CHAPTER X 83
him, though he was only a common moor boy, in patched clothes and with a funny face and a rough, rusty-red head. As she came closer to him she noticed that there was a clean fresh scent of heather and grass and leaves about him, almost as if he were made of them. She liked it very much and when she looked into his funny face with the red cheeks and round blue eyes she forgot that she had felt shy.
" Let us sit down on this log and look at them," she said.
They sat down and he took a clumsy little brown paper package out of his coat pocket. He untied the string and inside there were ever so many neater and smaller packages with a picture of a flower on each one.
" There ' s a lot o ' mignonette an ' poppies," he said. " Mignonette ' s th ' sweetest smellin ' thing as grows, an ' it ' ll grow wherever you cast it, same as poppies will. Them as ' ll come up an ' bloom if you just whistle to ' em, them ' s th ' nicest of all."
He stopped and turned his head quickly, his poppy-cheeked face lighting up.
" Where ' s that robin as is callin ' us?" he said.
The chirp came from a thick holly bush, bright with scarlet berries, and Mary thought she knew whose it was.
" Is it really calling us?" she asked.
" Aye," said Dickon, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, " he ' s callin ' some one he ' s friends with. That ' s same as sayin ' ' Here I am. Look at me. I wants a bit of a chat.' There he is in the bush. Whose is he?"
" He ' s Ben Weatherstaff ' s, but I think he knows me a little," answered Mary.
" Aye, he knows thee," said Dickon in his low voice again. " An ' he likes thee. He ' s took thee on. He ' ll tell me all about thee in a minute."