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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 113 ***
+
+THE SECRET GARDEN
+
+by Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+_Author of
+
+“The Shuttle,” “The Making of a Marchioness,” “The Methods of Lady
+Walderhurst,” “The Lass o’ Lowries,” “Through One Administration,”
+“Little Lord Fauntleroy,” “A Lady of Quality,” etc._
+
+
+Contents
+
+ I. THERE IS NO ONE LEFT
+ II. MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY
+ III. ACROSS THE MOOR
+ IV. MARTHA
+ V. THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR
+ VI. “THERE WAS SOMEONE CRYING—THERE WAS!”
+ VII. THE KEY TO THE GARDEN
+ VIII. THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY
+ IX. THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANYONE EVER LIVED IN
+ X. DICKON
+ XI. THE NEST OF THE MISSEL THRUSH
+ XII. “MIGHT I HAVE A BIT OF EARTH?”
+ XIII. “I AM COLIN”
+ XIV. A YOUNG RAJAH
+ XV. NEST BUILDING
+ XVI. “I WON’T!” SAID MARY
+ XVII. A TANTRUM
+ XVIII. “THA’ MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME”
+ XIX. “IT HAS COME!”
+ XX. “I SHALL LIVE FOREVER—AND EVER—AND EVER!”
+ XXI. BEN WEATHERSTAFF
+ XXII. WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN
+ XXIII. MAGIC
+ XXIV. “LET THEM LAUGH”
+ XXV. THE CURTAIN
+ XXVI. “IT’S MOTHER!”
+ XXVII. IN THE GARDEN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+THERE IS NO ONE LEFT
+
+
+When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle
+everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.
+It was true, too. She had a little thin face and a little thin body,
+thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her
+face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been
+ill in one way or another. Her father had held a position under the
+English Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and her
+mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and
+amuse herself with gay people. She had not wanted a little girl at all,
+and when Mary was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah, who
+was made to understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib she
+must keep the child out of sight as much as possible. So when she was a
+sickly, fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and when
+she became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the
+way also. She never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the dark
+faces of her Ayah and the other native servants, and as they always
+obeyed her and gave her her own way in everything, because the Mem
+Sahib would be angry if she was disturbed by her crying, by the time
+she was six years old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as
+ever lived. The young English governess who came to teach her to read
+and write disliked her so much that she gave up her place in three
+months, and when other governesses came to try to fill it they always
+went away in a shorter time than the first one. So if Mary had not
+chosen to really want to know how to read books she would never have
+learned her letters at all.
+
+One frightfully hot morning, when she was about nine years old, she
+awakened feeling very cross, and she became crosser still when she saw
+that the servant who stood by her bedside was not her Ayah.
+
+“Why did you come?” she said to the strange woman. “I will not let you
+stay. Send my Ayah to me.”
+
+The woman looked frightened, but she only stammered that the Ayah could
+not come and when Mary threw herself into a passion and beat and kicked
+her, she looked only more frightened and repeated that it was not
+possible for the Ayah to come to Missie Sahib.
+
+There was something mysterious in the air that morning. Nothing was
+done in its regular order and several of the native servants seemed
+missing, while those whom Mary saw slunk or hurried about with ashy and
+scared faces. But no one would tell her anything and her Ayah did not
+come. She was actually left alone as the morning went on, and at last
+she wandered out into the garden and began to play by herself under a
+tree near the veranda. She pretended that she was making a flower-bed,
+and she stuck big scarlet hibiscus blossoms into little heaps of earth,
+all the time growing more and more angry and muttering to herself the
+things she would say and the names she would call Saidie when she
+returned.
+
+“Pig! Pig! Daughter of Pigs!” she said, because to call a native a pig
+is the worst insult of all.
+
+She was grinding her teeth and saying this over and over again when she
+heard her mother come out on the veranda with someone. She was with a
+fair young man and they stood talking together in low strange voices.
+Mary knew the fair young man who looked like a boy. She had heard that
+he was a very young officer who had just come from England. The child
+stared at him, but she stared most at her mother. She always did this
+when she had a chance to see her, because the Mem Sahib—Mary used to
+call her that oftener than anything else—was such a tall, slim, pretty
+person and wore such lovely clothes. Her hair was like curly silk and
+she had a delicate little nose which seemed to be disdaining things,
+and she had large laughing eyes. All her clothes were thin and
+floating, and Mary said they were “full of lace.” They looked fuller of
+lace than ever this morning, but her eyes were not laughing at all.
+They were large and scared and lifted imploringly to the fair boy
+officer’s face.
+
+“Is it so very bad? Oh, is it?” Mary heard her say.
+
+“Awfully,” the young man answered in a trembling voice. “Awfully, Mrs.
+Lennox. You ought to have gone to the hills two weeks ago.”
+
+The Mem Sahib wrung her hands.
+
+“Oh, I know I ought!” she cried. “I only stayed to go to that silly
+dinner party. What a fool I was!”
+
+At that very moment such a loud sound of wailing broke out from the
+servants’ quarters that she clutched the young man’s arm, and Mary
+stood shivering from head to foot. The wailing grew wilder and wilder.
+“What is it? What is it?” Mrs. Lennox gasped.
+
+“Someone has died,” answered the boy officer. “You did not say it had
+broken out among your servants.”
+
+“I did not know!” the Mem Sahib cried. “Come with me! Come with me!”
+and she turned and ran into the house.
+
+After that appalling things happened, and the mysteriousness of the
+morning was explained to Mary. The cholera had broken out in its most
+fatal form and people were dying like flies. The Ayah had been taken
+ill in the night, and it was because she had just died that the
+servants had wailed in the huts. Before the next day three other
+servants were dead and others had run away in terror. There was panic
+on every side, and dying people in all the bungalows.
+
+During the confusion and bewilderment of the second day Mary hid
+herself in the nursery and was forgotten by everyone. Nobody thought of
+her, nobody wanted her, and strange things happened of which she knew
+nothing. Mary alternately cried and slept through the hours. She only
+knew that people were ill and that she heard mysterious and frightening
+sounds. Once she crept into the dining-room and found it empty, though
+a partly finished meal was on the table and chairs and plates looked as
+if they had been hastily pushed back when the diners rose suddenly for
+some reason. The child ate some fruit and biscuits, and being thirsty
+she drank a glass of wine which stood nearly filled. It was sweet, and
+she did not know how strong it was. Very soon it made her intensely
+drowsy, and she went back to her nursery and shut herself in again,
+frightened by cries she heard in the huts and by the hurrying sound of
+feet. The wine made her so sleepy that she could scarcely keep her eyes
+open and she lay down on her bed and knew nothing more for a long time.
+
+Many things happened during the hours in which she slept so heavily,
+but she was not disturbed by the wails and the sound of things being
+carried in and out of the bungalow.
+
+When she awakened she lay and stared at the wall. The house was
+perfectly still. She had never known it to be so silent before. She
+heard neither voices nor footsteps, and wondered if everybody had got
+well of the cholera and all the trouble was over. She wondered also who
+would take care of her now her Ayah was dead. There would be a new
+Ayah, and perhaps she would know some new stories. Mary had been rather
+tired of the old ones. She did not cry because her nurse had died. She
+was not an affectionate child and had never cared much for anyone. The
+noise and hurrying about and wailing over the cholera had frightened
+her, and she had been angry because no one seemed to remember that she
+was alive. Everyone was too panic-stricken to think of a little girl no
+one was fond of. When people had the cholera it seemed that they
+remembered nothing but themselves. But if everyone had got well again,
+surely someone would remember and come to look for her.
+
+But no one came, and as she lay waiting the house seemed to grow more
+and more silent. She heard something rustling on the matting and when
+she looked down she saw a little snake gliding along and watching her
+with eyes like jewels. She was not frightened, because he was a
+harmless little thing who would not hurt her and he seemed in a hurry
+to get out of the room. He slipped under the door as she watched him.
+
+“How queer and quiet it is,” she said. “It sounds as if there were no
+one in the bungalow but me and the snake.”
+
+Almost the next minute she heard footsteps in the compound, and then on
+the veranda. They were men’s footsteps, and the men entered the
+bungalow and talked in low voices. No one went to meet or speak to them
+and they seemed to open doors and look into rooms.
+
+“What desolation!” she heard one voice say. “That pretty, pretty woman!
+I suppose the child, too. I heard there was a child, though no one ever
+saw her.”
+
+Mary was standing in the middle of the nursery when they opened the
+door a few minutes later. She looked an ugly, cross little thing and
+was frowning because she was beginning to be hungry and feel
+disgracefully neglected. The first man who came in was a large officer
+she had once seen talking to her father. He looked tired and troubled,
+but when he saw her he was so startled that he almost jumped back.
+
+“Barney!” he cried out. “There is a child here! A child alone! In a
+place like this! Mercy on us, who is she!”
+
+“I am Mary Lennox,” the little girl said, drawing herself up stiffly.
+She thought the man was very rude to call her father’s bungalow “A
+place like this!” “I fell asleep when everyone had the cholera and I
+have only just wakened up. Why does nobody come?”
+
+“It is the child no one ever saw!” exclaimed the man, turning to his
+companions. “She has actually been forgotten!”
+
+“Why was I forgotten?” Mary said, stamping her foot. “Why does nobody
+come?”
+
+The young man whose name was Barney looked at her very sadly. Mary even
+thought she saw him wink his eyes as if to wink tears away.
+
+“Poor little kid!” he said. “There is nobody left to come.”
+
+It was in that strange and sudden way that Mary found out that she had
+neither father nor mother left; that they had died and been carried
+away in the night, and that the few native servants who had not died
+also had left the house as quickly as they could get out of it, none of
+them even remembering that there was a Missie Sahib. That was why the
+place was so quiet. It was true that there was no one in the bungalow
+but herself and the little rustling snake.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY
+
+
+Mary had liked to look at her mother from a distance and she had
+thought her very pretty, but as she knew very little of her she could
+scarcely have been expected to love her or to miss her very much when
+she was gone. She did not miss her at all, in fact, and as she was a
+self-absorbed child she gave her entire thought to herself, as she had
+always done. If she had been older she would no doubt have been very
+anxious at being left alone in the world, but she was very young, and
+as she had always been taken care of, she supposed she always would be.
+What she thought was that she would like to know if she was going to
+nice people, who would be polite to her and give her her own way as her
+Ayah and the other native servants had done.
+
+She knew that she was not going to stay at the English clergyman’s
+house where she was taken at first. She did not want to stay. The
+English clergyman was poor and he had five children nearly all the same
+age and they wore shabby clothes and were always quarreling and
+snatching toys from each other. Mary hated their untidy bungalow and
+was so disagreeable to them that after the first day or two nobody
+would play with her. By the second day they had given her a nickname
+which made her furious.
+
+It was Basil who thought of it first. Basil was a little boy with
+impudent blue eyes and a turned-up nose, and Mary hated him. She was
+playing by herself under a tree, just as she had been playing the day
+the cholera broke out. She was making heaps of earth and paths for a
+garden and Basil came and stood near to watch her. Presently he got
+rather interested and suddenly made a suggestion.
+
+“Why don’t you put a heap of stones there and pretend it is a rockery?”
+he said. “There in the middle,” and he leaned over her to point.
+
+“Go away!” cried Mary. “I don’t want boys. Go away!”
+
+For a moment Basil looked angry, and then he began to tease. He was
+always teasing his sisters. He danced round and round her and made
+faces and sang and laughed.
+
+“Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
+    How does your garden grow?
+With silver bells, and cockle shells,
+    And marigolds all in a row.”
+
+He sang it until the other children heard and laughed, too; and the
+crosser Mary got, the more they sang “Mistress Mary, quite contrary”;
+and after that as long as she stayed with them they called her
+“Mistress Mary Quite Contrary” when they spoke of her to each other,
+and often when they spoke to her.
+
+“You are going to be sent home,” Basil said to her, “at the end of the
+week. And we’re glad of it.”
+
+“I am glad of it, too,” answered Mary. “Where is home?”
+
+“She doesn’t know where home is!” said Basil, with seven-year-old
+scorn. “It’s England, of course. Our grandmama lives there and our
+sister Mabel was sent to her last year. You are not going to your
+grandmama. You have none. You are going to your uncle. His name is Mr.
+Archibald Craven.”
+
+“I don’t know anything about him,” snapped Mary.
+
+“I know you don’t,” Basil answered. “You don’t know anything. Girls
+never do. I heard father and mother talking about him. He lives in a
+great, big, desolate old house in the country and no one goes near him.
+He’s so cross he won’t let them, and they wouldn’t come if he would let
+them. He’s a hunchback, and he’s horrid.”
+
+“I don’t believe you,” said Mary; and she turned her back and stuck her
+fingers in her ears, because she would not listen any more.
+
+But she thought over it a great deal afterward; and when Mrs. Crawford
+told her that night that she was going to sail away to England in a few
+days and go to her uncle, Mr. Archibald Craven, who lived at
+Misselthwaite Manor, she looked so stony and stubbornly uninterested
+that they did not know what to think about her. They tried to be kind
+to her, but she only turned her face away when Mrs. Crawford attempted
+to kiss her, and held herself stiffly when Mr. Crawford patted her
+shoulder.
+
+“She is such a plain child,” Mrs. Crawford said pityingly, afterward.
+“And her mother was such a pretty creature. She had a very pretty
+manner, too, and Mary has the most unattractive ways I ever saw in a
+child. The children call her ‘Mistress Mary Quite Contrary,’ and though
+it’s naughty of them, one can’t help understanding it.”
+
+“Perhaps if her mother had carried her pretty face and her pretty
+manners oftener into the nursery Mary might have learned some pretty
+ways too. It is very sad, now the poor beautiful thing is gone, to
+remember that many people never even knew that she had a child at all.”
+
+“I believe she scarcely ever looked at her,” sighed Mrs. Crawford.
+“When her Ayah was dead there was no one to give a thought to the
+little thing. Think of the servants running away and leaving her all
+alone in that deserted bungalow. Colonel McGrew said he nearly jumped
+out of his skin when he opened the door and found her standing by
+herself in the middle of the room.”
+
+Mary made the long voyage to England under the care of an officer’s
+wife, who was taking her children to leave them in a boarding-school.
+She was very much absorbed in her own little boy and girl, and was
+rather glad to hand the child over to the woman Mr. Archibald Craven
+sent to meet her, in London. The woman was his housekeeper at
+Misselthwaite Manor, and her name was Mrs. Medlock. She was a stout
+woman, with very red cheeks and sharp black eyes. She wore a very
+purple dress, a black silk mantle with jet fringe on it and a black
+bonnet with purple velvet flowers which stuck up and trembled when she
+moved her head. Mary did not like her at all, but as she very seldom
+liked people there was nothing remarkable in that; besides which it was
+very evident Mrs. Medlock did not think much of her.
+
+“My word! she’s a plain little piece of goods!” she said. “And we’d
+heard that her mother was a beauty. She hasn’t handed much of it down,
+has she, ma’am?”
+
+“Perhaps she will improve as she grows older,” the officer’s wife said
+good-naturedly. “If she were not so sallow and had a nicer expression,
+her features are rather good. Children alter so much.”
+
+“She’ll have to alter a good deal,” answered Mrs. Medlock. “And,
+there’s nothing likely to improve children at Misselthwaite—if you ask
+me!”
+
+They thought Mary was not listening because she was standing a little
+apart from them at the window of the private hotel they had gone to.
+She was watching the passing buses and cabs and people, but she heard
+quite well and was made very curious about her uncle and the place he
+lived in. What sort of a place was it, and what would he be like? What
+was a hunchback? She had never seen one. Perhaps there were none in
+India.
+
+Since she had been living in other people’s houses and had had no Ayah,
+she had begun to feel lonely and to think queer thoughts which were new
+to her. She had begun to wonder why she had never seemed to belong to
+anyone even when her father and mother had been alive. Other children
+seemed to belong to their fathers and mothers, but she had never seemed
+to really be anyone’s little girl. She had had servants, and food and
+clothes, but no one had taken any notice of her. She did not know that
+this was because she was a disagreeable child; but then, of course, she
+did not know she was disagreeable. She often thought that other people
+were, but she did not know that she was so herself.
+
+She thought Mrs. Medlock the most disagreeable person she had ever
+seen, with her common, highly colored face and her common fine bonnet.
+When the next day they set out on their journey to Yorkshire, she
+walked through the station to the railway carriage with her head up and
+trying to keep as far away from her as she could, because she did not
+want to seem to belong to her. It would have made her angry to think
+people imagined she was her little girl.
+
+But Mrs. Medlock was not in the least disturbed by her and her
+thoughts. She was the kind of woman who would “stand no nonsense from
+young ones.” At least, that is what she would have said if she had been
+asked. She had not wanted to go to London just when her sister Maria’s
+daughter was going to be married, but she had a comfortable, well paid
+place as housekeeper at Misselthwaite Manor and the only way in which
+she could keep it was to do at once what Mr. Archibald Craven told her
+to do. She never dared even to ask a question.
+
+“Captain Lennox and his wife died of the cholera,” Mr. Craven had said
+in his short, cold way. “Captain Lennox was my wife’s brother and I am
+their daughter’s guardian. The child is to be brought here. You must go
+to London and bring her yourself.”
+
+So she packed her small trunk and made the journey.
+
+Mary sat in her corner of the railway carriage and looked plain and
+fretful. She had nothing to read or to look at, and she had folded her
+thin little black-gloved hands in her lap. Her black dress made her
+look yellower than ever, and her limp light hair straggled from under
+her black crêpe hat.
+
+“A more marred-looking young one I never saw in my life,” Mrs. Medlock
+thought. (Marred is a Yorkshire word and means spoiled and pettish.)
+She had never seen a child who sat so still without doing anything; and
+at last she got tired of watching her and began to talk in a brisk,
+hard voice.
+
+“I suppose I may as well tell you something about where you are going
+to,” she said. “Do you know anything about your uncle?”
+
+“No,” said Mary.
+
+“Never heard your father and mother talk about him?”
+
+“No,” said Mary frowning. She frowned because she remembered that her
+father and mother had never talked to her about anything in particular.
+Certainly they had never told her things.
+
+“Humph,” muttered Mrs. Medlock, staring at her queer, unresponsive
+little face. She did not say any more for a few moments and then she
+began again.
+
+“I suppose you might as well be told something—to prepare you. You are
+going to a queer place.”
+
+Mary said nothing at all, and Mrs. Medlock looked rather discomfited by
+her apparent indifference, but, after taking a breath, she went on.
+
+“Not but that it’s a grand big place in a gloomy way, and Mr. Craven’s
+proud of it in his way—and that’s gloomy enough, too. The house is six
+hundred years old and it’s on the edge of the moor, and there’s near a
+hundred rooms in it, though most of them’s shut up and locked. And
+there’s pictures and fine old furniture and things that’s been there
+for ages, and there’s a big park round it and gardens and trees with
+branches trailing to the ground—some of them.” She paused and took
+another breath. “But there’s nothing else,” she ended suddenly.
+
+Mary had begun to listen in spite of herself. It all sounded so unlike
+India, and anything new rather attracted her. But she did not intend to
+look as if she were interested. That was one of her unhappy,
+disagreeable ways. So she sat still.
+
+“Well,” said Mrs. Medlock. “What do you think of it?”
+
+“Nothing,” she answered. “I know nothing about such places.”
+
+That made Mrs. Medlock laugh a short sort of laugh.
+
+“Eh!” she said, “but you are like an old woman. Don’t you care?”
+
+“It doesn’t matter” said Mary, “whether I care or not.”
+
+“You are right enough there,” said Mrs. Medlock. “It doesn’t. What
+you’re to be kept at Misselthwaite Manor for I don’t know, unless
+because it’s the easiest way. _He’s_ not going to trouble himself about
+you, that’s sure and certain. He never troubles himself about no one.”
+
+She stopped herself as if she had just remembered something in time.
+
+“He’s got a crooked back,” she said. “That set him wrong. He was a sour
+young man and got no good of all his money and big place till he was
+married.”
+
+Mary’s eyes turned toward her in spite of her intention not to seem to
+care. She had never thought of the hunchback’s being married and she
+was a trifle surprised. Mrs. Medlock saw this, and as she was a
+talkative woman she continued with more interest. This was one way of
+passing some of the time, at any rate.
+
+“She was a sweet, pretty thing and he’d have walked the world over to
+get her a blade o’ grass she wanted. Nobody thought she’d marry him,
+but she did, and people said she married him for his money. But she
+didn’t—she didn’t,” positively. “When she died—”
+
+Mary gave a little involuntary jump.
+
+“Oh! did she die!” she exclaimed, quite without meaning to. She had
+just remembered a French fairy story she had once read called “Riquet à
+la Houppe.” It had been about a poor hunchback and a beautiful princess
+and it had made her suddenly sorry for Mr. Archibald Craven.
+
+“Yes, she died,” Mrs. Medlock answered. “And it made him queerer than
+ever. He cares about nobody. He won’t see people. Most of the time he
+goes away, and when he is at Misselthwaite he shuts himself up in the
+West Wing and won’t let anyone but Pitcher see him. Pitcher’s an old
+fellow, but he took care of him when he was a child and he knows his
+ways.”
+
+It sounded like something in a book and it did not make Mary feel
+cheerful. A house with a hundred rooms, nearly all shut up and with
+their doors locked—a house on the edge of a moor—whatsoever a moor
+was—sounded dreary. A man with a crooked back who shut himself up also!
+She stared out of the window with her lips pinched together, and it
+seemed quite natural that the rain should have begun to pour down in
+gray slanting lines and splash and stream down the window-panes. If the
+pretty wife had been alive she might have made things cheerful by being
+something like her own mother and by running in and out and going to
+parties as she had done in frocks “full of lace.” But she was not there
+any more.
+
+“You needn’t expect to see him, because ten to one you won’t,” said
+Mrs. Medlock. “And you mustn’t expect that there will be people to talk
+to you. You’ll have to play about and look after yourself. You’ll be
+told what rooms you can go into and what rooms you’re to keep out of.
+There’s gardens enough. But when you’re in the house don’t go wandering
+and poking about. Mr. Craven won’t have it.”
