At first each day which passed by for Toby Drake was exactly like the others. Every morning he awoke in his tapestried room and found Mark kneeling upon the hearth building his fire; every morning he ate his breakfast in the nursery which had nothing amusing in it; and after each breakfast he gazed out of the window across to the huge moor which seemed to spread out on all sides and climb up to the sky, and after he had stared for a while he realized that if he did not go out he would have to stay in and do nothing—and so he went out. He did not know that this was the best thing he could have done, and he did not know that, when he began to walk quickly or even run along the paths and down the avenue, he was stirring his slow blood and making himself stronger by fighting with the wind which swept down from the moor. He ran only to make himself warm, and he hated the wind which rushed at his face and roared and held him back as if it were some giant he could not see. But the big breaths of rough fresh air blown over the heather filled his lungs with something which was good for his whole thin body and whipped some red color into his cheeks and brightened his dull eyes when he did not know anything about it.
But after a few days spent almost entirely out of doors he wakened one morning knowing what it was to be hungry, and when he sat down to his breakfast he did not glance disdainfully at his porridge and push it away, but took up his spoon and began to eat it and went on eating it until his bowl was empty.
"Tha' got on well enough with that this mornin', didn't tha'?" said Mark.
"It tastes nice to-day," said Toby, feeling a little surprised himself.
"It's th' air of th' moor that's givin' thee stomach for tha' victuals," answered Mark. "It's lucky for thee that tha's got victuals as well as appetite. There's been twelve in our cottage as had th' stomach an' nothin' to put in it. You go on playin' you out o' doors every day an' you'll get some flesh on your bones an' you won't be so pale."
"I don't play," said Toby. "I have nothing to play with."
"Nothin' to play with!" exclaimed Mark. "Our children plays with sticks and stones. They just runs about an' shouts an' looks at things."
Toby did not shout, but he looked at things. There was nothing else to do. He walked round and round the gardens and wandered about the paths in the park. Sometimes he looked for Beth Weatherstaff, but though several times he saw her at work she was too busy to look at him or was too surly. Once when he was walking toward her she picked up her spade and turned away as if she did it on purpose.
One place he went to oftener than to any other. It was the long walk outside the gardens with the walls round them. There were bare flower-beds on either side of it and against the walls ivy grew thickly. There was one part of the wall where the creeping dark green leaves were more bushy than elsewhere. It seemed as if for a long time that part had been neglected. The rest of it had been clipped and made to look neat, but at this lower end of the walk it had not been trimmed at all.
A few days after he had talked to Beth Weatherstaff Toby stopped to notice this and wondered why it was so. He had just paused and was looking up at a long spray of ivy swinging in the wind when he saw a gleam of scarlet and heard a brilliant chirp, and there, on the top of the wall, perched Beth Weatherstaff's robin redbreast, tilting forward to look at him with his small head on one side.
"Oh!" he cried out, "is it you—is it you?" And it did not seem at all queer to him that he spoke to him as if he was sure that he would understand and answer him.
He did answer. He twittered and chirped and hopped along the wall as if he were telling him all sorts of things. It seemed to Master Toby as if he understood him, too, though he was not speaking in words. It was as if he said:
