obviously a lot of it is self-belief, but the distance communication between Archie Craven and his dead wife is presented as a thing, and the way something very similar happens in Robin actually is magic in a sort of theosophy/Rosicrucian sort of way.

I seem to have interpreted that the Magic is real, if not necessarily in the ways that the children believe and work their spells—I didn't know from either the numinous or headology the first time I read it, but it's not just Archibald Craven's dream of Lilias calling to him from the garden that can't be explained prosaically, it's the way that far off in Italy he comes back to life with his Yorkshire bit of earth like a fisher king who doesn't know it. I have opinions now as an adult reader about how much you can banish chronic illness by tending roses instead of thistles, but.

Robin is the Burnett I've read that isn't either The Secret Garden or A Little Princess! My mother and I discovered it in a one-room used book store in the basement of the Somerville Armory and bought it on the spot because neither of us had ever heard of it.