+
+“I shall not want to go poking about,” said sour little Mary and just
+as suddenly as she had begun to be rather sorry for Mr. Archibald
+Craven she began to cease to be sorry and to think he was unpleasant
+enough to deserve all that had happened to him.
+
+And she turned her face toward the streaming panes of the window of the
+railway carriage and gazed out at the gray rain-storm which looked as
+if it would go on forever and ever. She watched it so long and steadily
+that the grayness grew heavier and heavier before her eyes and she fell
+asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+ACROSS THE MOOR
+
+
+She slept a long time, and when she awakened Mrs. Medlock had bought a
+lunchbasket at one of the stations and they had some chicken and cold
+beef and bread and butter and some hot tea. The rain seemed to be
+streaming down more heavily than ever and everybody in the station wore
+wet and glistening waterproofs. The guard lighted the lamps in the
+carriage, and Mrs. Medlock cheered up very much over her tea and
+chicken and beef. She ate a great deal and afterward fell asleep
+herself, and Mary sat and stared at her and watched her fine bonnet
+slip on one side until she herself fell asleep once more in the corner
+of the carriage, lulled by the splashing of the rain against the
+windows. It was quite dark when she awakened again. The train had
+stopped at a station and Mrs. Medlock was shaking her.
+
+“You have had a sleep!” she said. “It’s time to open your eyes! We’re
+at Thwaite Station and we’ve got a long drive before us.”
+
+Mary stood up and tried to keep her eyes open while Mrs. Medlock
+collected her parcels. The little girl did not offer to help her,
+because in India native servants always picked up or carried things and
+it seemed quite proper that other people should wait on one.
+
+The station was a small one and nobody but themselves seemed to be
+getting out of the train. The station-master spoke to Mrs. Medlock in a
+rough, good-natured way, pronouncing his words in a queer broad fashion
+which Mary found out afterward was Yorkshire.
+
+“I see tha’s got back,” he said. “An’ tha’s browt th’ young ’un with
+thee.”
+
+“Aye, that’s her,” answered Mrs. Medlock, speaking with a Yorkshire
+accent herself and jerking her head over her shoulder toward Mary.
+“How’s thy Missus?”
+
+“Well enow. Th’ carriage is waitin’ outside for thee.”
+
+A brougham stood on the road before the little outside platform. Mary
+saw that it was a smart carriage and that it was a smart footman who
+helped her in. His long waterproof coat and the waterproof covering of
+his hat were shining and dripping with rain as everything was, the
+burly station-master included.
+
+When he shut the door, mounted the box with the coachman, and they
+drove off, the little girl found herself seated in a comfortably
+cushioned corner, but she was not inclined to go to sleep again. She
+sat and looked out of the window, curious to see something of the road
+over which she was being driven to the queer place Mrs. Medlock had
+spoken of. She was not at all a timid child and she was not exactly
+frightened, but she felt that there was no knowing what might happen in
+a house with a hundred rooms nearly all shut up—a house standing on the
+edge of a moor.
+
+“What is a moor?” she said suddenly to Mrs. Medlock.
+
+“Look out of the window in about ten minutes and you’ll see,” the woman
+answered. “We’ve got to drive five miles across Missel Moor before we
+get to the Manor. You won’t see much because it’s a dark night, but you
+can see something.”
+
+Mary asked no more questions but waited in the darkness of her corner,
+keeping her eyes on the window. The carriage lamps cast rays of light a
+little distance ahead of them and she caught glimpses of the things
+they passed. After they had left the station they had driven through a
+tiny village and she had seen whitewashed cottages and the lights of a
+public house. Then they had passed a church and a vicarage and a little
+shop-window or so in a cottage with toys and sweets and odd things set
+out for sale. Then they were on the highroad and she saw hedges and
+trees. After that there seemed nothing different for a long time—or at
+least it seemed a long time to her.
+
+At last the horses began to go more slowly, as if they were climbing
+up-hill, and presently there seemed to be no more hedges and no more
+trees. She could see nothing, in fact, but a dense darkness on either
+side. She leaned forward and pressed her face against the window just
+as the carriage gave a big jolt.
+
+“Eh! We’re on the moor now sure enough,” said Mrs. Medlock.
+
+The carriage lamps shed a yellow light on a rough-looking road which
+seemed to be cut through bushes and low-growing things which ended in
+the great expanse of dark apparently spread out before and around them.
+A wind was rising and making a singular, wild, low, rushing sound.
+
+“It’s—it’s not the sea, is it?” said Mary, looking round at her
+companion.
+
+“No, not it,” answered Mrs. Medlock. “Nor it isn’t fields nor
+mountains, it’s just miles and miles and miles of wild land that
+nothing grows on but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing lives on
+but wild ponies and sheep.”
+
+“I feel as if it might be the sea, if there were water on it,” said
+Mary. “It sounds like the sea just now.”
+
+“That’s the wind blowing through the bushes,” Mrs. Medlock said. “It’s
+a wild, dreary enough place to my mind, though there’s plenty that
+likes it—particularly when the heather’s in bloom.”
+
+On and on they drove through the darkness, and though the rain stopped,
+the wind rushed by and whistled and made strange sounds. The road went
+up and down, and several times the carriage passed over a little bridge
+beneath which water rushed very fast with a great deal of noise. Mary
+felt as if the drive would never come to an end and that the wide,
+bleak moor was a wide expanse of black ocean through which she was
+passing on a strip of dry land.
+
+“I don’t like it,” she said to herself. “I don’t like it,” and she
+pinched her thin lips more tightly together.
+
+The horses were climbing up a hilly piece of road when she first caught
+sight of a light. Mrs. Medlock saw it as soon as she did and drew a
+long sigh of relief.
+
+“Eh, I am glad to see that bit o’ light twinkling,” she exclaimed.
+“It’s the light in the lodge window. We shall get a good cup of tea
+after a bit, at all events.”
+
+It was “after a bit,” as she said, for when the carriage passed through
+the park gates there was still two miles of avenue to drive through and
+the trees (which nearly met overhead) made it seem as if they were
+driving through a long dark vault.
+
+They drove out of the vault into a clear space and stopped before an
+immensely long but low-built house which seemed to ramble round a stone
+court. At first Mary thought that there were no lights at all in the
+windows, but as she got out of the carriage she saw that one room in a
+corner upstairs showed a dull glow.
+
+The entrance door was a huge one made of massive, curiously shaped
+panels of oak studded with big iron nails and bound with great iron
+bars. It opened into an enormous hall, which was so dimly lighted that
+the faces in the portraits on the walls and the figures in the suits of
+armor made Mary feel that she did not want to look at them. As she
+stood on the stone floor she looked a very small, odd little black
+figure, and she felt as small and lost and odd as she looked.
+
+A neat, thin old man stood near the manservant who opened the door for
+them.
+
+“You are to take her to her room,” he said in a husky voice. “He
+doesn’t want to see her. He’s going to London in the morning.”
+
+“Very well, Mr. Pitcher,” Mrs. Medlock answered. “So long as I know
+what’s expected of me, I can manage.”
+
+“What’s expected of you, Mrs. Medlock,” Mr. Pitcher said, “is that you
+make sure that he’s not disturbed and that he doesn’t see what he
+doesn’t want to see.”
+
+And then Mary Lennox was led up a broad staircase and down a long
+corridor and up a short flight of steps and through another corridor
+and another, until a door opened in a wall and she found herself in a
+room with a fire in it and a supper on a table.
+
+Mrs. Medlock said unceremoniously:
+
+“Well, here you are! This room and the next are where you’ll live—and
+you must keep to them. Don’t you forget that!”
+
+It was in this way Mistress Mary arrived at Misselthwaite Manor and she
+had perhaps never felt quite so contrary in all her life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+MARTHA
+
+
+When she opened her eyes in the morning it was because a young
+housemaid had come into her room to light the fire and was kneeling on
+the hearth-rug raking out the cinders noisily. Mary lay and watched her
+for a few moments and then began to look about the room. She had never
+seen a room at all like it and thought it curious and gloomy. The walls
+were covered with tapestry with a forest scene embroidered on it. There
+were fantastically dressed people under the trees and in the distance
+there was a glimpse of the turrets of a castle. There were hunters and
+horses and dogs and ladies. Mary felt as if she were in the forest with
+them. Out of a deep window she could see a great climbing stretch of
+land which seemed to have no trees on it, and to look rather like an
+endless, dull, purplish sea.
+
+“What is that?” she said, pointing out of the window.
+
+Martha, the young housemaid, who had just risen to her feet, looked and
+pointed also.
+
+“That there?” she said.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“That’s th’ moor,” with a good-natured grin. “Does tha’ like it?”
+
+“No,” answered Mary. “I hate it.”
+
+“That’s because tha’rt not used to it,” Martha said, going back to her
+hearth. “Tha’ thinks it’s too big an’ bare now. But tha’ will like it.”
+
+“Do you?” inquired Mary.
+
+“Aye, that I do,” answered Martha, cheerfully polishing away at the
+grate. “I just love it. It’s none bare. It’s covered wi’ growin’ things
+as smells sweet. It’s fair lovely in spring an’ summer when th’ gorse
+an’ broom an’ heather’s in flower. It smells o’ honey an’ there’s such
+a lot o’ fresh air—an’ th’ sky looks so high an’ th’ bees an’ skylarks
+makes such a nice noise hummin’ an’ singin’. Eh! I wouldn’t live away
+from th’ moor for anythin’.”
+
+Mary listened to her with a grave, puzzled expression. The native
+servants she had been used to in India were not in the least like this.
+They were obsequious and servile and did not presume to talk to their
+masters as if they were their equals. They made salaams and called them
+“protector of the poor” and names of that sort. Indian servants were
+commanded to do things, not asked. It was not the custom to say
+“please” and “thank you” and Mary had always slapped her Ayah in the
+face when she was angry. She wondered a little what this girl would do
+if one slapped her in the face. She was a round, rosy, good-natured
+looking creature, but she had a sturdy way which made Mistress Mary
+wonder if she might not even slap back—if the person who slapped her
+was only a little girl.
+
+“You are a strange servant,” she said from her pillows, rather
+haughtily.
+
+Martha sat up on her heels, with her blacking-brush in her hand, and
+laughed, without seeming the least out of temper.
+
+“Eh! I know that,” she said. “If there was a grand Missus at
+Misselthwaite I should never have been even one of th’ under
+housemaids. I might have been let to be scullerymaid but I’d never have
+been let upstairs. I’m too common an’ I talk too much Yorkshire. But
+this is a funny house for all it’s so grand. Seems like there’s neither
+Master nor Mistress except Mr. Pitcher an’ Mrs. Medlock. Mr. Craven, he
+won’t be troubled about anythin’ when he’s here, an’ he’s nearly always
+away. Mrs. Medlock gave me th’ place out o’ kindness. She told me she
+could never have done it if Misselthwaite had been like other big
+houses.”
+
+“Are you going to be my servant?” Mary asked, still in her imperious
+little Indian way.
+
+Martha began to rub her grate again.
+
+“I’m Mrs. Medlock’s servant,” she said stoutly. “An’ she’s Mr.
+Craven’s—but I’m to do the housemaid’s work up here an’ wait on you a
+bit. But you won’t need much waitin’ on.”
+
+“Who is going to dress me?” demanded Mary.
+
+Martha sat up on her heels again and stared. She spoke in broad
+Yorkshire in her amazement.
+
+“Canna’ tha’ dress thysen!” she said.
+
+“What do you mean? I don’t understand your language,” said Mary.
+
+“Eh! I forgot,” Martha said. “Mrs. Medlock told me I’d have to be
+careful or you wouldn’t know what I was sayin’. I mean can’t you put on
+your own clothes?”
+
+“No,” answered Mary, quite indignantly. “I never did in my life. My
+Ayah dressed me, of course.”
+
+“Well,” said Martha, evidently not in the least aware that she was
+impudent, “it’s time tha’ should learn. Tha’ cannot begin younger.
+It’ll do thee good to wait on thysen a bit. My mother always said she
+couldn’t see why grand people’s children didn’t turn out fair
+fools—what with nurses an’ bein’ washed an’ dressed an’ took out to
+walk as if they was puppies!”
+
+“It is different in India,” said Mistress Mary disdainfully. She could
+scarcely stand this.
+
+But Martha was not at all crushed.
+
+“Eh! I can see it’s different,” she answered almost sympathetically. “I
+dare say it’s because there’s such a lot o’ blacks there instead o’
+respectable white people. When I heard you was comin’ from India I
+thought you was a black too.”
+
+Mary sat up in bed furious.
+
+“What!” she said. “What! You thought I was a native. You—you daughter
+of a pig!”
+
+Martha stared and looked hot.
+
+“Who are you callin’ names?” she said. “You needn’t be so vexed. That’s
+not th’ way for a young lady to talk. I’ve nothin’ against th’ blacks.
+When you read about ’em in tracts they’re always very religious. You
+always read as a black’s a man an’ a brother. I’ve never seen a black
+an’ I was fair pleased to think I was goin’ to see one close. When I
+come in to light your fire this mornin’ I crep’ up to your bed an’
+pulled th’ cover back careful to look at you. An’ there you was,”
+disappointedly, “no more black than me—for all you’re so yeller.”
+
+Mary did not even try to control her rage and humiliation.
+
+“You thought I was a native! You dared! You don’t know anything about
+natives! They are not people—they’re servants who must salaam to you.
+You know nothing about India. You know nothing about anything!”
+
+She was in such a rage and felt so helpless before the girl’s simple
+stare, and somehow she suddenly felt so horribly lonely and far away
+from everything she understood and which understood her, that she threw
+herself face downward on the pillows and burst into passionate sobbing.
+She sobbed so unrestrainedly that good-natured Yorkshire Martha was a
+little frightened and quite sorry for her. She went to the bed and bent
+over her.
+
+“Eh! you mustn’t cry like that there!” she begged. “You mustn’t for
+sure. I didn’t know you’d be vexed. I don’t know anythin’ about
+anythin’—just like you said. I beg your pardon, Miss. Do stop cryin’.”
+
+There was something comforting and really friendly in her queer
+Yorkshire speech and sturdy way which had a good effect on Mary. She
+gradually ceased crying and became quiet. Martha looked relieved.
+
+“It’s time for thee to get up now,” she said. “Mrs. Medlock said I was
+to carry tha’ breakfast an’ tea an’ dinner into th’ room next to this.
+It’s been made into a nursery for thee. I’ll help thee on with thy
+clothes if tha’ll get out o’ bed. If th’ buttons are at th’ back tha’
+cannot button them up tha’self.”
+
+When Mary at last decided to get up, the clothes Martha took from the
+wardrobe were not the ones she had worn when she arrived the night
+before with Mrs. Medlock.
+
+“Those are not mine,” she said. “Mine are black.”
+
+She looked the thick white wool coat and dress over, and added with
+cool approval:
+
+“Those are nicer than mine.”
+
+“These are th’ ones tha’ must put on,” Martha answered. “Mr. Craven
+ordered Mrs. Medlock to get ’em in London. He said ‘I won’t have a
+child dressed in black wanderin’ about like a lost soul,’ he said.
+‘It’d make the place sadder than it is. Put color on her.’ Mother she
+said she knew what he meant. Mother always knows what a body means. She
+doesn’t hold with black hersel’.”
+
+“I hate black things,” said Mary.
+
+The dressing process was one which taught them both something. Martha
+had “buttoned up” her little sisters and brothers but she had never
+seen a child who stood still and waited for another person to do things
+for her as if she had neither hands nor feet of her own.
+
+“Why doesn’t tha’ put on tha’ own shoes?” she said when Mary quietly
+held out her foot.
+
+“My Ayah did it,” answered Mary, staring. “It was the custom.”
+
+She said that very often—“It was the custom.” The native servants were
+always saying it. If one told them to do a thing their ancestors had
+not done for a thousand years they gazed at one mildly and said, “It is
+not the custom” and one knew that was the end of the matter.
+
+It had not been the custom that Mistress Mary should do anything but
+stand and allow herself to be dressed like a doll, but before she was
+ready for breakfast she began to suspect that her life at Misselthwaite
+Manor would end by teaching her a number of things quite new to
+her—things such as putting on her own shoes and stockings, and picking
+up things she let fall. If Martha had been a well-trained fine young
+lady’s maid she would have been more subservient and respectful and
+would have known that it was her business to brush hair, and button
+boots, and pick things up and lay them away. She was, however, only an
+untrained Yorkshire rustic who had been brought up in a moorland
+cottage with a swarm of little brothers and sisters who had never
+dreamed of doing anything but waiting on themselves and on the younger
+ones who were either babies in arms or just learning to totter about
+and tumble over things.
+
+If Mary Lennox had been a child who was ready to be amused she would
+perhaps have laughed at Martha’s readiness to talk, but Mary only
+listened to her coldly and wondered at her freedom of manner. At first
+she was not at all interested, but gradually, as the girl rattled on in
+her good-tempered, homely way, Mary began to notice what she was
+saying.
+
+“Eh! you should see ’em all,” she said. “There’s twelve of us an’ my
+father only gets sixteen shilling a week. I can tell you my mother’s
+put to it to get porridge for ’em all. They tumble about on th’ moor
+an’ play there all day an’ mother says th’ air of th’ moor fattens ’em.
+She says she believes they eat th’ grass same as th’ wild ponies do.
+Our Dickon, he’s twelve years old and he’s got a young pony he calls
+his own.”
+
+“Where did he get it?” asked Mary.
+
+“He found it on th’ moor with its mother when it was a little one an’
+he began to make friends with it an’ give it bits o’ bread an’ pluck
+young grass for it. And it got to like him so it follows him about an’
+it lets him get on its back. Dickon’s a kind lad an’ animals likes
+him.”
+
+Mary had never possessed an animal pet of her own and had always
+thought she should like one. So she began to feel a slight interest in
+Dickon, and as she had never before been interested in anyone but
+herself, it was the dawning of a healthy sentiment. When she went into
+the room which had been made into a nursery for her, she found that it
+was rather like the one she had slept in. It was not a child’s room,
+but a grown-up person’s room, with gloomy old pictures on the walls and
+heavy old oak chairs. A table in the center was set with a good
+substantial breakfast. But she had always had a very small appetite,
+and she looked with something more than indifference at the first plate
+Martha set before her.
+
+“I don’t want it,” she said.
+
+“Tha’ doesn’t want thy porridge!” Martha exclaimed incredulously.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Tha’ doesn’t know how good it is. Put a bit o’ treacle on it or a bit
+o’ sugar.”
+
+“I don’t want it,” repeated Mary.
+
+“Eh!” said Martha. “I can’t abide to see good victuals go to waste. If
+our children was at this table they’d clean it bare in five minutes.”
+
+“Why?” said Mary coldly.
+
+“Why!” echoed Martha. “Because they scarce ever had their stomachs full
+in their lives. They’re as hungry as young hawks an’ foxes.”
+
+“I don’t know what it is to be hungry,” said Mary, with the
+indifference of ignorance.
+
+Martha looked indignant.
+
+“Well, it would do thee good to try it. I can see that plain enough,”
+she said outspokenly. “I’ve no patience with folk as sits an’ just
+stares at good bread an’ meat. My word! don’t I wish Dickon and Phil
+an’ Jane an’ th’ rest of ’em had what’s here under their pinafores.”
+
+“Why don’t you take it to them?” suggested Mary.
+
+“It’s not mine,” answered Martha stoutly. “An’ this isn’t my day out. I
+get my day out once a month same as th’ rest. Then I go home an’ clean
+up for mother an’ give her a day’s rest.”
+
+Mary drank some tea and ate a little toast and some marmalade.
+
+“You wrap up warm an’ run out an’ play you,” said Martha. “It’ll do you
+good and give you some stomach for your meat.”
+
+Mary went to the window. There were gardens and paths and big trees,
+but everything looked dull and wintry.
+
+“Out? Why should I go out on a day like this?”
+
+“Well, if tha’ doesn’t go out tha’lt have to stay in, an’ what has tha’
+got to do?”
+
+Mary glanced about her. There was nothing to do. When Mrs. Medlock had
+prepared the nursery she had not thought of amusement. Perhaps it would
+be better to go and see what the gardens were like.
+
+“Who will go with me?” she inquired.
+
+Martha stared.
+
+“You’ll go by yourself,” she answered. “You’ll have to learn to play
+like other children does when they haven’t got sisters and brothers.
+Our Dickon goes off on th’ moor by himself an’ plays for hours. That’s
+how he made friends with th’ pony. He’s got sheep on th’ moor that
+knows him, an’ birds as comes an’ eats out of his hand. However little
+there is to eat, he always saves a bit o’ his bread to coax his pets.”
+
+It was really this mention of Dickon which made Mary decide to go out,
+though she was not aware of it. There would be, birds outside though
+there would not be ponies or sheep. They would be different from the
+birds in India and it might amuse her to look at them.
+
+Martha found her coat and hat for her and a pair of stout little boots
+and she showed her her way downstairs.
+
+“If tha’ goes round that way tha’ll come to th’ gardens,” she said,
+pointing to a gate in a wall of shrubbery. “There’s lots o’ flowers in
+summer-time, but there’s nothin’ bloomin’ now.” She seemed to hesitate
+a second before she added, “One of th’ gardens is locked up. No one has
+been in it for ten years.”
+
+“Why?” asked Mary in spite of herself. Here was another locked door
+added to the hundred in the strange house.
+
+“Mr. Craven had it shut when his wife died so sudden. He won’t let no
+one go inside. It was her garden. He locked th’ door an’ dug a hole and
+buried th’ key. There’s Mrs. Medlock’s bell ringing—I must run.”
+
+After she was gone Mary turned down the walk which led to the door in
+the shrubbery. She could not help thinking about the garden which no
+one had been into for ten years. She wondered what it would look like
+and whether there were any flowers still alive in it. When she had
+passed through the shrubbery gate she found herself in great gardens,
+with wide lawns and winding walks with clipped borders. There were
+trees, and flower-beds, and evergreens clipped into strange shapes, and
+a large pool with an old gray fountain in its midst. But the
+flower-beds were bare and wintry and the fountain was not playing. This
+was not the garden which was shut up. How could a garden be shut up?
+You could always walk into a garden.
