Then she began to smile slowly.
"I thought you were a ghost or a dream," he said.

"You can't bite a ghost or a dream, and if you scream they don't care." "Would you hate it if--if a boy looked at you ?" Mary asked uncertainly.
He lay back on his cushion and paused thoughtfully.
"There's one boy," he said quite slowly, as if he were thinking over every word, "there's one boy I believe I shouldn't mind.

It's that boy who knows where the foxes live--Dickon." "I'm sure you wouldn't mind him," said Mary.
"The birds don't and other animals," he said, still thinking it over, "perhaps that's why I shouldn't.

He's a sort of animal charmer and I am a boy animal." Then he laughed and she laughed too; in fact it ended in their both laughing a great deal and finding the idea of a boy animal hiding in his hole very funny indeed.
What Mary felt afterward was that she need not fear about Dickon.
On that first morning when the sky was blue again Mary wakened very early.

The sun was pouring in slanting rays through the blinds and there was something so joyous in the sight of it that she jumped out of bed and ran to the window.