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Updated: June 25, 2025
To talk about Dickon meant to talk about the moor and about the cottage and the fourteen people who lived in it on sixteen shillings a week and the children who got fat on the moor grass like the wild ponies. And about Dickon's mother and the skipping-rope and the moor with the sun on it and about pale green points sticking up out of the black sod.
Dickon's 'unconscious education' absorbed rather than learnt in boyhood had not been acquired under conditions likely to lead him to admire scenery. But, rough as he was, he was a good-natured fellow, and it was through him that I became acquainted with a very beautiful place.
Dickon spoke to him as Ben Weatherstaff did, but Dickon's tone was one of friendly advice. "Wheres'ever tha' puts it," he said, "it'll be all right. Tha' knew how to build tha' nest before tha' came out o' th' egg. Get on with thee, lad. Tha'st got no time to lose." "Oh, I do like to hear you talk to him!" Mary said, laughing delightedly.
The sun was beginning to set and sending deep gold-colored rays slanting under the trees when they parted. "It'll be fine to-morrow," said Dickon. "I'll be at work by sunrise." "So will I," said Mary. She ran back to the house as quickly as her feet would carry her. She wanted to tell Colin about Dickon's fox cub and the rook and about what the springtime had been doing.
"An' tha's stopped." "Yes, I've stopped," said Colin. Then suddenly he remembered something Mary had said. "Are you making Magic?" he asked sharply. Dickon's curly mouth spread in a cheerful grin. "Tha's doin' Magic thysel'," he said. "It's same Magic as made these 'ere work out o' th' earth," and he touched with his thick boot a clump of crocuses in the grass. Colin looked down at them.
He stooped to loose the halter, and as he bent to his task a man slipped from the shadow of the hedge into the quiet moonlight. There was a thud, a dull cry, and Robin fell prone across the horse's neck a pace beyond him in the moonlight shone the gleam of gold. Next day Dickon's child died, ay, and the other five followed with scant time between the buryings.
While he dug or weeded he whistled or sang bits of Yorkshire moor songs or talked to Soot or Captain or the brothers and sisters he had taught to help him. "We'd never get on as comfortable as we do," Mrs. Sowerby said, "if it wasn't for Dickon's garden. Anything'll grow for him. His 'taters and cabbages is twice th' size of any one else's an' they've got a flavor with 'em as nobody's has."
Roach only just escaped being sufficiently undignified to jump backward. The young Rajah was neither in bed nor on his sofa. He was sitting in an armchair and a young lamb was standing by him shaking its tail in feeding-lamb fashion as Dickon knelt giving it milk from its bottle. A squirrel was perched on Dickon's bent back attentively nibbling a nut.
Dickon's moorland boots were thick and clumsy and though he tried to walk quietly they made a clumping sound as he walked through the long corridors. Mary and Colin heard him marching marching, until he passed through the tapestry door on to the soft carpet of Colin's own passage. "If you please, sir," announced Martha, opening the door, "if you please, sir, here's Dickon an' his creatures."
Dickon the smith stood under the great oak tree that sheltered the forge, weary and sick at heart. There was no better man of his inches in all Sussex, but the world is not always good to see, even at nineteen. Dickon's world had been empty ever since the departure of Audrey of the Borstall Farm, cousin to Edwitha, the wife of his friend Wilfrid the Potter.
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