+
+She was just thinking this when she saw that, at the end of the path
+she was following, there seemed to be a long wall, with ivy growing
+over it. She was not familiar enough with England to know that she was
+coming upon the kitchen-gardens where the vegetables and fruit were
+growing. She went toward the wall and found that there was a green door
+in the ivy, and that it stood open. This was not the closed garden,
+evidently, and she could go into it.
+
+She went through the door and found that it was a garden with walls all
+round it and that it was only one of several walled gardens which
+seemed to open into one another. She saw another open green door,
+revealing bushes and pathways between beds containing winter
+vegetables. Fruit-trees were trained flat against the wall, and over
+some of the beds there were glass frames. The place was bare and ugly
+enough, Mary thought, as she stood and stared about her. It might be
+nicer in summer when things were green, but there was nothing pretty
+about it now.
+
+Presently an old man with a spade over his shoulder walked through the
+door leading from the second garden. He looked startled when he saw
+Mary, and then touched his cap. He had a surly old face, and did not
+seem at all pleased to see her—but then she was displeased with his
+garden and wore her “quite contrary” expression, and certainly did not
+seem at all pleased to see him.
+
+“What is this place?” she asked.
+
+“One o’ th’ kitchen-gardens,” he answered.
+
+“What is that?” said Mary, pointing through the other green door.
+
+“Another of ’em,” shortly. “There’s another on t’other side o’ th’ wall
+an’ there’s th’ orchard t’other side o’ that.”
+
+“Can I go in them?” asked Mary.
+
+“If tha’ likes. But there’s nowt to see.”
+
+Mary made no response. She went down the path and through the second
+green door. There, she found more walls and winter vegetables and glass
+frames, but in the second wall there was another green door and it was
+not open. Perhaps it led into the garden which no one had seen for ten
+years. As she was not at all a timid child and always did what she
+wanted to do, Mary went to the green door and turned the handle. She
+hoped the door would not open because she wanted to be sure she had
+found the mysterious garden—but it did open quite easily and she walked
+through it and found herself in an orchard. There were walls all round
+it also and trees trained against them, and there were bare fruit-trees
+growing in the winter-browned grass—but there was no green door to be
+seen anywhere. Mary looked for it, and yet when she had entered the
+upper end of the garden she had noticed that the wall did not seem to
+end with the orchard but to extend beyond it as if it enclosed a place
+at the other side. She could see the tops of trees above the wall, and
+when she stood still she saw a bird with a bright red breast sitting on
+the topmost branch of one of them, and suddenly he burst into his
+winter song—almost as if he had caught sight of her and was calling to
+her.
+
+She stopped and listened to him and somehow his cheerful, friendly
+little whistle gave her a pleased feeling—even a disagreeable little
+girl may be lonely, and the big closed house and big bare moor and big
+bare gardens had made this one feel as if there was no one left in the
+world but herself. If she had been an affectionate child, who had been
+used to being loved, she would have broken her heart, but even though
+she was “Mistress Mary Quite Contrary” she was desolate, and the
+bright-breasted little bird brought a look into her sour little face
+which was almost a smile. She listened to him until he flew away. He
+was not like an Indian bird and she liked him and wondered if she
+should ever see him again. Perhaps he lived in the mysterious garden
+and knew all about it.
+
+Perhaps it was because she had nothing whatever to do that she thought
+so much of the deserted garden. She was curious about it and wanted to
+see what it was like. Why had Mr. Archibald Craven buried the key? If
+he had liked his wife so much why did he hate her garden? She wondered
+if she should ever see him, but she knew that if she did she should not
+like him, and he would not like her, and that she should only stand and
+stare at him and say nothing, though she should be wanting dreadfully
+to ask him why he had done such a queer thing.
+
+“People never like me and I never like people,” she thought. “And I
+never can talk as the Crawford children could. They were always talking
+and laughing and making noises.”
+
+She thought of the robin and of the way he seemed to sing his song at
+her, and as she remembered the tree-top he perched on she stopped
+rather suddenly on the path.
+
+“I believe that tree was in the secret garden—I feel sure it was,” she
+said. “There was a wall round the place and there was no door.”
+
+She walked back into the first kitchen-garden she had entered and found
+the old man digging there. She went and stood beside him and watched
+him a few moments in her cold little way. He took no notice of her and
+so at last she spoke to him.
+
+“I have been into the other gardens,” she said.
+
+“There was nothin’ to prevent thee,” he answered crustily.
+
+“I went into the orchard.”
+
+“There was no dog at th’ door to bite thee,” he answered.
+
+“There was no door there into the other garden,” said Mary.
+
+“What garden?” he said in a rough voice, stopping his digging for a
+moment.
+
+“The one on the other side of the wall,” answered Mistress Mary. “There
+are trees there—I saw the tops of them. A bird with a red breast was
+sitting on one of them and he sang.”
+
+To her surprise the surly old weather-beaten face actually changed its
+expression. A slow smile spread over it and the gardener looked quite
+different. It made her think that it was curious how much nicer a
+person looked when he smiled. She had not thought of it before.
+
+He turned about to the orchard side of his garden and began to
+whistle—a low soft whistle. She could not understand how such a surly
+man could make such a coaxing sound.
+
+Almost the next moment a wonderful thing happened. She heard a soft
+little rushing flight through the air—and it was the bird with the red
+breast flying to them, and he actually alighted on the big clod of
+earth quite near to the gardener’s foot.
+
+“Here he is,” chuckled the old man, and then he spoke to the bird as if
+he were speaking to a child.
+
+“Where has tha’ been, tha’ cheeky little beggar?” he said. “I’ve not
+seen thee before today. Has tha begun tha’ courtin’ this early in th’
+season? Tha’rt too forrad.”
+
+The bird put his tiny head on one side and looked up at him with his
+soft bright eye which was like a black dewdrop. He seemed quite
+familiar and not the least afraid. He hopped about and pecked the earth
+briskly, looking for seeds and insects. It actually gave Mary a queer
+feeling in her heart, because he was so pretty and cheerful and seemed
+so like a person. He had a tiny plump body and a delicate beak, and
+slender delicate legs.
+
+“Will he always come when you call him?” she asked almost in a whisper.
+
+“Aye, that he will. I’ve knowed him ever since he was a fledgling. He
+come out of th’ nest in th’ other garden an’ when first he flew over
+th’ wall he was too weak to fly back for a few days an’ we got
+friendly. When he went over th’ wall again th’ rest of th’ brood was
+gone an’ he was lonely an’ he come back to me.”
+
+“What kind of a bird is he?” Mary asked.
+
+“Doesn’t tha’ know? He’s a robin redbreast an’ they’re th’ friendliest,
+curiousest birds alive. They’re almost as friendly as dogs—if you know
+how to get on with ’em. Watch him peckin’ about there an’ lookin’ round
+at us now an’ again. He knows we’re talkin’ about him.”
+
+It was the queerest thing in the world to see the old fellow. He looked
+at the plump little scarlet-waistcoated bird as if he were both proud
+and fond of him.
+
+“He’s a conceited one,” he chuckled. “He likes to hear folk talk about
+him. An’ curious—bless me, there never was his like for curiosity an’
+meddlin’. He’s always comin’ to see what I’m plantin’. He knows all th’
+things Mester Craven never troubles hissel’ to find out. He’s th’ head
+gardener, he is.”
+
+The robin hopped about busily pecking the soil and now and then stopped
+and looked at them a little. Mary thought his black dewdrop eyes gazed
+at her with great curiosity. It really seemed as if he were finding out
+all about her. The queer feeling in her heart increased.
+
+“Where did the rest of the brood fly to?” she asked.
+
+“There’s no knowin’. The old ones turn ’em out o’ their nest an’ make
+’em fly an’ they’re scattered before you know it. This one was a
+knowin’ one an’ he knew he was lonely.”
+
+Mistress Mary went a step nearer to the robin and looked at him very
+hard.
+
+“I’m lonely,” she said.
+
+She had not known before that this was one of the things which made her
+feel sour and cross. She seemed to find it out when the robin looked at
+her and she looked at the robin.
+
+The old gardener pushed his cap back on his bald head and stared at her
+a minute.
+
+“Art tha’ th’ little wench from India?” he asked.
+
+Mary nodded.
+
+“Then no wonder tha’rt lonely. Tha’lt be lonlier before tha’s done,” he
+said.
+
+He began to dig again, driving his spade deep into the rich black
+garden soil while the robin hopped about very busily employed.
+
+“What is your name?” Mary inquired.
+
+He stood up to answer her.
+
+“Ben Weatherstaff,” he answered, and then he added with a surly
+chuckle, “I’m lonely mysel’ except when he’s with me,” and he jerked
+his thumb toward the robin. “He’s th’ only friend I’ve got.”
+
+“I have no friends at all,” said Mary. “I never had. My Ayah didn’t
+like me and I never played with anyone.”
+
+It is a Yorkshire habit to say what you think with blunt frankness, and
+old Ben Weatherstaff was a Yorkshire moor man.
+
+“Tha’ an’ me are a good bit alike,” he said. “We was wove out of th’
+same cloth. We’re neither of us good lookin’ an’ we’re both of us as
+sour as we look. We’ve got the same nasty tempers, both of us, I’ll
+warrant.”
+
+This was plain speaking, and Mary Lennox had never heard the truth
+about herself in her life. Native servants always salaamed and
+submitted to you, whatever you did. She had never thought much about
+her looks, but she wondered if she was as unattractive as Ben
+Weatherstaff and she also wondered if she looked as sour as he had
+looked before the robin came. She actually began to wonder also if she
+was “nasty tempered.” She felt uncomfortable.
+
+Suddenly a clear rippling little sound broke out near her and she
+turned round. She was standing a few feet from a young apple-tree and
+the robin had flown on to one of its branches and had burst out into a
+scrap of a song. Ben Weatherstaff laughed outright.
+
+“What did he do that for?” asked Mary.
+
+“He’s made up his mind to make friends with thee,” replied Ben. “Dang
+me if he hasn’t took a fancy to thee.”
+
+“To me?” said Mary, and she moved toward the little tree softly and
+looked up.
+
+“Would you make friends with me?” she said to the robin just as if she
+was speaking to a person. “Would you?” And she did not say it either in
+her hard little voice or in her imperious Indian voice, but in a tone
+so soft and eager and coaxing that Ben Weatherstaff was as surprised as
+she had been when she heard him whistle.
+
+“Why,” he cried out, “tha’ said that as nice an’ human as if tha’ was a
+real child instead of a sharp old woman. Tha’ said it almost like
+Dickon talks to his wild things on th’ moor.”
+
+“Do you know Dickon?” Mary asked, turning round rather in a hurry.
+
+“Everybody knows him. Dickon’s wanderin’ about everywhere. Th’ very
+blackberries an’ heather-bells knows him. I warrant th’ foxes shows him
+where their cubs lies an’ th’ skylarks doesn’t hide their nests from
+him.”
+
+Mary would have liked to ask some more questions. She was almost as
+curious about Dickon as she was about the deserted garden. But just
+that moment the robin, who had ended his song, gave a little shake of
+his wings, spread them and flew away. He had made his visit and had
+other things to do.
+
+“He has flown over the wall!” Mary cried out, watching him. “He has
+flown into the orchard—he has flown across the other wall—into the
+garden where there is no door!”
+
+“He lives there,” said old Ben. “He came out o’ th’ egg there. If he’s
+courtin’, he’s makin’ up to some young madam of a robin that lives
+among th’ old rose-trees there.”
+
+“Rose-trees,” said Mary. “Are there rose-trees?”
+
+Ben Weatherstaff took up his spade again and began to dig.
+
+“There was ten year’ ago,” he mumbled.
+
+“I should like to see them,” said Mary. “Where is the green door? There
+must be a door somewhere.”
+
+Ben drove his spade deep and looked as uncompanionable as he had looked
+when she first saw him.
+
+“There was ten year’ ago, but there isn’t now,” he said.
+
+“No door!” cried Mary. “There must be.”
+
+“None as anyone can find, an’ none as is anyone’s business. Don’t you
+be a meddlesome wench an’ poke your nose where it’s no cause to go.
+Here, I must go on with my work. Get you gone an’ play you. I’ve no
+more time.”
+
+And he actually stopped digging, threw his spade over his shoulder and
+walked off, without even glancing at her or saying good-by.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR
+
+
+At first each day which passed by for Mary Lennox was exactly like the
+others. Every morning she awoke in her tapestried room and found Martha
+kneeling upon the hearth building her fire; every morning she ate her
+breakfast in the nursery which had nothing amusing in it; and after
+each breakfast she 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 she had stared for a while she realized that if she did not go
+out she would have to stay in and do nothing—and so she went out. She
+did not know that this was the best thing she could have done, and she
+did not know that, when she began to walk quickly or even run along the
+paths and down the avenue, she was stirring her slow blood and making
+herself stronger by fighting with the wind which swept down from the
+moor. She ran only to make herself warm, and she hated the wind which
+rushed at her face and roared and held her back as if it were some
+giant she could not see. But the big breaths of rough fresh air blown
+over the heather filled her lungs with something which was good for her
+whole thin body and whipped some red color into her cheeks and
+brightened her dull eyes when she did not know anything about it.
+
+But after a few days spent almost entirely out of doors she wakened one
+morning knowing what it was to be hungry, and when she sat down to her
+breakfast she did not glance disdainfully at her porridge and push it
+away, but took up her spoon and began to eat it and went on eating it
+until her bowl was empty.
+
+“Tha’ got on well enough with that this mornin’, didn’t tha’?” said
+Martha.
+
+“It tastes nice today,” said Mary, feeling a little surprised herself.
+
+“It’s th’ air of th’ moor that’s givin’ thee stomach for tha’
+victuals,” answered Martha. “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 yeller.”
+
+“I don’t play,” said Mary. “I have nothing to play with.”
+
+“Nothin’ to play with!” exclaimed Martha. “Our children plays with
+sticks and stones. They just runs about an’ shouts an’ looks at
+things.” Mary did not shout, but she looked at things. There was
+nothing else to do. She walked round and round the gardens and wandered
+about the paths in the park. Sometimes she looked for Ben Weatherstaff,
+but though several times she saw him at work he was too busy to look at
+her or was too surly. Once when she was walking toward him he picked up
+his spade and turned away as if he did it on purpose.
+
+One place she 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 she had talked to Ben Weatherstaff, Mary stopped to
+notice this and wondered why it was so. She had just paused and was
+looking up at a long spray of ivy swinging in the wind when she saw a
+gleam of scarlet and heard a brilliant chirp, and there, on the top of
+the wall, perched Ben Weatherstaff’s robin redbreast, tilting forward
+to look at her with his small head on one side.
+
+“Oh!” she cried out, “is it you—is it you?” And it did not seem at all
+queer to her that she spoke to him as if she were sure that he would
+understand and answer her.
+
+He did answer. He twittered and chirped and hopped along the wall as if
+he were telling her all sorts of things. It seemed to Mistress Mary as
+if she understood him, too, though he was not speaking in words. It was
+as if he said:
+
+“Good morning! Isn’t the wind nice? Isn’t the sun nice? Isn’t
+everything nice? Let us both chirp and hop and twitter. Come on! Come
+on!”
+
+Mary began to laugh, and as he hopped and took little flights along the
+wall she ran after him. Poor little thin, sallow, ugly Mary—she
+actually looked almost pretty for a moment.
+
+“I like you! I like you!” she cried out, pattering down the walk; and
+she chirped and tried to whistle, which last she did not know how to do
+in the least. But the robin seemed to be quite satisfied and chirped
+and whistled back at her. At last he spread his wings and made a
+darting flight to the top of a tree, where he perched and sang loudly.
+
+That reminded Mary of the first time she had seen him. He had been
+swinging on a tree-top then and she had been standing in the orchard.
+Now she was on the other side of the orchard and standing in the path
+outside a wall—much lower down—and there was the same tree inside.
+
+“It’s in the garden no one can go into,” she said to herself. “It’s the
+garden without a door. He lives in there. How I wish I could see what
+it is like!”
+
+She ran up the walk to the green door she had entered the first
+morning. Then she ran down the path through the other door and then
+into the orchard, and when she stood and looked up there was the tree
+on the other side of the wall, and there was the robin just finishing
+his song and beginning to preen his feathers with his beak.
+
+“It is the garden,” she said. “I am sure it is.”
+
+She walked round and looked closely at that side of the orchard wall,
+but she only found what she had found before—that there was no door in
+it. Then she ran through the kitchen-gardens again and out into the
+walk outside the long ivy-covered wall, and she walked to the end of it
+and looked at it, but there was no door; and then she walked to the
+other end, looking again, but there was no door.
+
+“It’s very queer,” she said. “Ben Weatherstaff said there was no door
+and there is no door. But there must have been one ten years ago,
+because Mr. Craven buried the key.”
+
+This gave her so much to think of that she began to be quite interested
+and feel that she was not sorry that she had come to Misselthwaite
+Manor. In India she had always felt hot and too languid to care much
+about anything. The fact was that the fresh wind from the moor had
+begun to blow the cobwebs out of her young brain and to waken her up a
+little.
+
+She stayed out of doors nearly all day, and when she sat down to her
+supper at night she felt hungry and drowsy and comfortable. She did not
+feel cross when Martha chattered away. She felt as if she rather liked
+to hear her, and at last she thought she would ask her a question. She
+asked it after she had finished her supper and had sat down on the
+hearth-rug before the fire.
+
+“Why did Mr. Craven hate the garden?” she said.
+
+She had made Martha stay with her and Martha had not objected at all.
+She was very young, and used to a crowded cottage full of brothers and
+sisters, and she found it dull in the great servants’ hall downstairs
+where the footman and upper-housemaids made fun of her Yorkshire speech
+and looked upon her as a common little thing, and sat and whispered
+among themselves. Martha liked to talk, and the strange child who had
+lived in India, and been waited upon by “blacks,” was novelty enough to
+attract her.
+
+She sat down on the hearth herself without waiting to be asked.
+
+“Art tha’ thinkin’ about that garden yet?” she said. “I knew tha’
+would. That was just the way with me when I first heard about it.”
+
+“Why did he hate it?” Mary persisted.
+
+Martha tucked her feet under her and made herself quite comfortable.
+
+“Listen to th’ wind wutherin’ round the house,” she said. “You could
+bare stand up on the moor if you was out on it tonight.”
+
+Mary did not know what “wutherin’” meant until she listened, and then
+she understood. It must mean that hollow shuddering sort of roar which
+rushed round and round the house as if the giant no one could see were
+buffeting it and beating at the walls and windows to try to break in.
+But one knew he could not get in, and somehow it made one feel very
+safe and warm inside a room with a red coal fire.
+
+“But why did he hate it so?” she asked, after she had listened. She
+intended to know if Martha did.
+
+Then Martha gave up her store of knowledge.
+
+“Mind,” she said, “Mrs. Medlock said it’s not to be talked about.
+There’s lots o’ things in this place that’s not to be talked over.
+That’s Mr. Craven’s orders. His troubles are none servants’ business,
+he says. But for th’ garden he wouldn’t be like he is. It was Mrs.
+Craven’s garden that she had made when first they were married an’ she
+just loved it, an’ they used to ’tend the flowers themselves. An’ none
+o’ th’ gardeners was ever let to go in. Him an’ her used to go in an’
+shut th’ door an’ stay there hours an’ hours, readin’ and talkin’. An’
+she was just a bit of a girl an’ there was an old tree with a branch
+bent like a seat on it. An’ she made roses grow over it an’ she used to
+sit there. But one day when she was sittin’ there th’ branch broke an’
+she fell on th’ ground an’ was hurt so bad that next day she died. Th’
+doctors thought he’d go out o’ his mind an’ die, too. That’s why he
+hates it. No one’s never gone in since, an’ he won’t let anyone talk
+about it.”
+
+Mary did not ask any more questions. She looked at the red fire and
+listened to the wind “wutherin’.” It seemed to be “wutherin’” louder
+than ever.
+
+At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things
+had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor.
+She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had
+understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm;
+she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she
+had found out what it was to be sorry for someone.
+
+But as she was listening to the wind she began to listen to something
+else. She did not know what it was, because at first she could scarcely
+distinguish it from the wind itself. It was a curious sound—it seemed
+almost as if a child were crying somewhere. Sometimes the wind sounded
+rather like a child crying, but presently Mistress Mary felt quite sure
+this sound was inside the house, not outside it. It was far away, but
+it was inside. She turned round and looked at Martha.
+
+“Do you hear anyone crying?” she said.
+
+Martha suddenly looked confused.
+
+“No,” she answered. “It’s th’ wind. Sometimes it sounds like as if
+someone was lost on th’ moor an’ wailin’. It’s got all sorts o’
+sounds.”
+
+“But listen,” said Mary. “It’s in the house—down one of those long
+corridors.”
+
+And at that very moment a door must have been opened somewhere
+downstairs; for a great rushing draft blew along the passage and the
+door of the room they sat in was blown open with a crash, and as they
+both jumped to their feet the light was blown out and the crying sound
+was swept down the far corridor so that it was to be heard more plainly
+than ever.
+
+“There!” said Mary. “I told you so! It is someone crying—and it isn’t a
+grown-up person.”
+
+Martha ran and shut the door and turned the key, but before she did it
+they both heard the sound of a door in some far passage shutting with a
+bang, and then everything was quiet, for even the wind ceased
+“wutherin’” for a few moments.
+
+“It was th’ wind,” said Martha stubbornly. “An’ if it wasn’t, it was
+little Betty Butterworth, th’ scullery-maid. She’s had th’ toothache
+all day.”
+
+But something troubled and awkward in her manner made Mistress Mary
+stare very hard at her. She did not believe she was speaking the truth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+“THERE WAS SOMEONE CRYING—THERE WAS!”
+
+
+The next day the rain poured down in torrents again, and when Mary
+looked out of her window the moor was almost hidden by gray mist and
+cloud. There could be no going out today.
+
+“What do you do in your cottage when it rains like this?” she asked
+Martha.
+
+“Try to keep from under each other’s feet mostly,” Martha answered.
