Ben Weatherstaff?”
“Aye, aye, sir!” said Ben Weatherstaff, “Aye, aye!”
“If you keep doing it every day as regularly as soldiers go through drill we shall see what will happen and find out if the experiment succeeds. You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking about them until they stay in you mind forever and I think it will be the same with Magic. If you keep calling it to come to you and help you it will get to be a part of you and it will stay and do things.”
“I once heard an officer in India tell me mother that there were fakirs who said words over and over thousands of times,” said Mary.
“I’ve heard Jem Fettleworth’s wife say th’ same thing over thousand o’ times-- callin’ Jem a drunken brute,” said Ben Weatherstaff dryly. “Summat allus come o’ that, sure enough. He gave her a good hidin’ an’ went to th’ Blue Lion an’ got drunk as a lord.”
Colin drew his brows together and thought a few minutes, Then he cheered up.
“Well,” he said, “you see something did come of it. She used the wrong Magic until she made him beat her. If she used the right Magic and had said something nice perhaps he wouldn’t have got as drunk as a lord and perhaps-- perhaps he might have bought her a new bonnet.”
Ben Weatherstaff chuckled and there was shrewd admiration in his little old eyes.
“Tha’rt a clever las as well as a straight-legged one, Mester Colin,” he said. “Next time I see Bess Fettleworth I’ll give her a bit of a hint o’ what Magic will do for her. She’d be a rare an’ pleased if the’ sinetifik ‘speriment worked-- an’ so ‘ud Jem.”
Dickon had stood listening to the lecture, his round eyes shining with curious delight. Nut and Shell were on his shoulders and he held a long-eared white rabbit in his arm and stroked and stroked it softly while it laid its ears along its back and enjoyed itself.
“Do you think the experiment will work?” Colin asked him, wondering what he was thinking. He so often wondered what Dickon was thinking when he saw him looking at him or at one of “creatures” with his happy wide smile.
He smiled now and his smile was wider than usual.
“Aye,” he answered, “That I do. It’ll work same as th’ seeds do when the sun shines on ‘em. It’ll work for sure. Shall we begin it now?”
Colin was delighted and so was Mary. Fired by recollections of fakirs and devotees in Colin suggested that they should all sit crosslegged under the tree which made a canopy.
“It will be like sitting in a sort of temple,” said Colin, “I’m rather tired and I want to sit down.”
“Eh!” said Dickon, “tha’ mustn’t begin by sayin’ tha’rt tired. Tha’ might spoil th’ Magic.”
“That’s true,” he said slowly. “I must only think of the Magic.”