+“Eh! there does seem a lot of us then. Mother’s a good-tempered woman
+but she gets fair moithered. The biggest ones goes out in th’ cow-shed
+and plays there. Dickon he doesn’t mind th’ wet. He goes out just th’
+same as if th’ sun was shinin’. He says he sees things on rainy days as
+doesn’t show when it’s fair weather. He once found a little fox cub
+half drowned in its hole and he brought it home in th’ bosom of his
+shirt to keep it warm. Its mother had been killed nearby an’ th’ hole
+was swum out an’ th’ rest o’ th’ litter was dead. He’s got it at home
+now. He found a half-drowned young crow another time an’ he brought it
+home, too, an’ tamed it. It’s named Soot because it’s so black, an’ it
+hops an’ flies about with him everywhere.”
+
+The time had come when Mary had forgotten to resent Martha’s familiar
+talk. She had even begun to find it interesting and to be sorry when
+she stopped or went away. The stories she had been told by her Ayah
+when she lived in India had been quite unlike those Martha had to tell
+about the moorland cottage which held fourteen people who lived in four
+little rooms and never had quite enough to eat. The children seemed to
+tumble about and amuse themselves like a litter of rough, good-natured
+collie puppies. Mary was most attracted by the mother and Dickon. When
+Martha told stories of what “mother” said or did they always sounded
+comfortable.
+
+“If I had a raven or a fox cub I could play with it,” said Mary. “But I
+have nothing.”
+
+Martha looked perplexed.
+
+“Can tha’ knit?” she asked.
+
+“No,” answered Mary.
+
+“Can tha’ sew?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Can tha’ read?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then why doesn’t tha read somethin’, or learn a bit o’ spellin’?
+Tha’st old enough to be learnin’ thy book a good bit now.”
+
+“I haven’t any books,” said Mary. “Those I had were left in India.”
+
+“That’s a pity,” said Martha. “If Mrs. Medlock’d let thee go into th’
+library, there’s thousands o’ books there.”
+
+Mary did not ask where the library was, because she was suddenly
+inspired by a new idea. She made up her mind to go and find it herself.
+She was not troubled about Mrs. Medlock. Mrs. Medlock seemed always to
+be in her comfortable housekeeper’s sitting-room downstairs. In this
+queer place one scarcely ever saw anyone at all. In fact, there was no
+one to see but the servants, and when their master was away they lived
+a luxurious life below stairs, where there was a huge kitchen hung
+about with shining brass and pewter, and a large servants’ hall where
+there were four or five abundant meals eaten every day, and where a
+great deal of lively romping went on when Mrs. Medlock was out of the
+way.
+
+Mary’s meals were served regularly, and Martha waited on her, but no
+one troubled themselves about her in the least. Mrs. Medlock came and
+looked at her every day or two, but no one inquired what she did or
+told her what to do. She supposed that perhaps this was the English way
+of treating children. In India she had always been attended by her
+Ayah, who had followed her about and waited on her, hand and foot. She
+had often been tired of her company. Now she was followed by nobody and
+was learning to dress herself because Martha looked as though she
+thought she was silly and stupid when she wanted to have things handed
+to her and put on.
+
+“Hasn’t tha’ got good sense?” she said once, when Mary had stood
+waiting for her to put on her gloves for her. “Our Susan Ann is twice
+as sharp as thee an’ she’s only four year’ old. Sometimes tha’ looks
+fair soft in th’ head.”
+
+Mary had worn her contrary scowl for an hour after that, but it made
+her think several entirely new things.
+
+She stood at the window for about ten minutes this morning after Martha
+had swept up the hearth for the last time and gone downstairs. She was
+thinking over the new idea which had come to her when she heard of the
+library. She did not care very much about the library itself, because
+she had read very few books; but to hear of it brought back to her mind
+the hundred rooms with closed doors. She wondered if they were all
+really locked and what she would find if she could get into any of
+them. Were there a hundred really? Why shouldn’t she go and see how
+many doors she could count? It would be something to do on this morning
+when she could not go out. She had never been taught to ask permission
+to do things, and she knew nothing at all about authority, so she would
+not have thought it necessary to ask Mrs. Medlock if she might walk
+about the house, even if she had seen her.
+
+She opened the door of the room and went into the corridor, and then
+she began her wanderings. It was a long corridor and it branched into
+other corridors and it led her up short flights of steps which mounted
+to others again. There were doors and doors, and there were pictures on
+the walls. Sometimes they were pictures of dark, curious landscapes,
+but oftenest they were portraits of men and women in queer, grand
+costumes made of satin and velvet. She found herself in one long
+gallery whose walls were covered with these portraits. She had never
+thought there could be so many in any house. She walked slowly down
+this place and stared at the faces which also seemed to stare at her.
+She felt as if they were wondering what a little girl from India was
+doing in their house. Some were pictures of children—little girls in
+thick satin frocks which reached to their feet and stood out about
+them, and boys with puffed sleeves and lace collars and long hair, or
+with big ruffs around their necks. She always stopped to look at the
+children, and wonder what their names were, and where they had gone,
+and why they wore such odd clothes. There was a stiff, plain little
+girl rather like herself. She wore a green brocade dress and held a
+green parrot on her finger. Her eyes had a sharp, curious look.
+
+“Where do you live now?” said Mary aloud to her. “I wish you were
+here.”
+
+Surely no other little girl ever spent such a queer morning. It seemed
+as if there was no one in all the huge rambling house but her own small
+self, wandering about upstairs and down, through narrow passages and
+wide ones, where it seemed to her that no one but herself had ever
+walked. Since so many rooms had been built, people must have lived in
+them, but it all seemed so empty that she could not quite believe it
+true.
+
+It was not until she climbed to the second floor that she thought of
+turning the handle of a door. All the doors were shut, as Mrs. Medlock
+had said they were, but at last she put her hand on the handle of one
+of them and turned it. She was almost frightened for a moment when she
+felt that it turned without difficulty and that when she pushed upon
+the door itself it slowly and heavily opened. It was a massive door and
+opened into a big bedroom. There were embroidered hangings on the wall,
+and inlaid furniture such as she had seen in India stood about the
+room. A broad window with leaded panes looked out upon the moor; and
+over the mantel was another portrait of the stiff, plain little girl
+who seemed to stare at her more curiously than ever.
+
+“Perhaps she slept here once,” said Mary. “She stares at me so that she
+makes me feel queer.”
+
+After that she opened more doors and more. She saw so many rooms that
+she became quite tired and began to think that there must be a hundred,
+though she had not counted them. In all of them there were old pictures
+or old tapestries with strange scenes worked on them. There were
+curious pieces of furniture and curious ornaments in nearly all of
+them.
+
+In one room, which looked like a lady’s sitting-room, the hangings were
+all embroidered velvet, and in a cabinet were about a hundred little
+elephants made of ivory. They were of different sizes, and some had
+their mahouts or palanquins on their backs. Some were much bigger than
+the others and some were so tiny that they seemed only babies. Mary had
+seen carved ivory in India and she knew all about elephants. She opened
+the door of the cabinet and stood on a footstool and played with these
+for quite a long time. When she got tired she set the elephants in
+order and shut the door of the cabinet.
+
+In all her wanderings through the long corridors and the empty rooms,
+she had seen nothing alive; but in this room she saw something. Just
+after she had closed the cabinet door she heard a tiny rustling sound.
+It made her jump and look around at the sofa by the fireplace, from
+which it seemed to come. In the corner of the sofa there was a cushion,
+and in the velvet which covered it there was a hole, and out of the
+hole peeped a tiny head with a pair of frightened eyes in it.
+
+Mary crept softly across the room to look. The bright eyes belonged to
+a little gray mouse, and the mouse had eaten a hole into the cushion
+and made a comfortable nest there. Six baby mice were cuddled up asleep
+near her. If there was no one else alive in the hundred rooms there
+were seven mice who did not look lonely at all.
+
+“If they wouldn’t be so frightened I would take them back with me,”
+said Mary.
+
+She had wandered about long enough to feel too tired to wander any
+farther, and she turned back. Two or three times she lost her way by
+turning down the wrong corridor and was obliged to ramble up and down
+until she found the right one; but at last she reached her own floor
+again, though she was some distance from her own room and did not know
+exactly where she was.
+
+“I believe I have taken a wrong turning again,” she said, standing
+still at what seemed the end of a short passage with tapestry on the
+wall. “I don’t know which way to go. How still everything is!”
+
+It was while she was standing here and just after she had said this
+that the stillness was broken by a sound. It was another cry, but not
+quite like the one she had heard last night; it was only a short one, a
+fretful childish whine muffled by passing through walls.
+
+“It’s nearer than it was,” said Mary, her heart beating rather faster.
+“And it _is_ crying.”
+
+She put her hand accidentally upon the tapestry near her, and then
+sprang back, feeling quite startled. The tapestry was the covering of a
+door which fell open and showed her that there was another part of the
+corridor behind it, and Mrs. Medlock was coming up it with her bunch of
+keys in her hand and a very cross look on her face.
+
+“What are you doing here?” she said, and she took Mary by the arm and
+pulled her away. “What did I tell you?”
+
+“I turned round the wrong corner,” explained Mary. “I didn’t know which
+way to go and I heard someone crying.” She quite hated Mrs. Medlock at
+the moment, but she hated her more the next.
+
+“You didn’t hear anything of the sort,” said the housekeeper. “You come
+along back to your own nursery or I’ll box your ears.”
+
+And she took her by the arm and half pushed, half pulled her up one
+passage and down another until she pushed her in at the door of her own
+room.
+
+“Now,” she said, “you stay where you’re told to stay or you’ll find
+yourself locked up. The master had better get you a governess, same as
+he said he would. You’re one that needs someone to look sharp after
+you. I’ve got enough to do.”
+
+She went out of the room and slammed the door after her, and Mary went
+and sat on the hearth-rug, pale with rage. She did not cry, but ground
+her teeth.
+
+“There _was_ someone crying—there _was_—there _was!_” she said to
+herself.
+
+She had heard it twice now, and sometime she would find out. She had
+found out a great deal this morning. She felt as if she had been on a
+long journey, and at any rate she had had something to amuse her all
+the time, and she had played with the ivory elephants and had seen the
+gray mouse and its babies in their nest in the velvet cushion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+THE KEY TO THE GARDEN
+
+
+Two days after this, when Mary opened her eyes she sat upright in bed
+immediately, and called to Martha.
+
+“Look at the moor! Look at the moor!”
+
+The rainstorm had ended and the gray mist and clouds had been swept
+away in the night by the wind. The wind itself had ceased and a
+brilliant, deep blue sky arched high over the moorland. Never, never
+had Mary dreamed of a sky so blue. In India skies were hot and blazing;
+this was of a deep cool blue which almost seemed to sparkle like the
+waters of some lovely bottomless lake, and here and there, high, high
+in the arched blueness floated small clouds of snow-white fleece. The
+far-reaching world of the moor itself looked softly blue instead of
+gloomy purple-black or awful dreary gray.
+
+“Aye,” said Martha with a cheerful grin. “Th’ storm’s over for a bit.
+It does like this at this time o’ th’ year. It goes off in a night like
+it was pretendin’ it had never been here an’ never meant to come again.
+That’s because th’ springtime’s on its way. It’s a long way off yet,
+but it’s comin’.”
+
+“I thought perhaps it always rained or looked dark in England,” Mary
+said.
+
+“Eh! no!” said Martha, sitting up on her heels among her black lead
+brushes. “Nowt o’ th’ soart!”
+
+“What does that mean?” asked Mary seriously. In India the natives spoke
+different dialects which only a few people understood, so she was not
+surprised when Martha used words she did not know.
+
+Martha laughed as she had done the first morning.
+
+“There now,” she said. “I’ve talked broad Yorkshire again like Mrs.
+Medlock said I mustn’t. ‘Nowt o’ th’ soart’ means
+‘nothin’-of-the-sort,’” slowly and carefully, “but it takes so long to
+say it. Yorkshire’s th’ sunniest place on earth when it is sunny. I
+told thee tha’d like th’ moor after a bit. Just you wait till you see
+th’ gold-colored gorse blossoms an’ th’ blossoms o’ th’ broom, an’ th’
+heather flowerin’, all purple bells, an’ hundreds o’ butterflies
+flutterin’ an’ bees hummin’ an’ skylarks soarin’ up an’ singin’. You’ll
+want to get out on it at sunrise an’ live out on it all day like Dickon
+does.”
+
+“Could I ever get there?” asked Mary wistfully, looking through her
+window at the far-off blue. It was so new and big and wonderful and
+such a heavenly color.
+
+“I don’t know,” answered Martha. “Tha’s never used tha’ legs since tha’
+was born, it seems to me. Tha’ couldn’t walk five mile. It’s five mile
+to our cottage.”
+
+“I should like to see your cottage.”
+
+Martha stared at her a moment curiously before she took up her
+polishing brush and began to rub the grate again. She was thinking that
+the small plain face did not look quite as sour at this moment as it
+had done the first morning she saw it. It looked just a trifle like
+little Susan Ann’s when she wanted something very much.
+
+“I’ll ask my mother about it,” she said. “She’s one o’ them that nearly
+always sees a way to do things. It’s my day out today an’ I’m goin’
+home. Eh! I am glad. Mrs. Medlock thinks a lot o’ mother. Perhaps she
+could talk to her.”
+
+“I like your mother,” said Mary.
+
+“I should think tha’ did,” agreed Martha, polishing away.
+
+“I’ve never seen her,” said Mary.
+
+“No, tha’ hasn’t,” replied Martha.
+
+She sat up on her heels again and rubbed the end of her nose with the
+back of her hand as if puzzled for a moment, but she ended quite
+positively.
+
+“Well, she’s that sensible an’ hard workin’ an’ good-natured an’ clean
+that no one could help likin’ her whether they’d seen her or not. When
+I’m goin’ home to her on my day out I just jump for joy when I’m
+crossin’ the moor.”
+
+“I like Dickon,” added Mary. “And I’ve never seen him.”
+
+“Well,” said Martha stoutly, “I’ve told thee that th’ very birds likes
+him an’ th’ rabbits an’ wild sheep an’ ponies, an’ th’ foxes
+themselves. I wonder,” staring at her reflectively, “what Dickon would
+think of thee?”
+
+“He wouldn’t like me,” said Mary in her stiff, cold little way. “No one
+does.”
+
+Martha looked reflective again.
+
+“How does tha’ like thysel’?” she inquired, really quite as if she were
+curious to know.
+
+Mary hesitated a moment and thought it over.
+
+“Not at all—really,” she answered. “But I never thought of that
+before.”
+
+Martha grinned a little as if at some homely recollection.
+
+“Mother said that to me once,” she said. “She was at her wash-tub an’ I
+was in a bad temper an’ talkin’ ill of folk, an’ she turns round on me
+an’ says: ‘Tha’ young vixen, tha’! There tha’ stands sayin’ tha’
+doesn’t like this one an’ tha’ doesn’t like that one. How does tha’
+like thysel’?’ It made me laugh an’ it brought me to my senses in a
+minute.”
+
+She went away in high spirits as soon as she had given Mary her
+breakfast. She was going to walk five miles across the moor to the
+cottage, and she was going to help her mother with the washing and do
+the week’s baking and enjoy herself thoroughly.
+
+Mary felt lonelier than ever when she knew she was no longer in the
+house. She went out into the garden as quickly as possible, and the
+first thing she did was to run round and round the fountain flower
+garden ten times. She counted the times carefully and when she had
+finished she felt in better spirits. The sunshine made the whole place
+look different. The high, deep, blue sky arched over Misselthwaite as
+well as over the moor, and she kept lifting her face and looking up
+into it, trying to imagine what it would be like to lie down on one of
+the little snow-white clouds and float about. She went into the first
+kitchen-garden and found Ben Weatherstaff working there with two other
+gardeners. The change in the weather seemed to have done him good. He
+spoke to her of his own accord.
+
+“Springtime’s comin,’” he said. “Cannot tha’ smell it?”
+
+Mary sniffed and thought she could.
+
+“I smell something nice and fresh and damp,” she said.
+
+“That’s th’ good rich earth,” he answered, digging away. “It’s in a
+good humor makin’ ready to grow things. It’s glad when plantin’ time
+comes. It’s dull in th’ winter when it’s got nowt to do. In th’ flower
+gardens out there things will be stirrin’ down below in th’ dark. Th’
+sun’s warmin’ ’em. You’ll see bits o’ green spikes stickin’ out o’ th’
+black earth after a bit.”
+
+“What will they be?” asked Mary.
+
+“Crocuses an’ snowdrops an’ daffydowndillys. Has tha’ never seen them?”
+
+“No. Everything is hot, and wet, and green after the rains in India,”
+said Mary. “And I think things grow up in a night.”
+
+“These won’t grow up in a night,” said Weatherstaff. “Tha’ll have to
+wait for ’em. They’ll poke up a bit higher here, an’ push out a spike
+more there, an’ uncurl a leaf this day an’ another that. You watch
+’em.”
+
+“I am going to,” answered Mary.
+
+Very soon she heard the soft rustling flight of wings again and she
+knew at once that the robin had come again. He was very pert and
+lively, and hopped about so close to her feet, and put his head on one
+side and looked at her so slyly that she asked Ben Weatherstaff a
+question.
+
+“Do you think he remembers me?” she said.
+
+“Remembers thee!” said Weatherstaff indignantly. “He knows every
+cabbage stump in th’ gardens, let alone th’ people. He’s never seen a
+little wench here before, an’ he’s bent on findin’ out all about thee.
+Tha’s no need to try to hide anything from _him_.”
+
+“Are things stirring down below in the dark in that garden where he
+lives?” Mary inquired.
+
+“What garden?” grunted Weatherstaff, becoming surly again.
+
+“The one where the old rose-trees are.” She could not help asking,
+because she wanted so much to know. “Are all the flowers dead, or do
+some of them come again in the summer? Are there ever any roses?”
+
+“Ask him,” said Ben Weatherstaff, hunching his shoulders toward the
+robin. “He’s the only one as knows. No one else has seen inside it for
+ten year’.”
+
+Ten years was a long time, Mary thought. She had been born ten years
+ago.
+
+She walked away, slowly thinking. She had begun to like the garden just
+as she had begun to like the robin and Dickon and Martha’s mother. She
+was beginning to like Martha, too. That seemed a good many people to
+like—when you were not used to liking. She thought of the robin as one
+of the people. She went to her walk outside the long, ivy-covered wall
+over which she could see the tree-tops; and the second time she walked
+up and down the most interesting and exciting thing happened to her,
+and it was all through Ben Weatherstaff’s robin.
+
+She heard a chirp and a twitter, and when she looked at the bare
+flower-bed at her left side there he was hopping about and pretending
+to peck things out of the earth to persuade her that he had not
+followed her. But she knew he had followed her and the surprise so
+filled her with delight that she almost trembled a little.
+
+“You do remember me!” she cried out. “You do! You are prettier than
+anything else in the world!”
+
+She chirped, and talked, and coaxed and he hopped, and flirted his tail
+and twittered. It was as if he were talking. His red waistcoat was like
+satin and he puffed his tiny breast out and was so fine and so grand
+and so pretty that it was really as if he were showing her how
+important and like a human person a robin could be. Mistress Mary
+forgot that she had ever been contrary in her life when he allowed her
+to draw closer and closer to him, and bend down and talk and try to
+make something like robin sounds.
+
+Oh! to think that he should actually let her come as near to him as
+that! He knew nothing in the world would make her put out her hand
+toward him or startle him in the least tiniest way. He knew it because
+he was a real person—only nicer than any other person in the world. She
+was so happy that she scarcely dared to breathe.
+
+The flower-bed was not quite bare. It was bare of flowers because the
+perennial plants had been cut down for their winter rest, but there
+were tall shrubs and low ones which grew together at the back of the
+bed, and as the robin hopped about under them she saw him hop over a
+small pile of freshly turned up earth. He stopped on it to look for a
+worm. The earth had been turned up because a dog had been trying to dig
+up a mole and he had scratched quite a deep hole.
+
+Mary looked at it, not really knowing why the hole was there, and as
+she looked she saw something almost buried in the newly-turned soil. It
+was something like a ring of rusty iron or brass and when the robin
+flew up into a tree nearby she put out her hand and picked the ring up.
+It was more than a ring, however; it was an old key which looked as if
+it had been buried a long time.
+
+Mistress Mary stood up and looked at it with an almost frightened face
+as it hung from her finger.
+
+“Perhaps it has been buried for ten years,” she said in a whisper.
+“Perhaps it is the key to the garden!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY
+
+
+She looked at the key quite a long time. She turned it over and over,
+and thought about it. As I have said before, she was not a child who
+had been trained to ask permission or consult her elders about things.
+All she thought about the key was that if it was the key to the closed
+garden, and she could find out where the door was, she could perhaps
+open it and see what was inside the walls, and what had happened to the
+old rose-trees. It was because it had been shut up so long that she
+wanted to see it. It seemed as if it must be different from other
+places and that something strange must have happened to it during ten
+years. Besides that, if she liked it she could go into it every day and
+shut the door behind her, and she could make up some play of her own
+and play it quite alone, because nobody would ever know where she was,
+but would think the door was still locked and the key buried in the
+earth. The thought of that pleased her very much.
+
+Living as it were, all by herself in a house with a hundred
+mysteriously closed rooms and having nothing whatever to do to amuse
+herself, had set her inactive brain to working and was actually
+awakening her imagination. There is no doubt that the fresh, strong,
+pure air from the moor had a great deal to do with it. Just as it had
+given her an appetite, and fighting with the wind had stirred her
+blood, so the same things had stirred her mind. In India she had always
+been too hot and languid and weak to care much about anything, but in
+this place she was beginning to care and to want to do new things.
+Already she felt less “contrary,” though she did not know why.
+
+She put the key in her pocket and walked up and down her walk. No one
+but herself ever seemed to come there, so she could walk slowly and
+look at the wall, or, rather, at the ivy growing on it. The ivy was the
+baffling thing. Howsoever carefully she looked she could see nothing
+but thickly growing, glossy, dark green leaves. She was very much
+disappointed. Something of her contrariness came back to her as she
+paced the walk and looked over it at the tree-tops inside. It seemed so
+silly, she said to herself, to be near it and not be able to get in.
+She took the key in her pocket when she went back to the house, and she
+made up her mind that she would always carry it with her when she went
+out, so that if she ever should find the hidden door she would be
+ready.
+
+Mrs. Medlock had allowed Martha to sleep all night at the cottage, but
+she was back at her work in the morning with cheeks redder than ever
+and in the best of spirits.
+
+“I got up at four o’clock,” she said. “Eh! it was pretty on th’ moor
+with th’ birds gettin’ up an’ th’ rabbits scamperin’ about an’ th’ sun
+risin’. I didn’t walk all th’ way. A man gave me a ride in his cart an’
+I did enjoy myself.”
+
+She was full of stories of the delights of her day out. Her mother had
+been glad to see her and they had got the baking and washing all out of
+the way. She had even made each of the children a doughcake with a bit
+of brown sugar in it.
+
+“I had ’em all pipin’ hot when they came in from playin’ on th’ moor.
+An’ th’ cottage all smelt o’ nice, clean hot bakin’ an’ there was a
+good fire, an’ they just shouted for joy. Our Dickon he said our
+cottage was good enough for a king to live in.”
+
+In the evening they had all sat round the fire, and Martha and her
+mother had sewed patches on torn clothes and mended stockings and
+Martha had told them about the little girl who had come from India and
+who had been waited on all her life by what Martha called “blacks”
+until she didn’t know how to put on her own stockings.
+
+“Eh! they did like to hear about you,” said Martha. “They wanted to
+know all about th’ blacks an’ about th’ ship you came in. I couldn’t
+tell ’em enough.”
+
+Mary reflected a little.
+
+“I’ll tell you a great deal more before your next day out,” she said,
+“so that you will have more to talk about. I dare say they would like
+to hear about riding on elephants and camels, and about the officers
+going to hunt tigers.”
+
+“My word!” cried delighted Martha. “It would set ’em clean off their
+heads. Would tha’ really do that, Miss? It would be same as a wild
+beast show like we heard they had in York once.”
+
+“India is quite different from Yorkshire,” Mary said slowly, as she
+thought the matter over. “I never thought of that. Did Dickon and your
+mother like to hear you talk about me?”
+
+“Why, our Dickon’s eyes nearly started out o’ his head, they got that
+round,” answered Martha. “But mother, she was put out about your
+seemin’ to be all by yourself like. She said, ‘Hasn’t Mr. Craven got no
+governess for her, nor no nurse?’ and I said, ‘No, he hasn’t, though
+Mrs. Medlock says he will when he thinks of it, but she says he mayn’t
+think of it for two or three years.’”
+
+“I don’t want a governess,” said Mary sharply.
+
+“But mother says you ought to be learnin’ your book by this time an’
+you ought to have a woman to look after you, an’ she says: ‘Now,
+Martha, you just think how you’d feel yourself, in a big place like
+that, wanderin’ about all alone, an’ no mother. You do your best to
+cheer her up,’ she says, an’ I said I would.”
+
+Mary gave her a long, steady look.
+
+“You do cheer me up,” she said. “I like to hear you talk.”
+
+Presently Martha went out of the room and came back with something held
+in her hands under her apron.
+
+“What does tha’ think,” she said, with a cheerful grin. “I’ve brought
+thee a present.”
+
+“A present!” exclaimed Mistress Mary. How could a cottage full of
+fourteen hungry people give anyone a present!
+
+“A man was drivin’ across the moor peddlin’,” Martha explained. “An’ he
+stopped his cart at our door. He had pots an’ pans an’ odds an’ ends,
+but mother had no money to buy anythin’. Just as he was goin’ away our
+’Lizabeth Ellen called out, ‘Mother, he’s got skippin’-ropes with red
+an’ blue handles.’ An’ mother she calls out quite sudden, ‘Here, stop,
+mister! How much are they?’ An’ he says ‘Tuppence’, an’ mother she
+began fumblin’ in her pocket an’ she says to me, ‘Martha, tha’s brought
+me thy wages like a good lass, an’ I’ve got four places to put every
+penny, but I’m just goin’ to take tuppence out of it to buy that child
+a skippin’-rope,’ an’ she bought one an’ here it is.”
+
+She brought it out from under her apron and exhibited it quite proudly.
+It was a strong, slender rope with a striped red and blue handle at
+each end, but Mary Lennox had never seen a skipping-rope before. She
+gazed at it with a mystified expression.
+
+“What is it for?” she asked curiously.
+
+“For!” cried out Martha. “Does tha’ mean that they’ve not got
+skippin’-ropes in India, for all they’ve got elephants and tigers and
+camels! No wonder most of ’em’s black. This is what it’s for; just
+watch me.”
+
+And she ran into the middle of the room and, taking a handle in each
+hand, began to skip, and skip, and skip, while Mary turned in her chair
+to stare at her, and the queer faces in the old portraits seemed to
+stare at her, too, and wonder what on earth this common little cottager
+had the impudence to be doing under their very noses. But Martha did
+not even see them. The interest and curiosity in Mistress Mary’s face
+delighted her, and she went on skipping and counted as she skipped
+until she had reached a hundred.
+
+“I could skip longer than that,” she said when she stopped. “I’ve
+skipped as much as five hundred when I was twelve, but I wasn’t as fat
+then as I am now, an’ I was in practice.”
+
+Mary got up from her chair beginning to feel excited herself.
+
+“It looks nice,” she said. “Your mother is a kind woman. Do you think I
+could ever skip like that?”
+
+“You just try it,” urged Martha, handing her the skipping-rope. “You
+can’t skip a hundred at first, but if you practice you’ll mount up.
+That’s what mother said. She says, ‘Nothin’ will do her more good than
+skippin’ rope. It’s th’ sensiblest toy a child can have. Let her play
+out in th’ fresh air skippin’ an’ it’ll stretch her legs an’ arms an’
+give her some strength in ’em.’”
+
+It was plain that there was not a great deal of strength in Mistress
+Mary’s arms and legs when she first began to skip. She was not very
+clever at it, but she liked it so much that she did not want to stop.
+
+“Put on tha’ things and run an’ skip out o’ doors,” said Martha.
+“Mother said I must tell you to keep out o’ doors as much as you could,
+even when it rains a bit, so as tha’ wrap up warm.”
+
+Mary put on her coat and hat and took her skipping-rope over her arm.
+She opened the door to go out, and then suddenly thought of something
+and turned back rather slowly.
+
+“Martha,” she said, “they were your wages. It was your two-pence
+really. Thank you.” She said it stiffly because she was not used to
+thanking people or noticing that they did things for her. “Thank you,”
+she said, and held out her hand because she did not know what else to
+do.
+
+Martha gave her hand a clumsy little shake, as if she was not
+accustomed to this sort of thing either. Then she laughed.
+
+“Eh! th’ art a queer, old-womanish thing,” she said. “If tha’d been our
+’Lizabeth Ellen tha’d have given me a kiss.”
+
+Mary looked stiffer than ever.
+
+“Do you want me to kiss you?”
+
+Martha laughed again.
+
+“Nay, not me,” she answered. “If tha’ was different, p’raps tha’d want
+to thysel’. But tha’ isn’t. Run off outside an’ play with thy rope.”
+
+Mistress Mary felt a little awkward as she went out of the room.
+Yorkshire people seemed strange, and Martha was always rather a puzzle
+to her. At first she had disliked her very much, but now she did not.
+The skipping-rope was a wonderful thing. She counted and skipped, and
+skipped and counted, until her cheeks were quite red, and she was more
+interested than she had ever been since she was born. The sun was
+shining and a little wind was blowing—not a rough wind, but one which
+came in delightful little gusts and brought a fresh scent of newly
+turned earth with it. She skipped round the fountain garden, and up one
+walk and down another. She skipped at last into the kitchen-garden and
+saw Ben Weatherstaff digging and talking to his robin, which was
+hopping about him. She skipped down the walk toward him and he lifted
+his head and looked at her with a curious expression. She had wondered
+if he would notice her. She wanted him to see her skip.
+
+“Well!” he exclaimed. “Upon my word. P’raps tha’ art a young ’un, after
+all, an’ p’raps tha’s got child’s blood in thy veins instead of sour
+buttermilk. Tha’s skipped red into thy cheeks as sure as my name’s Ben
+Weatherstaff. I wouldn’t have believed tha’ could do it.”
+
+“I never skipped before,” Mary said. “I’m just beginning. I can only go
+up to twenty.”
+
+“Tha’ keep on,” said Ben. “Tha’ shapes well enough at it for a young
+’un that’s lived with heathen. Just see how he’s watchin’ thee,”
+jerking his head toward the robin. “He followed after thee yesterday.
+He’ll be at it again today. He’ll be bound to find out what th’
+skippin’-rope is. He’s never seen one. Eh!” shaking his head at the
+bird, “tha’ curiosity will be th’ death of thee sometime if tha’
+doesn’t look sharp.”
+
+Mary skipped round all the gardens and round the orchard, resting every
+few minutes. At length she went to her own special walk and made up her
+mind to try if she could skip the whole length of it. It was a good
+long skip and she began slowly, but before she had gone half-way down
+the path she was so hot and breathless that she was obliged to stop.
+She did not mind much, because she had already counted up to thirty.
+She stopped with a little laugh of pleasure, and there, lo and behold,
+was the robin swaying on a long branch of ivy. He had followed her and
+he greeted her with a chirp. As Mary had skipped toward him she felt
+something heavy in her pocket strike against her at each jump, and when
+she saw the robin she laughed again.
+
+“You showed me where the key was yesterday,” she said. “You ought to
+show me the door today; but I don’t believe you know!”
+
+The robin flew from his swinging spray of ivy on to the top of the wall
+and he opened his beak and sang a loud, lovely trill, merely to show
+off. Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when
+he shows off—and they are nearly always doing it.
+
+Mary Lennox had heard a great deal about Magic in her Ayah’s stories,
+and she always said that what happened almost at that moment was Magic.
+
+One of the nice little gusts of wind rushed down the walk, and it was a
+stronger one than the rest. It was strong enough to wave the branches
+of the trees, and it was more than strong enough to sway the trailing
+sprays of untrimmed ivy hanging from the wall. Mary had stepped close
+to the robin, and suddenly the gust of wind swung aside some loose ivy
+trails, and more suddenly still she jumped toward it and caught it in
+her hand. This she did because she had seen something under it—a round
+knob which had been covered by the leaves hanging over it. It was the
+knob of a door.
+
+She put her hands under the leaves and began to pull and push them
+aside. Thick as the ivy hung, it nearly all was a loose and swinging
+curtain, though some had crept over wood and iron. Mary’s heart began
+to thump and her hands to shake a little in her delight and excitement.
+The robin kept singing and twittering away and tilting his head on one
+side, as if he were as excited as she was. What was this under her
+hands which was square and made of iron and which her fingers found a
+hole in?
+
+It was the lock of the door which had been closed ten years and she put
+her hand in her pocket, drew out the key and found it fitted the
+keyhole. She put the key in and turned it. It took two hands to do it,
+but it did turn.
+
+And then she took a long breath and looked behind her up the long walk
+to see if anyone was coming. No one was coming. No one ever did come,
+it seemed, and she took another long breath, because she could not help
+it, and she held back the swinging curtain of ivy and pushed back the
+door which opened slowly—slowly.
+
+Then she slipped through it, and shut it behind her, and stood with her
+back against it, looking about her and breathing quite fast with
+excitement, and wonder, and delight.
+
+She was standing _inside_ the secret garden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANYONE EVER LIVED IN
+
+
+It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place anyone could
+imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless
+stems of climbing roses which were so thick that they were matted
+together. Mary Lennox knew they were roses because she had seen a great
+many roses in India. All the ground was covered with grass of a wintry
+brown and out of it grew clumps of bushes which were surely rosebushes
+if they were alive. There were numbers of standard roses which had so
+spread their branches that they were like little trees. There were
+other trees in the garden, and one of the things which made the place
+look strangest and loveliest was that climbing roses had run all over
+them and swung down long tendrils which made light swaying curtains,
+and here and there they had caught at each other or at a far-reaching
+branch and had crept from one tree to another and made lovely bridges
+of themselves. There were neither leaves nor roses on them now and Mary
+did not know whether they were dead or alive, but their thin gray or
+brown branches and sprays looked like a sort of hazy mantle spreading
+over everything, walls, and trees, and even brown grass, where they had
+fallen from their fastenings and run along the ground. It was this hazy
+tangle from tree to tree which made it all look so mysterious. Mary had
+thought it must be different from other gardens which had not been left
+all by themselves so long; and indeed it was different from any other
+place she had ever seen in her life.
+
+“How still it is!” she whispered. “How still!”
+
+Then she waited a moment and listened at the stillness. The robin, who
+had flown to his treetop, was still as all the rest. He did not even
+flutter his wings; he sat without stirring, and looked at Mary.
+
+“No wonder it is still,” she whispered again. “I am the first person
+who has spoken in here for ten years.”
+
+She moved away from the door, stepping as softly as if she were afraid
+of awakening someone. She was glad that there was grass under her feet
+and that her steps made no sounds. She walked under one of the
+fairy-like gray arches between the trees and looked up at the sprays
+and tendrils which formed them.
+
+“I wonder if they are all quite dead,” she said. “Is it all a quite
+dead garden? I wish it wasn’t.”
+
+If she had been Ben Weatherstaff she could have told whether the wood
+was alive by looking at it, but she could only see that there were only
+gray or brown sprays and branches and none showed any signs of even a
+tiny leaf-bud anywhere.
+
+But she was _inside_ the wonderful garden and she could come through
+the door under the ivy any time and she felt as if she had found a
+world all her own.
+
+The sun was shining inside the four walls and the high arch of blue sky
+over this particular piece of Misselthwaite seemed even more brilliant
+and soft than it was over the moor. The robin flew down from his
+tree-top and hopped about or flew after her from one bush to another.
+He chirped a good deal and had a very busy air, as if he were showing
+her things. Everything was strange and silent and she seemed to be
+hundreds of miles away from anyone, but somehow she did not feel lonely
+at all. All that troubled her was her wish that she knew whether all
+the roses were dead, or if perhaps some of them had lived and might put
+out leaves and buds as the weather got warmer. She did not want it to
+be a quite dead garden. If it were a quite alive garden, how wonderful
+it would be, and what thousands of roses would grow on every side!
+
+Her skipping-rope had hung over her arm when she came in and after she
+had walked about for a while she thought she would skip round the whole
+garden, stopping when she wanted to look at things. There seemed to
+have been grass paths here and there, and in one or two corners there
+were alcoves of evergreen with stone seats or tall moss-covered flower
+urns in them.
+
+As she came near the second of these alcoves she stopped skipping.
+There had once been a flowerbed in it, and she thought she saw
+something sticking out of the black earth—some sharp little pale green
+points. She remembered what Ben Weatherstaff had said and she knelt
+down to look at them.
+
+“Yes, they are tiny growing things and they _might_ be crocuses or
+snowdrops or daffodils,” she whispered.
+
+She bent very close to them and sniffed the fresh scent of the damp
+earth. She liked it very much.
+
+“Perhaps there are some other ones coming up in other places,” she
+said. “I will go all over the garden and look.”
+
+She did not skip, but walked. She went slowly and kept her eyes on the
+ground. She looked in the old border beds and among the grass, and
+after she had gone round, trying to miss nothing, she had found ever so
+many more sharp, pale green points, and she had become quite excited
+again.
+
+“It isn’t a quite dead garden,” she cried out softly to herself. “Even
+if the roses are dead, there are other things alive.”
+
+She did not know anything about gardening, but the grass seemed so
+thick in some of the places where the green points were pushing their
+way through that she thought they did not seem to have room enough to
+grow. She searched about until she found a rather sharp piece of wood
+and knelt down and dug and weeded out the weeds and grass until she
+made nice little clear places around them.
+
+“Now they look as if they could breathe,” she said, after she had
+finished with the first ones. “I am going to do ever so many more. I’ll
+do all I can see. If I haven’t time today I can come tomorrow.”
+
+She went from place to place, and dug and weeded, and enjoyed herself
+so immensely that she was led on from bed to bed and into the grass
+under the trees. The exercise made her so warm that she first threw her
+coat off, and then her hat, and without knowing it she was smiling down
+on to the grass and the pale green points all the time.
+
+The robin was tremendously busy. He was very much pleased to see
+gardening begun on his own estate. He had often wondered at Ben
+Weatherstaff. Where gardening is done all sorts of delightful things to
+eat are turned up with the soil. Now here was this new kind of creature
+who was not half Ben’s size and yet had had the sense to come into his
+garden and begin at once.
+
+Mistress Mary worked in her garden until it was time to go to her
+midday dinner. In fact, she was rather late in remembering, and when
+she put on her coat and hat, and picked up her skipping-rope, she could
+not believe that she had been working two or three hours. She had been
+actually happy all the time; and dozens and dozens of the tiny, pale
+green points were to be seen in cleared places, looking twice as
+cheerful as they had looked before when the grass and weeds had been
+smothering them.
+
+“I shall come back this afternoon,” she said, looking all round at her
+new kingdom, and speaking to the trees and the rose-bushes as if they
+heard her.
+
+Then she ran lightly across the grass, pushed open the slow old door
+and slipped through it under the ivy. She had such red cheeks and such
+bright eyes and ate such a dinner that Martha was delighted.
+
+“Two pieces o’ meat an’ two helps o’ rice puddin’!” she said. “Eh!
+mother will be pleased when I tell her what th’ skippin’-rope’s done
+for thee.”
+
+In the course of her digging with her pointed stick Mistress Mary had
+found herself digging up a sort of white root rather like an onion. She
+had put it back in its place and patted the earth carefully down on it
+and just now she wondered if Martha could tell her what it was.
+
+“Martha,” she said, “what are those white roots that look like onions?”
+
+“They’re bulbs,” answered Martha. “Lots o’ spring flowers grow from
+’em. Th’ very little ones are snowdrops an’ crocuses an’ th’ big ones
+are narcissuses an’ jonquils and daffydowndillys. Th’ biggest of all is
+lilies an’ purple flags. Eh! they are nice. Dickon’s got a whole lot of
+’em planted in our bit o’ garden.”
+
+“Does Dickon know all about them?” asked Mary, a new idea taking
+possession of her.
+
+“Our Dickon can make a flower grow out of a brick walk. Mother says he
+just whispers things out o’ th’ ground.”
+
+“Do bulbs live a long time? Would they live years and years if no one
+helped them?” inquired Mary anxiously.
+
+“They’re things as helps themselves,” said Martha. “That’s why poor
+folk can afford to have ’em. If you don’t trouble ’em, most of ’em’ll
+work away underground for a lifetime an’ spread out an’ have little
+’uns. There’s a place in th’ park woods here where there’s snowdrops by
+thousands. They’re the prettiest sight in Yorkshire when th’ spring
+comes. No one knows when they was first planted.”
+
+“I wish the spring was here now,” said Mary. “I want to see all the
+things that grow in England.”
+
+She had finished her dinner and gone to her favorite seat on the
+hearth-rug.
+
+“I wish—I wish I had a little spade,” she said.
+
+“Whatever does tha’ want a spade for?” asked Martha, laughing. “Art
+tha’ goin’ to take to diggin’? I must tell mother that, too.”
+
+Mary looked at the fire and pondered a little. She must be careful if
+she meant to keep her secret kingdom. She wasn’t doing any harm, but if
+Mr. Craven found out about the open door he would be fearfully angry
+and get a new key and lock it up forevermore. She really could not bear
+that.
+
+“This is such a big lonely place,” she said slowly, as if she were
+turning matters over in her mind. “The house is lonely, and the park is
+lonely, and the gardens are lonely. So many places seem shut up. I
+never did many things in India, but there were more people to look
+at—natives and soldiers marching by—and sometimes bands playing, and my
+Ayah told me stories. There is no one to talk to here except you and
+Ben Weatherstaff. And you have to do your work and Ben Weatherstaff
+won’t speak to me often. I thought if I had a little spade I could dig
+somewhere as he does, and I might make a little garden if he would give
+me some seeds.”
+
+Martha’s face quite lighted up.
+
+“There now!” she exclaimed, “if that wasn’t one of th’ things mother
+said. She says, ‘There’s such a lot o’ room in that big place, why
+don’t they give her a bit for herself, even if she doesn’t plant
+nothin’ but parsley an’ radishes? She’d dig an’ rake away an’ be right
+down happy over it.’ Them was the very words she said.”
+
+“Were they?” said Mary. “How many things she knows, doesn’t she?”
+
+“Eh!” said Martha. “It’s like she says: ‘A woman as brings up twelve
+children learns something besides her A B C. Children’s as good as
+’rithmetic to set you findin’ out things.’”
+
+“How much would a spade cost—a little one?” Mary asked.
+
+“Well,” was Martha’s reflective answer, “at Thwaite village there’s a
+shop or so an’ I saw little garden sets with a spade an’ a rake an’ a
+fork all tied together for two shillings. An’ they was stout enough to
+work with, too.”
+
+“I’ve got more than that in my purse,” said Mary. “Mrs. Morrison gave
+me five shillings and Mrs. Medlock gave me some money from Mr. Craven.”
+
+“Did he remember thee that much?” exclaimed Martha.
+
+“Mrs. Medlock said I was to have a shilling a week to spend. She gives
+me one every Saturday. I didn’t know what to spend it on.”
+
+“My word! that’s riches,” said Martha. “Tha’ can buy anything in th’
+world tha’ wants. Th’ rent of our cottage is only one an’ threepence
+an’ it’s like pullin’ eye-teeth to get it. Now I’ve just thought of
+somethin’,” putting her hands on her hips.
+
+“What?” said Mary eagerly.
+
+“In the shop at Thwaite they sell packages o’ flower-seeds for a penny
+each, and our Dickon he knows which is th’ prettiest ones an’ how to
+make ’em grow. He walks over to Thwaite many a day just for th’ fun of
+it. Does tha’ know how to print letters?” suddenly.
+
+“I know how to write,” Mary answered.
+
+Martha shook her head.
+
+“Our Dickon can only read printin’. If tha’ could print we could write
+a letter to him an’ ask him to go an’ buy th’ garden tools an’ th’
+seeds at th’ same time.”
+
+“Oh! you’re a good girl!” Mary cried. “You are, really! I didn’t know
+you were so nice. I know I can print letters if I try. Let’s ask Mrs.
+Medlock for a pen and ink and some paper.”
+
+“I’ve got some of my own,” said Martha. “I bought ’em so I could print
+a bit of a letter to mother of a Sunday. I’ll go and get it.”
+
+She ran out of the room, and Mary stood by the fire and twisted her
+thin little hands together with sheer pleasure.
+
+“If I have a spade,” she whispered, “I can make the earth nice and soft
+and dig up weeds. If I have seeds and can make flowers grow the garden
+won’t be dead at all—it will come alive.”
+
+She did not go out again that afternoon because when Martha returned
+with her pen and ink and paper she was obliged to clear the table and
+carry the plates and dishes downstairs and when she got into the
+kitchen Mrs. Medlock was there and told her to do something, so Mary
+waited for what seemed to her a long time before she came back. Then it
+was a serious piece of work to write to Dickon. Mary had been taught
+very little because her governesses had disliked her too much to stay
+with her. She could not spell particularly well but she found that she
+could print letters when she tried. This was the letter Martha dictated
+to her:
+
+
+“_My Dear Dickon:_
+
+This comes hoping to find you well as it leaves me at present. Miss
+Mary has plenty of money and will you go to Thwaite and buy her some
+flower seeds and a set of garden tools to make a flower-bed. Pick the
+prettiest ones and easy to grow because she has never done it before
+and lived in India which is different. Give my love to mother and
+everyone of you. Miss Mary is going to tell me a lot more so that on my
+next day out you can hear about elephants and camels and gentlemen
+going hunting lions and tigers.
+
+    “Your loving sister,
+
+                “Martha Phœbe Sowerby.”
+
+“We’ll put the money in th’ envelope an’ I’ll get th’ butcher boy to
+take it in his cart. He’s a great friend o’ Dickon’s,” said Martha.
+
+“How shall I get the things when Dickon buys them?”
+
+“He’ll bring ’em to you himself. He’ll like to walk over this way.”
+
+“Oh!” exclaimed Mary, “then I shall see him! I never thought I should
+see Dickon.”
+
+“Does tha’ want to see him?” asked Martha suddenly, for Mary had looked
+so pleased.
+
+“Yes, I do. I never saw a boy foxes and crows loved. I want to see him
+very much.”
+
+Martha gave a little start, as if she remembered something.
+
+“Now to think,” she broke out, “to think o’ me forgettin’ that there;
+an’ I thought I was goin’ to tell you first thing this mornin’. I asked
+mother—and she said she’d ask Mrs. Medlock her own self.”
+
+“Do you mean—” Mary began.
+
+“What I said Tuesday. Ask her if you might be driven over to our
+cottage some day and have a bit o’ mother’s hot oat cake, an’ butter,
+an’ a glass o’ milk.”
+
+It seemed as if all the interesting things were happening in one day.
+To think of going over the moor in the daylight and when the sky was
+blue! To think of going into the cottage which held twelve children!
+
+“Does she think Mrs. Medlock would let me go?” she asked, quite
+anxiously.
+
+“Aye, she thinks she would. She knows what a tidy woman mother is and
+how clean she keeps the cottage.”
+
+“If I went I should see your mother as well as Dickon,” said Mary,
+thinking it over and liking the idea very much. “She doesn’t seem to be
+like the mothers in India.”
+
+Her work in the garden and the excitement of the afternoon ended by
+making her feel quiet and thoughtful. Martha stayed with her until
+tea-time, but they sat in comfortable quiet and talked very little. But
+just before Martha went downstairs for the tea-tray, Mary asked a
+question.
+
+“Martha,” she said, “has the scullery-maid had the toothache again
+today?”
+
+Martha certainly started slightly.
+
+“What makes thee ask that?” she said.
+
+“Because when I waited so long for you to come back I opened the door
+and walked down the corridor to see if you were coming. And I heard
+that far-off crying again, just as we heard it the other night. There
+isn’t a wind today, so you see it couldn’t have been the wind.”
+
+“Eh!” said Martha restlessly. “Tha’ mustn’t go walkin’ about in
+corridors an’ listenin’. Mr. Craven would be that there angry there’s
+no knowin’ what he’d do.”
+
+“I wasn’t listening,” said Mary. “I was just waiting for you—and I
+heard it. That’s three times.”
+
+“My word! There’s Mrs. Medlock’s bell,” said Martha, and she almost ran
+out of the room.
+
+“It’s the strangest house anyone ever lived in,” said Mary drowsily, as
+she dropped her head on the cushioned seat of the armchair near her.
+Fresh air, and digging, and skipping-rope had made her feel so
+comfortably tired that she fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+DICKON
+
+
+The sun shone down for nearly a week on the secret garden. The Secret
+Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked
+the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful
+old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like
+being shut out of the world in some fairy place. The few books she had
+read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret
+gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them
+for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid. She
+had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming
+wider awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite. She was beginning
+to like to be out of doors; she no longer hated the wind, but enjoyed
+it. She could run faster, and longer, and she could skip up to a
+hundred. The bulbs in the secret garden must have been much astonished.
+Such nice clear places were made round them that they had all the
+breathing space they wanted, and really, if Mistress Mary had known it,
+they began to cheer up under the dark earth and work tremendously. The
+sun could get at them and warm them, and when the rain came down it
+could reach them at once, so they began to feel very much alive.
+
+Mary was an odd, determined little person, and now she had something
+interesting to be determined about, she was very much absorbed, indeed.
+She worked and dug and pulled up weeds steadily, only becoming more
+pleased with her work every hour instead of tiring of it. It seemed to
+her like a fascinating sort of play. She found many more of the
+sprouting pale green points than she had ever hoped to find. They
+seemed to be starting up everywhere and each day she was sure she found
+tiny new ones, some so tiny that they barely peeped above the earth.
+There were so many that she remembered what Martha had said about the
+“snowdrops by the thousands,” and about bulbs spreading and making new
+ones. These had been left to themselves for ten years and perhaps they
+had spread, like the snowdrops, into thousands. She wondered how long
+it would be before they showed that they were flowers. Sometimes she
+stopped digging to look at the garden and try to imagine what it would
+be like when it was covered with thousands of lovely things in bloom.
+
+During that week of sunshine, she became more intimate with Ben
+Weatherstaff. She surprised him several times by seeming to start up
+beside him as if she sprang out of the earth. The truth was that she
+was afraid that he would pick up his tools and go away if he saw her
+coming, so she always walked toward him as silently as possible. But,
+in fact, he did not object to her as strongly as he had at first.
+Perhaps he was secretly rather flattered by her evident desire for his
+elderly company. Then, also, she was more civil than she had been. He
+did not know that when she first saw him she spoke to him as she would
+have spoken to a native, and had not known that a cross, sturdy old
+Yorkshire man was not accustomed to salaam to his masters, and be
+merely commanded by them to do things.
+
+“Tha’rt like th’ robin,” he said to her one morning when he lifted his
+head and saw her standing by him. “I never knows when I shall see thee
+or which side tha’ll come from.”
+
+“He’s friends with me now,” said Mary.
+
+“That’s like him,” snapped Ben Weatherstaff. “Makin’ up to th’ women
+folk just for vanity an’ flightiness. There’s nothin’ he wouldn’t do
+for th’ sake o’ showin’ off an’ flirtin’ his tail-feathers. He’s as
+full o’ pride as an egg’s full o’ meat.”
+
+He very seldom talked much and sometimes did not even answer Mary’s
+questions except by a grunt, but this morning he said more than usual.
+He stood up and rested one hobnailed boot on the top of his spade while
+he looked her over.
+
+“How long has tha’ been here?” he jerked out.
+
+“I think it’s about a month,” she answered.
+
+“Tha’s beginnin’ to do Misselthwaite credit,” he said. “Tha’s a bit
+fatter than tha’ was an’ tha’s not quite so yeller. Tha’ looked like a
+young plucked crow when tha’ first came into this garden. Thinks I to
+myself I never set eyes on an uglier, sourer faced young ’un.”
+
+Mary was not vain and as she had never thought much of her looks she
+was not greatly disturbed.
+
+“I know I’m fatter,” she said. “My stockings are getting tighter. They
+used to make wrinkles. There’s the robin, Ben Weatherstaff.”
+
+There, indeed, was the robin, and she thought he looked nicer than
+ever. His red waistcoat was as glossy as satin and he flirted his wings
+and tail and tilted his head and hopped about with all sorts of lively
+graces. He seemed determined to make Ben Weatherstaff admire him. But
+Ben was sarcastic.
+
+“Aye, there tha’ art!” he said. “Tha’ can put up with me for a bit
+sometimes when tha’s got no one better. Tha’s been reddenin’ up thy
+waistcoat an’ polishin’ thy feathers this two weeks. I know what tha’s
+up to. Tha’s courtin’ some bold young madam somewhere tellin’ thy lies
+to her about bein’ th’ finest cock robin on Missel Moor an’ ready to
+fight all th’ rest of ’em.”
+
+“Oh! look at him!” exclaimed Mary.
+
+The robin was evidently in a fascinating, bold mood. He hopped closer
+and closer and looked at Ben Weatherstaff more and more engagingly. He
+flew on to the nearest currant bush and tilted his head and sang a
+little song right at him.
+
+“Tha’ thinks tha’ll get over me by doin’ that,” said Ben, wrinkling his
+face up in such a way that Mary felt sure he was trying not to look
+pleased. “Tha’ thinks no one can stand out against thee—that’s what
+tha’ thinks.”
+
+The robin spread his wings—Mary could scarcely believe her eyes. He
+flew right up to the handle of Ben Weatherstaff’s spade and alighted on
+the top of it. Then the old man’s face wrinkled itself slowly into a
+new expression. He stood still as if he were afraid to breathe—as if he
+would not have stirred for the world, lest his robin should start away.
+He spoke quite in a whisper.
+
+“Well, I’m danged!” he said as softly as if he were saying something
+quite different. “Tha’ does know how to get at a chap—tha’ does! Tha’s
+fair unearthly, tha’s so knowin’.”
+
+And he stood without stirring—almost without drawing his breath—until
+the robin gave another flirt to his wings and flew away. Then he stood
+looking at the handle of the spade as if there might be Magic in it,
+and then he began to dig again and said nothing for several minutes.
+
+But because he kept breaking into a slow grin now and then, Mary was
+not afraid to talk to him.
+
+“Have you a garden of your own?” she asked.
+
+“No. I’m bachelder an’ lodge with Martin at th’ gate.”
+
+“If you had one,” said Mary, “what would you plant?”
+
+“Cabbages an’ ’taters an’ onions.”
+
+“But if you wanted to make a flower garden,” persisted Mary, “what
+would you plant?”
+
+“Bulbs an’ sweet-smellin’ things—but mostly roses.”
+
+Mary’s face lighted up.
+
+“Do you like roses?” she said.
+
+Ben Weatherstaff rooted up a weed and threw it aside before he
+answered.
+
+“Well, yes, I do. I was learned that by a young lady I was gardener to.
+She had a lot in a place she was fond of, an’ she loved ’em like they
+was children—or robins. I’ve seen her bend over an’ kiss ’em.” He
+dragged out another weed and scowled at it. “That were as much as ten
+year’ ago.”
+
+“Where is she now?” asked Mary, much interested.
+
+“Heaven,” he answered, and drove his spade deep into the soil,
+“’cording to what parson says.”
+
+“What happened to the roses?” Mary asked again, more interested than
+ever.
+
+“They was left to themselves.”
+
+Mary was becoming quite excited.
+
+“Did they quite die? Do roses quite die when they are left to
+themselves?” she ventured.
+
+“Well, I’d got to like ’em—an’ I liked her—an’ she liked ’em,” Ben
+Weatherstaff admitted reluctantly. “Once or twice a year I’d go an’
+work at ’em a bit—prune ’em an’ dig about th’ roots. They run wild, but
+they was in rich soil, so some of ’em lived.”
+
+“When they have no leaves and look gray and brown and dry, how can you
+tell whether they are dead or alive?” inquired Mary.
+
+“Wait till th’ spring gets at ’em—wait till th’ sun shines on th’ rain
+and th’ rain falls on th’ sunshine an’ then tha’ll find out.”
+
+“How—how?” cried Mary, forgetting to be careful.
+
+“Look along th’ twigs an’ branches an’ if tha’ see a bit of a brown
+lump swelling here an’ there, watch it after th’ warm rain an’ see what
+happens.” He stopped suddenly and looked curiously at her eager face.
+“Why does tha’ care so much about roses an’ such, all of a sudden?” he
+demanded.
+
+Mistress Mary felt her face grow red. She was almost afraid to answer.
+
+“I—I want to play that—that I have a garden of my own,” she stammered.
+“I—there is nothing for me to do. I have nothing—and no one.”
+
+“Well,” said Ben Weatherstaff slowly, as he watched her, “that’s true.
+Tha’ hasn’t.”
+
+He said it in such an odd way that Mary wondered if he was actually a
+little sorry for her. She had never felt sorry for herself; she had
+only felt tired and cross, because she disliked people and things so
+much. But now the world seemed to be changing and getting nicer. If no
+one found out about the secret garden, she should enjoy herself always.
+
+She stayed with him for ten or fifteen minutes longer and asked him as
+many questions as she dared. He answered everyone of them in his queer
+grunting way and he did not seem really cross and did not pick up his
+spade and leave her. He said something about roses just as she was
+going away and it reminded her of the ones he had said he had been fond
+of.
+
+“Do you go and see those other roses now?” she asked.
+
+“Not been this year. My rheumatics has made me too stiff in th’
+joints.”
+
+He said it in his grumbling voice, and then quite suddenly he seemed to
+get angry with her, though she did not see why he should.
+
+“Now look here!” he said sharply. “Don’t tha’ ask so many questions.
+Tha’rt th’ worst wench for askin’ questions I’ve ever come across. Get
+thee gone an’ play thee. I’ve done talkin’ for today.”
+
+And he said it so crossly that she knew there was not the least use in
+staying another minute. She went skipping slowly down the outside walk,
+thinking him over and saying to herself that, queer as it was, here was
+another person whom she liked in spite of his crossness. She liked old
+Ben Weatherstaff. Yes, she did like him. She always wanted to try to
+make him talk to her. Also she began to believe that he knew everything
+in the world about flowers.
+
+There was a laurel-hedged walk which curved round the secret garden and
+ended at a gate which opened into a wood, in the park. She thought she
+would slip round this walk and look into the wood and see if there were
+any rabbits hopping about. She enjoyed the skipping very much and when
+she reached the little gate she opened it and went through because she
+heard a low, peculiar whistling sound and wanted to find out what it
+was.
+
+It was a very strange thing indeed. She quite caught her breath as she
+stopped to look at it. A boy was sitting under a tree, with his back
+against it, playing on a rough wooden pipe. He was a funny looking boy
+about twelve. He looked very clean and his nose turned up and his
+cheeks were as red as poppies and never had Mistress Mary seen such
+round and such blue eyes in any boy’s face. And on the trunk of the
+tree he leaned against, a brown squirrel was clinging and watching him,
+and from behind a bush nearby a cock pheasant was delicately stretching
+his neck to peep out, and quite near him were two rabbits sitting up
+and sniffing with tremulous noses—and actually it appeared as if they
+were all drawing near to watch him and listen to the strange low little
+call his pipe seemed to make.
+
+When he saw Mary he held up his hand and spoke to her in a voice almost
+as low as and rather like his piping.
+
+“Don’t tha’ move,” he said. “It’d flight ’em.”
+
+Mary remained motionless. He stopped playing his pipe and began to rise
+from the ground. He moved so slowly that it scarcely seemed as though
+he were moving at all, but at last he stood on his feet and then the
+squirrel scampered back up into the branches of his tree, the pheasant
+withdrew his head and the rabbits dropped on all fours and began to hop
+away, though not at all as if they were frightened.
+
+“I’m Dickon,” the boy said. “I know tha’rt Miss Mary.”
+
+Then Mary realized that somehow she had known at first that he was
+Dickon. Who else could have been charming rabbits and pheasants as the
+natives charm snakes in India? He had a wide, red, curving mouth and
+his smile spread all over his face.
+
+“I got up slow,” he explained, “because if tha’ makes a quick move it
+startles ’em. A body ’as to move gentle an’ speak low when wild things
+is about.”
+
+He did not speak to her as if they had never seen each other before but
+as if he knew her quite well. Mary knew nothing about boys and she
+spoke to him a little stiffly because she felt rather shy.
+
+“Did you get Martha’s letter?” she asked.
+
+He nodded his curly, rust-colored head.
+
+“That’s why I come.”
+
+He stooped to pick up something which had been lying on the ground
+beside him when he piped.
+
+“I’ve got th’ garden tools. There’s a little spade an’ rake an’ a fork
+an’ hoe. Eh! they are good ’uns. There’s a trowel, too. An’ th’ woman
+in th’ shop threw in a packet o’ white poppy an’ one o’ blue larkspur
+when I bought th’ other seeds.”
+
+“Will you show the seeds to me?” Mary said.
+
+She wished she could talk as he did. His speech was so quick and easy.
+It sounded as if he liked her and was not the least afraid she would
+not like 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’ someone 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.”
+
+He moved quite close to the bush with the slow movement Mary had
+noticed before, and then he made a sound almost like the robin’s own
+twitter. The robin listened a few seconds, intently, and then answered
+quite as if he were replying to a question.
+
+“Aye, he’s a friend o’ yours,” chuckled Dickon.
+
+“Do you think he is?” cried Mary eagerly. She did so want to know. “Do
+you think he really likes me?”
+
+“He wouldn’t come near thee if he didn’t,” answered Dickon. “Birds is
+rare choosers an’ a robin can flout a body worse than a man. See, he’s
+making up to thee now. ‘Cannot tha’ see a chap?’ he’s sayin’.”
+
+And it really seemed as if it must be true. He so sidled and twittered
+and tilted as he hopped on his bush.
+
+“Do you understand everything birds say?” said Mary.
+
+Dickon’s grin spread until he seemed all wide, red, curving mouth, and
+he rubbed his rough head.
+
+“I think I do, and they think I do,” he said. “I’ve lived on th’ moor
+with ’em so long. I’ve watched ’em break shell an’ come out an’ fledge
+an’ learn to fly an’ begin to sing, till I think I’m one of ’em.
+Sometimes I think p’raps I’m a bird, or a fox, or a rabbit, or a
+squirrel, or even a beetle, an’ I don’t know it.”
+
+He laughed and came back to the log and began to talk about the flower
+seeds again. He told her what they looked like when they were flowers;
+he told her how to plant them, and watch them, and feed and water them.
+
+“See here,” he said suddenly, turning round to look at her. “I’ll plant
+them for thee myself. Where is tha’ garden?”
+
+Mary’s thin hands clutched each other as they lay on her lap. She did
+not know what to say, so for a whole minute she said nothing. She had
+never thought of this. She felt miserable. And she felt as if she went
+red and then pale.
+
+“Tha’s got a bit o’ garden, hasn’t tha’?” Dickon said.
+
+It was true that she had turned red and then pale. Dickon saw her do
+it, and as she still said nothing, he began to be puzzled.
+
+“Wouldn’t they give thee a bit?” he asked. “Hasn’t tha’ got any yet?”
+
+She held her hands tighter and turned her eyes toward him.
+
+“I don’t know anything about boys,” she said slowly. “Could you keep a
+secret, if I told you one? It’s a great secret. I don’t know what I
+should do if anyone found it out. I believe I should die!” She said the
+last sentence quite fiercely.
+
+Dickon looked more puzzled than ever and even rubbed his hand over his
+rough head again, but he answered quite good-humoredly.
+
+“I’m keepin’ secrets all th’ time,” he said. “If I couldn’t keep
+secrets from th’ other lads, secrets about foxes’ cubs, an’ birds’
+nests, an’ wild things’ holes, there’d be naught safe on th’ moor. Aye,
+I can keep secrets.”
+
+Mistress Mary did not mean to put out her hand and clutch his sleeve
+but she did it.
+
+“I’ve stolen a garden,” she said very fast. “It isn’t mine. It isn’t
+anybody’s. Nobody wants it, nobody cares for it, nobody ever goes into
+it. Perhaps everything is dead in it already. I don’t know.”
+
+She began to feel hot and as contrary as she had ever felt in her life.
+
+“I don’t care, I don’t care! Nobody has any right to take it from me
+when I care about it and they don’t. They’re letting it die, all shut
+in by itself,” she ended passionately, and she threw her arms over her
+face and burst out crying—poor little Mistress Mary.
+
+Dickon’s curious blue eyes grew rounder and rounder.
+
+“Eh-h-h!” he said, drawing his exclamation out slowly, and the way he
+did it meant both wonder and sympathy.
+
+“I’ve nothing to do,” said Mary. “Nothing belongs to me. I found it
+myself and I got into it myself. I was only just like the robin, and
+they wouldn’t take it from the robin.”
+
+“Where is it?” asked Dickon in a dropped voice.
+
+Mistress Mary got up from the log at once. She knew she felt contrary
+again, and obstinate, and she did not care at all. She was imperious
+and Indian, and at the same time hot and sorrowful.
+
+“Come with me and I’ll show you,” she said.
+
+She led him round the laurel path and to the walk where the ivy grew so
+thickly. Dickon followed her with a queer, almost pitying, look on his
+face. He felt as if he were being led to look at some strange bird’s
+nest and must move softly. When she stepped to the wall and lifted the
+hanging ivy he started. There was a door and Mary pushed it slowly open
+and they passed in together, and then Mary stood and waved her hand
+round defiantly.
+
+“It’s this,” she said. “It’s a secret garden, and I’m the only one in
+the world who wants it to be alive.”
+
+Dickon looked round and round about it, and round and round again.
+
+“Eh!” he almost whispered, “it is a queer, pretty place! It’s like as
+if a body was in a dream.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+THE NEST OF THE MISSEL THRUSH
+
+
+For two or three minutes he stood looking round him, while Mary watched
+him, and then he began to walk about softly, even more lightly than
+Mary had walked the first time she had found herself inside the four
+walls. His eyes seemed to be taking in everything—the gray trees with
+the gray creepers climbing over them and hanging from their branches,
+the tangle on the walls and among the grass, the evergreen alcoves with
+the stone seats and tall flower urns standing in them.
+
+“I never thought I’d see this place,” he said at last, in a whisper.
+
+“Did you know about it?” asked Mary.
+
+She had spoken aloud and he made a sign to her.
+
+“We must talk low,” he said, “or someone’ll hear us an’ wonder what’s
+to do in here.”
+
+“Oh! I forgot!” said Mary, feeling frightened and putting her hand
+quickly against her mouth. “Did you know about the garden?” she asked
+again when she had recovered herself.
+
+Dickon nodded.
+
+“Martha told me there was one as no one ever went inside,” he answered.
+“Us used to wonder what it was like.”
+
+He stopped and looked round at the lovely gray tangle about him, and
+his round eyes looked queerly happy.
+
+“Eh! the nests as’ll be here come springtime,” he said. “It’d be th’
+safest nestin’ place in England. No one never comin’ near an’ tangles
+o’ trees an’ roses to build in. I wonder all th’ birds on th’ moor
+don’t build here.”
+
+Mistress Mary put her hand on his arm again without knowing it.
+
+“Will there be roses?” she whispered. “Can you tell? I thought perhaps
+they were all dead.”
+
+“Eh! No! Not them—not all of ’em!” he answered. “Look here!”
+
+He stepped over to the nearest tree—an old, old one with gray lichen
+all over its bark, but upholding a curtain of tangled sprays and
+branches. He took a thick knife out of his pocket and opened one of its
+blades.
+
+“There’s lots o’ dead wood as ought to be cut out,” he said. “An’
+there’s a lot o’ old wood, but it made some new last year. This here’s
+a new bit,” and he touched a shoot which looked brownish green instead
+of hard, dry gray.
+
+Mary touched it herself in an eager, reverent way.
+
+“That one?” she said. “Is that one quite alive quite?”
+
+Dickon curved his wide smiling mouth.
+
+“It’s as wick as you or me,” he said; and Mary remembered that Martha
+had told her that “wick” meant “alive” or “lively.”
+
+“I’m glad it’s wick!” she cried out in her whisper. “I want them all to
+be wick. Let us go round the garden and count how many wick ones there
+are.”
+
+She quite panted with eagerness, and Dickon was as eager as she was.
+They went from tree to tree and from bush to bush. Dickon carried his
+knife in his hand and showed her things which she thought wonderful.
+
+“They’ve run wild,” he said, “but th’ strongest ones has fair thrived
+on it. The delicatest ones has died out, but th’ others has growed an’
+growed, an’ spread an’ spread, till they’s a wonder. See here!” and he
+pulled down a thick gray, dry-looking branch. “A body might think this
+was dead wood, but I don’t believe it is—down to th’ root. I’ll cut it
+low down an’ see.”
+
+He knelt and with his knife cut the lifeless-looking branch through,
+not far above the earth.
+
+“There!” he said exultantly. “I told thee so. There’s green in that
+wood yet. Look at it.”
+
+Mary was down on her knees before he spoke, gazing with all her might.
+
+“When it looks a bit greenish an’ juicy like that, it’s wick,” he
+explained. “When th’ inside is dry an’ breaks easy, like this here
+piece I’ve cut off, it’s done for. There’s a big root here as all this
+live wood sprung out of, an’ if th’ old wood’s cut off an’ it’s dug
+round, and took care of there’ll be—” he stopped and lifted his face to
+look up at the climbing and hanging sprays above him—“there’ll be a
+fountain o’ roses here this summer.”
+
+They went from bush to bush and from tree to tree. He was very strong
+and clever with his knife and knew how to cut the dry and dead wood
+away, and could tell when an unpromising bough or twig had still green
+life in it. In the course of half an hour Mary thought she could tell
+too, and when he cut through a lifeless-looking branch she would cry
+out joyfully under her breath when she caught sight of the least shade
+of moist green. The spade, and hoe, and fork were very useful. He
+showed her how to use the fork while he dug about roots with the spade
+and stirred the earth and let the air in.
+
+They were working industriously round one of the biggest standard roses
+when he caught sight of something which made him utter an exclamation
+of surprise.
+
+“Why!” he cried, pointing to the grass a few feet away. “Who did that
+there?”
+
+It was one of Mary’s own little clearings round the pale green points.
+
+“I did it,” said Mary.
+
+“Why, I thought tha’ didn’t know nothin’ about gardenin’,” he
+exclaimed.
+
+“I don’t,” she answered, “but they were so little, and the grass was so
+thick and strong, and they looked as if they had no room to breathe. So
+I made a place for them. I don’t even know what they are.”
+
+Dickon went and knelt down by them, smiling his wide smile.
+
+“Tha’ was right,” he said. “A gardener couldn’t have told thee better.
+They’ll grow now like Jack’s bean-stalk. They’re crocuses an’
+snowdrops, an’ these here is narcissuses,” turning to another patch,
+“an here’s daffydowndillys. Eh! they will be a sight.”
+
+He ran from one clearing to another.
+
+“Tha’ has done a lot o’ work for such a little wench,” he said, looking
+her over.
+
+“I’m growing fatter,” said Mary, “and I’m growing stronger. I used
+always to be tired. When I dig I’m not tired at all. I like to smell
+the earth when it’s turned up.”
+
+“It’s rare good for thee,” he said, nodding his head wisely. “There’s
+naught as nice as th’ smell o’ good clean earth, except th’ smell o’
+fresh growin’ things when th’ rain falls on ’em. I get out on th’ moor
+many a day when it’s rainin’ an’ I lie under a bush an’ listen to th’
+soft swish o’ drops on th’ heather an’ I just sniff an’ sniff. My nose
+end fair quivers like a rabbit’s, mother says.”
+
+“Do you never catch cold?” inquired Mary, gazing at him wonderingly.
+She had never seen such a funny boy, or such a nice one.
+
+“Not me,” he said, grinning. “I never ketched cold since I was born. I
+wasn’t brought up nesh enough. I’ve chased about th’ moor in all
+weathers same as th’ rabbits does. Mother says I’ve sniffed up too much
+fresh air for twelve year’ to ever get to sniffin’ with cold. I’m as
+tough as a white-thorn knobstick.”
+
+He was working all the time he was talking and Mary was following him
+and helping him with her fork or the trowel.
+
+“There’s a lot of work to do here!” he said once, looking about quite
+exultantly.
+
+“Will you come again and help me to do it?” Mary begged. “I’m sure I
+can help, too. I can dig and pull up weeds, and do whatever you tell
+me. Oh! do come, Dickon!”
+
+“I’ll come every day if tha’ wants me, rain or shine,” he answered
+stoutly. “It’s the best fun I ever had in my life—shut in here an’
+wakenin’ up a garden.”
+
+“If you will come,” said Mary, “if you will help me to make it alive
+I’ll—I don’t know what I’ll do,” she ended helplessly. What could you
+do for a boy like that?
+
+“I’ll tell thee what tha’ll do,” said Dickon, with his happy grin.
+“Tha’ll get fat an’ tha’ll get as hungry as a young fox an’ tha’ll
+learn how to talk to th’ robin same as I do. Eh! we’ll have a lot o’
+fun.”
+
+He began to walk about, looking up in the trees and at the walls and
+bushes with a thoughtful expression.
+
+“I wouldn’t want to make it look like a gardener’s garden, all clipped
+an’ spick an’ span, would you?” he said. “It’s nicer like this with
+things runnin’ wild, an’ swingin’ an’ catchin’ hold of each other.”
+
+“Don’t let us make it tidy,” said Mary anxiously. “It wouldn’t seem
+like a secret garden if it was tidy.”
+
+Dickon stood rubbing his rusty-red head with a rather puzzled look.
+
+“It’s a secret garden sure enough,” he said, “but seems like someone
+besides th’ robin must have been in it since it was shut up ten year’
+ago.”
+
+“But the door was locked and the key was buried,” said Mary. “No one
+could get in.”
+
+“That’s true,” he answered. “It’s a queer place. Seems to me as if
+there’d been a bit o’ prunin’ done here an’ there, later than ten year’
+ago.”
+
+“But how could it have been done?” said Mary.
+
+He was examining a branch of a standard rose and he shook his head.
+
+“Aye! how could it!” he murmured. “With th’ door locked an’ th’ key
+buried.”
+
+Mistress Mary always felt that however many years she lived she should
+never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow. Of
+course, it did seem to begin to grow for her that morning. When Dickon
+began to clear places to plant seeds, she remembered what Basil had
+sung at her when he wanted to tease her.
+
+“Are there any flowers that look like bells?” she inquired.
+
+“Lilies o’ th’ valley does,” he answered, digging away with the trowel,
+“an’ there’s Canterbury bells, an’ campanulas.”
+
+“Let’s plant some,” said Mary.
+
+“There’s lilies o’ th, valley here already; I saw ’em. They’ll have
+growed too close an’ we’ll have to separate ’em, but there’s plenty.
+Th’ other ones takes two years to bloom from seed, but I can bring you
+some bits o’ plants from our cottage garden. Why does tha’ want ’em?”
+
+Then Mary told him about Basil and his brothers and sisters in India
+and of how she had hated them and of their calling her “Mistress Mary
+Quite Contrary.”
+
+“They used to dance round and sing at me. They sang—
+
+‘Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
+    How does your garden grow?
+With silver bells, and cockle shells,
+    And marigolds all in a row.’
+
+I just remembered it and it made me wonder if there were really flowers
+like silver bells.”
+
+She frowned a little and gave her trowel a rather spiteful dig into the
+earth.
+
+“I wasn’t as contrary as they were.”
+
+But Dickon laughed.
+
+“Eh!” he said, and as he crumbled the rich black soil she saw he was
+sniffing up the scent of it. “There doesn’t seem to be no need for no
+one to be contrary when there’s flowers an’ such like, an’ such lots o’
+friendly wild things runnin’ about makin’ homes for themselves, or
+buildin’ nests an’ singin’ an’ whistlin’, does there?”
+
+Mary, kneeling by him holding the seeds, looked at him and stopped
+frowning.
+
+“Dickon,” she said, “you are as nice as Martha said you were. I like
+you, and you make the fifth person. I never thought I should like five
+people.”
+
+Dickon sat up on his heels as Martha did when she was polishing the
+grate. He did look funny and delightful, Mary thought, with his round
+blue eyes and red cheeks and happy looking turned-up nose.
+
+“Only five folk as tha’ likes?” he said. “Who is th’ other four?”
+
+“Your mother and Martha,” Mary checked them off on her fingers, “and
+the robin and Ben Weatherstaff.”
+
+Dickon laughed so that he was obliged to stifle the sound by putting
+his arm over his mouth.
+
+“I know tha’ thinks I’m a queer lad,” he said, “but I think tha’ art
+th’ queerest little lass I ever saw.”
+
+Then Mary did a strange thing. She leaned forward and asked him a
+question she had never dreamed of asking anyone before. And she tried
+to ask it in Yorkshire because that was his language, and in India a
+native was always pleased if you knew his speech.
+
+“Does tha’ like me?” she said.
+
+“Eh!” he answered heartily, “that I does. I likes thee wonderful, an’
+so does th’ robin, I do believe!”
+
+“That’s two, then,” said Mary. “That’s two for me.”
+
+And then they began to work harder than ever and more joyfully. Mary
+was startled and sorry when she heard the big clock in the courtyard
+strike the hour of her midday dinner.
+
+“I shall have to go,” she said mournfully. “And you will have to go
+too, won’t you?”
+
+Dickon grinned.
+
+“My dinner’s easy to carry about with me,” he said. “Mother always lets
+me put a bit o’ somethin’ in my pocket.”
+
+He picked up his coat from the grass and brought out of a pocket a
+lumpy little bundle tied up in a quite clean, coarse, blue and white
+handkerchief. It held two thick pieces of bread with a slice of
+something laid between them.
+
+“It’s oftenest naught but bread,” he said, “but I’ve got a fine slice
+o’ fat bacon with it today.”
+
+Mary thought it looked a queer dinner, but he seemed ready to enjoy it.
+
+“Run on an’ get thy victuals,” he said. “I’ll be done with mine first.
+I’ll get some more work done before I start back home.”
+
+He sat down with his back against a tree.
+
+“I’ll call th’ robin up,” he said, “and give him th’ rind o’ th’ bacon
+to peck at. They likes a bit o’ fat wonderful.”
+
+Mary could scarcely bear to leave him. Suddenly it seemed as if he
+might be a sort of wood fairy who might be gone when she came into the
+garden again. He seemed too good to be true. She went slowly half-way
+to the door in the wall and then she stopped and went back.
+
+“Whatever happens, you—you never would tell?” she said.
+
+His poppy-colored cheeks were distended with his first big bite of
+bread and bacon, but he managed to smile encouragingly.
+
+“If tha’ was a missel thrush an’ showed me where thy nest was, does
+tha’ think I’d tell anyone? Not me,” he said. “Tha’ art as safe as a
+missel thrush.”
+
+And she was quite sure she was.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+“MIGHT I HAVE A BIT OF EARTH?”
+
+
+Mary ran so fast that she was rather out of breath when she reached her
+room. Her hair was ruffled on her forehead and her cheeks were bright
+pink. Her dinner was waiting on the table, and Martha was waiting near
+it.
+
+“Tha’s a bit late,” she said. “Where has tha’ been?”
+
+“I’ve seen Dickon!” said Mary. “I’ve seen Dickon!”
+
+“I knew he’d come,” said Martha exultantly. “How does tha’ like him?”
+
+“I think—I think he’s beautiful!” said Mary in a determined voice.
+
+Martha looked rather taken aback but she looked pleased, too.
+
+“Well,” she said, “he’s th’ best lad as ever was born, but us never
+thought he was handsome. His nose turns up too much.”
+
+“I like it to turn up,” said Mary.
+
+“An’ his eyes is so round,” said Martha, a trifle doubtful. “Though
+they’re a nice color.”
+
+“I like them round,” said Mary. “And they are exactly the color of the
+sky over the moor.”
+
+Martha beamed with satisfaction.
+
+“Mother says he made ’em that color with always lookin’ up at th’ birds
+an’ th’ clouds. But he has got a big mouth, hasn’t he, now?”
+
+“I love his big mouth,” said Mary obstinately. “I wish mine were just
+like it.”
+
+Martha chuckled delightedly.
+
+“It’d look rare an’ funny in thy bit of a face,” she said. “But I
+knowed it would be that way when tha’ saw him. How did tha’ like th’
+seeds an’ th’ garden tools?”
+
+“How did you know he brought them?” asked Mary.
+
+“Eh! I never thought of him not bringin’ ’em. He’d be sure to bring ’em
+if they was in Yorkshire. He’s such a trusty lad.”
+
+Mary was afraid that she might begin to ask difficult questions, but
+she did not. She was very much interested in the seeds and gardening
+tools, and there was only one moment when Mary was frightened. This was
+when she began to ask where the flowers were to be planted.
+
+“Who did tha’ ask about it?” she inquired.
+
+“I haven’t asked anybody yet,” said Mary, hesitating.
+
+“Well, I wouldn’t ask th’ head gardener. He’s too grand, Mr. Roach is.”
+
+“I’ve never seen him,” said Mary. “I’ve only seen undergardeners and
+Ben Weatherstaff.”
+
+“If I was you, I’d ask Ben Weatherstaff,” advised Martha. “He’s not
+half as bad as he looks, for all he’s so crabbed. Mr. Craven lets him
+do what he likes because he was here when Mrs. Craven was alive, an’ he
+used to make her laugh. She liked him. Perhaps he’d find you a corner
+somewhere out o’ the way.”
+
+“If it was out of the way and no one wanted it, no one _could_ mind my
+having it, could they?” Mary said anxiously.
+
+“There wouldn’t be no reason,” answered Martha. “You wouldn’t do no
+harm.”
+
+Mary ate her dinner as quickly as she could and when she rose from the
+table she was going to run to her room to put on her hat again, but
+Martha stopped her.
+
+“I’ve got somethin’ to tell you,” she said. “I thought I’d let you eat
+your dinner first. Mr. Craven came back this mornin’ and I think he
+wants to see you.”
+
+Mary turned quite pale.
+
+“Oh!” she said. “Why! Why! He didn’t want to see me when I came. I
+heard Pitcher say he didn’t.”
+
+“Well,” explained Martha, “Mrs. Medlock says it’s because o’ mother.
+She was walkin’ to Thwaite village an’ she met him. She’d never spoke
+to him before, but Mrs. Craven had been to our cottage two or three
+times. He’d forgot, but mother hadn’t an’ she made bold to stop him. I
+don’t know what she said to him about you but she said somethin’ as put
+him in th’ mind to see you before he goes away again, tomorrow.”
+
+“Oh!” cried Mary, “is he going away tomorrow? I am so glad!”
+
+“He’s goin’ for a long time. He mayn’t come back till autumn or winter.
+He’s goin’ to travel in foreign places. He’s always doin’ it.”
+
+“Oh! I’m so glad—so glad!” said Mary thankfully.
+
+If he did not come back until winter, or even autumn, there would be
+time to watch the secret garden come alive. Even if he found out then
+and took it away from her she would have had that much at least.
+
+“When do you think he will want to see—”
+
+She did not finish the sentence, because the door opened, and Mrs.
+Medlock walked in. She had on her best black dress and cap, and her
+collar was fastened with a large brooch with a picture of a man’s face
+on it. It was a colored photograph of Mr. Medlock who had died years
+ago, and she always wore it when she was dressed up. She looked nervous
+and excited.
+
+“Your hair’s rough,” she said quickly. “Go and brush it. Martha, help
+her to slip on her best dress. Mr. Craven sent me to bring her to him
+in his study.”
+
+All the pink left Mary’s cheeks. Her heart began to thump and she felt
+herself changing into a stiff, plain, silent child again. She did not
+even answer Mrs. Medlock, but turned and walked into her bedroom,
+followed by Martha. She said nothing while her dress was changed, and
+her hair brushed, and after she was quite tidy she followed Mrs.
+Medlock down the corridors, in silence. What was there for her to say?
+She was obliged to go and see Mr. Craven and he would not like her, and
+she would not like him. She knew what he would think of her.
+
+She was taken to a part of the house she had not been into before. At
+last Mrs. Medlock knocked at a door, and when someone said, “Come in,”
+they entered the room together. A man was sitting in an armchair before
+the fire, and Mrs. Medlock spoke to him.
+
+“This is Miss Mary, sir,” she said.
+
+“You can go and leave her here. I will ring for you when I want you to
+take her away,” said Mr. Craven.
+
+When she went out and closed the door, Mary could only stand waiting, a
+plain little thing, twisting her thin hands together. She could see
+that the man in the chair was not so much a hunchback as a man with
+high, rather crooked shoulders, and he had black hair streaked with
+white. He turned his head over his high shoulders and spoke to her.
+
+“Come here!” he said.
+
+Mary went to him.
+
+He was not ugly. His face would have been handsome if it had not been
+so miserable. He looked as if the sight of her worried and fretted him
+and as if he did not know what in the world to do with her.
+
+“Are you well?” he asked.
+
+“Yes,” answered Mary.
+
+“Do they take good care of you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+He rubbed his forehead fretfully as he looked her over.
+
+“You are very thin,” he said.
+
+“I am getting fatter,” Mary answered in what she knew was her stiffest
+way.
+
+What an unhappy face he had! His black eyes seemed as if they scarcely
+saw her, as if they were seeing something else, and he could hardly
+keep his thoughts upon her.
+
+“I forgot you,” he said. “How could I remember you? I intended to send
+you a governess or a nurse, or someone of that sort, but I forgot.”
+
+“Please,” began Mary. “Please—” and then the lump in her throat choked
+her.
+
+“What do you want to say?” he inquired.
+
+“I am—I am too big for a nurse,” said Mary. “And please—please don’t
+make me have a governess yet.”
+
+He rubbed his forehead again and stared at her.
+
+“That was what the Sowerby woman said,” he muttered absent-mindedly.
+
+Then Mary gathered a scrap of courage.
+
+“Is she—is she Martha’s mother?” she stammered.
+
+“Yes, I think so,” he replied.
+
+“She knows about children,” said Mary. “She has twelve. She knows.”
+
+He seemed to rouse himself.
+
+“What do you want to do?”
+
+“I want to play out of doors,” Mary answered, hoping that her voice did
+not tremble. “I never liked it in India. It makes me hungry here, and I
+am getting fatter.”
+
+He was watching her.
+
+“Mrs. Sowerby said it would do you good. Perhaps it will,” he said.
+“She thought you had better get stronger before you had a governess.”
+
+“It makes me feel strong when I play and the wind comes over the moor,”
+argued Mary.
+
+“Where do you play?” he asked next.
+
+“Everywhere,” gasped Mary. “Martha’s mother sent me a skipping-rope. I
+skip and run—and I look about to see if things are beginning to stick
+up out of the earth. I don’t do any harm.”
+
+“Don’t look so frightened,” he said in a worried voice. “You could not
+do any harm, a child like you! You may do what you like.”
+
+Mary put her hand up to her throat because she was afraid he might see
+the excited lump which she felt jump into it. She came a step nearer to
+him.
+
+“May I?” she said tremulously.
+
+Her anxious little face seemed to worry him more than ever.
+
+“Don’t look so frightened,” he exclaimed. “Of course you may. I am your
+guardian, though I am a poor one for any child. I cannot give you time
+or attention. I am too ill, and wretched and distracted; but I wish you
+to be happy and comfortable. I don’t know anything about children, but
+Mrs. Medlock is to see that you have all you need. I sent for you today
+because Mrs. Sowerby said I ought to see you. Her daughter had talked
+about you. She thought you needed fresh air and freedom and running
+about.”
+
+“She knows all about children,” Mary said again in spite of herself.
+
+“She ought to,” said Mr. Craven. “I thought her rather bold to stop me
+on the moor, but she said—Mrs. Craven had been kind to her.” It seemed
+hard for him to speak his dead wife’s name. “She is a respectable
+woman. Now I have seen you I think she said sensible things. Play out
+of doors as much as you like. It’s a big place and you may go where you
+like and amuse yourself as you like. Is there anything you want?” as if
+a sudden thought had struck him. “Do you want toys, books, dolls?”
+
+“Might I,” quavered Mary, “might I have a bit of earth?”
+
+In her eagerness she did not realize how queer the words would sound
+and that they were not the ones she had meant to say. Mr. Craven looked
+quite startled.
+
+“Earth!” he repeated. “What do you mean?”
+
+“To plant seeds in—to make things grow—to see them come alive,” Mary
+faltered.
+
+He gazed at her a moment and then passed his hand quickly over his
+eyes.
+
+“Do you—care about gardens so much,” he said slowly.
+
+“I didn’t know about them in India,” said Mary. “I was always ill and
+tired and it was too hot. I sometimes made little beds in the sand and
+stuck flowers in them. But here it is different.”
+
+Mr. Craven got up and began to walk slowly across the room.
+
+“A bit of earth,” he said to himself, and Mary thought that somehow she
+must have reminded him of something. When he stopped and spoke to her
+his dark eyes looked almost soft and kind.
+
+“You can have as much earth as you want,” he said. “You remind me of
+someone else who loved the earth and things that grow. When you see a
+bit of earth you want,” with something like a smile, “take it, child,
+and make it come alive.”
+
+“May I take it from anywhere—if it’s not wanted?”
+
+“Anywhere,” he answered. “There! You must go now, I am tired.” He
+touched the bell to call Mrs. Medlock. “Good-by. I shall be away all
+summer.”
+
+Mrs. Medlock came so quickly that Mary thought she must have been
+waiting in the corridor.
+
+“Mrs. Medlock,” Mr. Craven said to her, “now I have seen the child I
+understand what Mrs. Sowerby meant. She must be less delicate before
+she begins lessons. Give her simple, healthy food. Let her run wild in
+the garden. Don’t look after her too much. She needs liberty and fresh
+air and romping about. Mrs. Sowerby is to come and see her now and then
+and she may sometimes go to the cottage.”
+
+Mrs. Medlock looked pleased. She was relieved to hear that she need not
+“look after” Mary too much. She had felt her a tiresome charge and had
+indeed seen as little of her as she dared. In addition to this she was
+fond of Martha’s mother.
+
+“Thank you, sir,” she said. “Susan Sowerby and me went to school
+together and she’s as sensible and good-hearted a woman as you’d find
+in a day’s walk. I never had any children myself and she’s had twelve,
+and there never was healthier or better ones. Miss Mary can get no harm
+from them. I’d always take Susan Sowerby’s advice about children
+myself. She’s what you might call healthy-minded—if you understand me.”
+
+“I understand,” Mr. Craven answered. “Take Miss Mary away now and send
+Pitcher to me.”
+
+When Mrs. Medlock left her at the end of her own corridor Mary flew
+back to her room. She found Martha waiting there. Martha had, in fact,
+hurried back after she had removed the dinner service.
+
+“I can have my garden!” cried Mary. “I may have it where I like! I am
+not going to have a governess for a long time! Your mother is coming to
+see me and I may go to your cottage! He says a little girl like me
+could not do any harm and I may do what I like—anywhere!”
+
+“Eh!” said Martha delightedly, “that was nice of him wasn’t it?”
+
+“Martha,” said Mary solemnly, “he is really a nice man, only his face
+is so miserable and his forehead is all drawn together.”
+
+She ran as quickly as she could to the garden. She had been away so
+much longer than she had thought she should and she knew Dickon would
+have to set out early on his five-mile walk. When she slipped through
+the door under the ivy, she saw he was not working where she had left
+him. The gardening tools were laid together under a tree. She ran to
+them, looking all round the place, but there was no Dickon to be seen.
+He had gone away and the secret garden was empty—except for the robin
+who had just flown across the wall and sat on a standard rose-bush
+watching her.
+
+“He’s gone,” she said woefully. “Oh! was he—was he—was he only a wood
+fairy?”
+
+Something white fastened to the standard rose-bush caught her eye. It
+was a piece of paper, in fact, it was a piece of the letter she had
+printed for Martha to send to Dickon. It was fastened on the bush with
+a long thorn, and in a minute she knew Dickon had left it there. There
+were some roughly printed letters on it and a sort of picture. At first
+she could not tell what it was. Then she saw it was meant for a nest
+with a bird sitting on it. Underneath were the printed letters and they
+said:
+
+“I will cum bak.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+“I AM COLIN”
+
+
+Mary took the picture back to the house when she went to her supper and
+she showed it to Martha.
+
+“Eh!” said Martha with great pride. “I never knew our Dickon was as
+clever as that. That there’s a picture of a missel thrush on her nest,
+as large as life an’ twice as natural.”
+
+Then Mary knew Dickon had meant the picture to be a message. He had
+meant that she might be sure he would keep her secret. Her garden was
+her nest and she was like a missel thrush. Oh, how she did like that
+queer, common boy!
+
+She hoped he would come back the very next day and she fell asleep
+looking forward to the morning.
+
+But you never know what the weather will do in Yorkshire, particularly
+in the springtime. She was awakened in the night by the sound of rain
+beating with heavy drops against her window. It was pouring down in
+torrents and the wind was “wuthering” round the corners and in the
+chimneys of the huge old house. Mary sat up in bed and felt miserable
+and angry.
+
+“The rain is as contrary as I ever was,” she said. “It came because it
+knew I did not want it.”
+
+She threw herself back on her pillow and buried her face. She did not
+cry, but she lay and hated the sound of the heavily beating rain, she
+hated the wind and its “wuthering.” She could not go to sleep again.
+The mournful sound kept her awake because she felt mournful herself. If
+she had felt happy it would probably have lulled her to sleep. How it
+“wuthered” and how the big raindrops poured down and beat against the
+pane!
+
+“It sounds just like a person lost on the moor and wandering on and on
+crying,” she said.
+
+She had been lying awake turning from side to side for about an hour,
+when suddenly something made her sit up in bed and turn her head toward
+the door listening. She listened and she listened.
+
+“It isn’t the wind now,” she said in a loud whisper. “That isn’t the
+wind. It is different. It is that crying I heard before.”
+
+The door of her room was ajar and the sound came down the corridor, a
+far-off faint sound of fretful crying. She listened for a few minutes
+and each minute she became more and more sure. She felt as if she must
+find out what it was. It seemed even stranger than the secret garden
+and the buried key. Perhaps the fact that she was in a rebellious mood
+made her bold. She put her foot out of bed and stood on the floor.
+
+“I am going to find out what it is,” she said. “Everybody is in bed and
+I don’t care about Mrs. Medlock—I don’t care!”
+
+There was a candle by her bedside and she took it up and went softly
+out of the room. The corridor looked very long and dark, but she was
+too excited to mind that. She thought she remembered the corners she
+must turn to find the short corridor with the door covered with
+tapestry—the one Mrs. Medlock had come through the day she lost
+herself. The sound had come up that passage. So she went on with her
+dim light, almost feeling her way, her heart beating so loud that she
+fancied she could hear it. The far-off faint crying went on and led
+her. Sometimes it stopped for a moment or so and then began again. Was
+this the right corner to turn? She stopped and thought. Yes it was.
+Down this passage and then to the left, and then up two broad steps,
+and then to the right again. Yes, there was the tapestry door.
+
+She pushed it open very gently and closed it behind her, and she stood
+in the corridor and could hear the crying quite plainly, though it was
+not loud. It was on the other side of the wall at her left and a few
+yards farther on there was a door. She could see a glimmer of light
+coming from beneath it. The Someone was crying in that room, and it was
+quite a young Someone.
+
+So she walked to the door and pushed it open, and there she was
+standing in the room!
+
+It was a big room with ancient, handsome furniture in it. There was a
+low fire glowing faintly on the hearth and a night light burning by the
+side of a carved four-posted bed hung with brocade, and on the bed was
+lying a boy, crying fretfully.
+
+Mary wondered if she was in a real place or if she had fallen asleep
+again and was dreaming without knowing it.
+
+The boy had a sharp, delicate face the color of ivory and he seemed to
+have eyes too big for it. He had also a lot of hair which tumbled over
+his forehead in heavy locks and made his thin face seem smaller. He
+looked like a boy who had been ill, but he was crying more as if he
+were tired and cross than as if he were in pain.
+
+Mary stood near the door with her candle in her hand, holding her
+breath. Then she crept across the room, and, as she drew nearer, the
+light attracted the boy’s attention and he turned his head on his
+pillow and stared at her, his gray eyes opening so wide that they
+seemed immense.
+
+“Who are you?” he said at last in a half-frightened whisper. “Are you a
+ghost?”
+
+“No, I am not,” Mary answered, her own whisper sounding half
+frightened. “Are you one?”
+
+He stared and stared and stared. Mary could not help noticing what
+strange eyes he had. They were agate gray and they looked too big for
+his face because they had black lashes all round them.
+
+“No,” he replied after waiting a moment or so. “I am Colin.”
+
+“Who is Colin?” she faltered.
+
+“I am Colin Craven. Who are you?”
+
+“I am Mary Lennox. Mr. Craven is my uncle.”
+
+“He is my father,” said the boy.
+
+“Your father!” gasped Mary. “No one ever told me he had a boy! Why
+didn’t they?”
+
+“Come here,” he said, still keeping his strange eyes fixed on her with
+an anxious expression.
+
+She came close to the bed and he put out his hand and touched her.
+
+“You are real, aren’t you?” he said. “I have such real dreams very
+often. You might be one of them.”
+
+Mary had slipped on a woolen wrapper before she left her room and she
+put a piece of it between his fingers.
+
+“Rub that and see how thick and warm it is,” she said. “I will pinch
+you a little if you like, to show you how real I am. For a minute I
+thought you might be a dream too.”
+
+“Where did you come from?” he asked.
+
+“From my own room. The wind wuthered so I couldn’t go to sleep and I
+heard someone crying and wanted to find out who it was. What were you
+crying for?”
+
+“Because I couldn’t go to sleep either and my head ached. Tell me your
+name again.”
+
+“Mary Lennox. Did no one ever tell you I had come to live here?”
+
+He was still fingering the fold of her wrapper, but he began to look a
+little more as if he believed in her reality.
+
+“No,” he answered. “They daren’t.”
+
+“Why?” asked Mary.
+
+“Because I should have been afraid you would see me. I won’t let people
+see me and talk me over.”
+
+“Why?” Mary asked again, feeling more mystified every moment.
+
+“Because I am like this always, ill and having to lie down. My father
+won’t let people talk me over either. The servants are not allowed to
+speak about me. If I live I may be a hunchback, but I shan’t live. My
+father hates to think I may be like him.”
+
+“Oh, what a queer house this is!” Mary said. “What a queer house!
+Everything is a kind of secret. Rooms are locked up and gardens are
+locked up—and you! Have you been locked up?”
+
+“No. I stay in this room because I don’t want to be moved out of it. It
+tires me too much.”
+
+“Does your father come and see you?” Mary ventured.
+
+“Sometimes. Generally when I am asleep. He doesn’t want to see me.”
+
+“Why?” Mary could not help asking again.
+
+A sort of angry shadow passed over the boy’s face.
+
+“My mother died when I was born and it makes him wretched to look at
+me. He thinks I don’t know, but I’ve heard people talking. He almost
+hates me.”
+
+“He hates the garden, because she died,” said Mary half speaking to
+herself.
+
+“What garden?” the boy asked.
+
+“Oh! just—just a garden she used to like,” Mary stammered. “Have you
+been here always?”
+
+“Nearly always. Sometimes I have been taken to places at the seaside,
+but I won’t stay because people stare at me. I used to wear an iron
+thing to keep my back straight, but a grand doctor came from London to
+see me and said it was stupid. He told them to take it off and keep me
+out in the fresh air. I hate fresh air and I don’t want to go out.”
+
+“I didn’t when first I came here,” said Mary. “Why do you keep looking
+at me like that?”
+
+“Because of the dreams that are so real,” he answered rather fretfully.
+“Sometimes when I open my eyes I don’t believe I’m awake.”
+
+“We’re both awake,” said Mary. She glanced round the room with its high
+ceiling and shadowy corners and dim fire-light. “It looks quite like a
+dream, and it’s the middle of the night, and everybody in the house is
+asleep—everybody but us. We are wide awake.”
+
+“I don’t want it to be a dream,” the boy said restlessly.
+
+Mary thought of something all at once.
+
+“If you don’t like people to see you,” she began, “do you want me to go
+away?”
+
+He still held the fold of her wrapper and he gave it a little pull.
+
+“No,” he said. “I should be sure you were a dream if you went. If you
+are real, sit down on that big footstool and talk. I want to hear about
+you.”
+
+Mary put down her candle on the table near the bed and sat down on the
+cushioned stool. She did not want to go away at all. She wanted to stay
+in the mysterious hidden-away room and talk to the mysterious boy.
+
+“What do you want me to tell you?” she said.
+
+He wanted to know how long she had been at Misselthwaite; he wanted to
+know which corridor her room was on; he wanted to know what she had
+been doing; if she disliked the moor as he disliked it; where she had
+lived before she came to Yorkshire. She answered all these questions
+and many more and he lay back on his pillow and listened. He made her
+tell him a great deal about India and about her voyage across the
+ocean. She found out that because he had been an invalid he had not
+learned things as other children had. One of his nurses had taught him
+to read when he was quite little and he was always reading and looking
+at pictures in splendid books.
+
+Though his father rarely saw him when he was awake, he was given all
+sorts of wonderful things to amuse himself with. He never seemed to
+have been amused, however. He could have anything he asked for and was
+never made to do anything he did not like to do.
+
+“Everyone is obliged to do what pleases me,” he said indifferently. “It
+makes me ill to be angry. No one believes I shall live to grow up.”
+
+He said it as if he was so accustomed to the idea that it had ceased to
+matter to him at all. He seemed to like the sound of Mary’s voice. As
+she went on talking he listened in a drowsy, interested way. Once or
+twice she wondered if he were not gradually falling into a doze. But at
+last he asked a question which opened up a new subject.
+
+“How old are you?” he asked.
+
+“I am ten,” answered Mary, forgetting herself for the moment, “and so
+are you.”
+
+“How do you know that?” he demanded in a surprised voice.
+
+“Because when you were born the garden door was locked and the key was
+buried. And it has been locked for ten years.”
+
+Colin half sat up, turning toward her, leaning on his elbows.
+
+“What garden door was locked? Who did it? Where was the key buried?” he
+exclaimed as if he were suddenly very much interested.
+
+“It—it was the garden Mr. Craven hates,” said Mary nervously. “He
+locked the door. No one—no one knew where he buried the key.”
+
+“What sort of a garden is it?” Colin persisted eagerly.
+
+“No one has been allowed to go into it for ten years,” was Mary’s
+careful answer.
+
+But it was too late to be careful. He was too much like herself. He too
+had had nothing to think about and the idea of a hidden garden
+attracted him as it had attracted her. He asked question after
+question. Where was it? Had she never looked for the door? Had she
+never asked the gardeners?
+
+“They won’t talk about it,” said Mary. “I think they have been told not
+to answer questions.”
+
+“I would make them,” said Colin.
+
+“Could you?” Mary faltered, beginning to feel frightened. If he could
+make people answer questions, who knew what might happen!
+
+“Everyone is obliged to please me. I told you that,” he said. “If I
+were to live, this place would sometime belong to me. They all know
+that. I would make them tell me.”
+
+Mary had not known that she herself had been spoiled, but she could see
+quite plainly that this mysterious boy had been. He thought that the
+whole world belonged to him. How peculiar he was and how coolly he
+spoke of not living.
+
+“Do you think you won’t live?” she asked, partly because she was
+curious and partly in hope of making him forget the garden.
+
+“I don’t suppose I shall,” he answered as indifferently as he had
+spoken before. “Ever since I remember anything I have heard people say
+I shan’t. At first they thought I was too little to understand and now
+they think I don’t hear. But I do. My doctor is my father’s cousin. He
+is quite poor and if I die he will have all Misselthwaite when my
+father is dead. I should think he wouldn’t want me to live.”
+
+“Do you want to live?” inquired Mary.
+
+“No,” he answered, in a cross, tired fashion. “But I don’t want to die.
+When I feel ill I lie here and think about it until I cry and cry.”
+
+“I have heard you crying three times,” Mary said, “but I did not know
+who it was. Were you crying about that?” She did so want him to forget
+the garden.
+
+“I dare say,” he answered. “Let us talk about something else. Talk
+about that garden. Don’t you want to see it?”
+
+“Yes,” answered Mary, in quite a low voice.
+
+“I do,” he went on persistently. “I don’t think I ever really wanted to
+see anything before, but I want to see that garden. I want the key dug
+up. I want the door unlocked. I would let them take me there in my
+chair. That would be getting fresh air. I am going to make them open
+the door.”
+
+He had become quite excited and his strange eyes began to shine like
+stars and looked more immense than ever.
+
+“They have to please me,” he said. “I will make them take me there and
+I will let you go, too.”
+
+Mary’s hands clutched each other. Everything would be
+spoiled—everything! Dickon would never come back. She would never again
+feel like a missel thrush with a safe-hidden nest.
+
+“Oh, don’t—don’t—don’t—don’t do that!” she cried out.
+
+He stared as if he thought she had gone crazy!
+
+“Why?” he exclaimed. “You said you wanted to see it.”
+
+“I do,” she answered almost with a sob in her throat, “but if you make
+them open the door and take you in like that it will never be a secret
+again.”
+
+He leaned still farther forward.
+
+“A secret,” he said. “What do you mean? Tell me.”
+
+Mary’s words almost tumbled over one another.
+
+“You see—you see,” she panted, “if no one knows but ourselves—if there
+was a door, hidden somewhere under the ivy—if there was—and we could
+find it; and if we could slip through it together and shut it behind
+us, and no one knew anyone was inside and we called it our garden and
+pretended that—that we were missel thrushes and it was our nest, and if
+we played there almost every day and dug and planted seeds and made it
+all come alive—”
+
+“Is it dead?” he interrupted her.
+
+“It soon will be if no one cares for it,” she went on. “The bulbs will
+live but the roses—”
+
+He stopped her again as excited as she was herself.
+
+“What are bulbs?” he put in quickly.
+
+“They are daffodils and lilies and snowdrops. They are working in the
+earth now—pushing up pale green points because the spring is coming.”
+
+“Is the spring coming?” he said. “What is it like? You don’t see it in
+rooms if you are ill.”
+
+“It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the
+sunshine, and things pushing up and working under the earth,” said
+Mary. “If the garden was a secret and we could get into it we could
+watch the things grow bigger every day, and see how many roses are
+alive. Don’t you see? Oh, don’t you see how much nicer it would be if
+it was a secret?”
+
+He dropped back on his pillow and lay there with an odd expression on
+his face.
+
+“I never had a secret,” he said, “except that one about not living to
+grow up. They don’t know I know that, so it is a sort of secret. But I
+like this kind better.”
+
+“If you won’t make them take you to the garden,” pleaded Mary,
+“perhaps—I feel almost sure I can find out how to get in sometime. And
+then—if the doctor wants you to go out in your chair, and if you can
+always do what you want to do, perhaps—perhaps we might find some boy
+who would push you, and we could go alone and it would always be a
+secret garden.”
+
+“I should—like—that,” he said very slowly, his eyes looking dreamy. “I
+should like that. I should not mind fresh air in a secret garden.”
+
+Mary began to recover her breath and feel safer because the idea of
+keeping the secret seemed to please him. She felt almost sure that if
+she kept on talking and could make him see the garden in his mind as
+she had seen it he would like it so much that he could not bear to
+think that everybody might tramp in to it when they chose.
+
+“I’ll tell you what I _think_ it would be like, if we could go into
+it,” she said. “It has been shut up so long things have grown into a
+tangle perhaps.”
+
+He lay quite still and listened while she went on talking about the
+roses which _might_ have clambered from tree to tree and hung
+down—about the many birds which _might_ have built their nests there
+because it was so safe. And then she told him about the robin and Ben
+Weatherstaff, and there was so much to tell about the robin and it was
+so easy and safe to talk about it that she ceased to be afraid. The
+robin pleased him so much that he smiled until he looked almost
+beautiful, and at first Mary had thought that he was even plainer than
+herself, with his big eyes and heavy locks of hair.
+
+“I did not know birds could be like that,” he said. “But if you stay in
+a room you never see things. What a lot of things you know. I feel as
+if you had been inside that garden.”
+
+She did not know what to say, so she did not say anything. He evidently
+did not expect an answer and the next moment he gave her a surprise.
+
+“I am going to let you look at something,” he said. “Do you see that
+rose-colored silk curtain hanging on the wall over the mantel-piece?”
+
+Mary had not noticed it before, but she looked up and saw it. It was a
+curtain of soft silk hanging over what seemed to be some picture.
+
+“Yes,” she answered.
+
+“There is a cord hanging from it,” said Colin. “Go and pull it.”
+
+Mary got up, much mystified, and found the cord. When she pulled it the
+silk curtain ran back on rings and when it ran back it uncovered a
+picture. It was the picture of a girl with a laughing face. She had
+bright hair tied up with a blue ribbon and her gay, lovely eyes were
+exactly like Colin’s unhappy ones, agate gray and looking twice as big
+as they really were because of the black lashes all round them.
+
+“She is my mother,” said Colin complainingly. “I don’t see why she
+died. Sometimes I hate her for doing it.”
+
+“How queer!” said Mary.
+
+“If she had lived I believe I should not have been ill always,” he
+grumbled. “I dare say I should have lived, too. And my father would not
+have hated to look at me. I dare say I should have had a strong back.
+Draw the curtain again.”
+
+Mary did as she was told and returned to her footstool.
+
+“She is much prettier than you,” she said, “but her eyes are just like
+yours—at least they are the same shape and color. Why is the curtain
+drawn over her?”
+
+He moved uncomfortably.
+
+“I made them do it,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t like to see her
+looking at me. She smiles too much when I am ill and miserable.
+Besides, she is mine and I don’t want everyone to see her.”
+
+There were a few moments of silence and then Mary spoke.
+
+“What would Mrs. Medlock do if she found out that I had been here?” she
+inquired.
+
+“She would do as I told her to do,” he answered. “And I should tell her
+that I wanted you to come here and talk to me every day. I am glad you
+came.”
+
+“So am I,” said Mary. “I will come as often as I can, but”—she
+hesitated—“I shall have to look every day for the garden door.”
+
+“Yes, you must,” said Colin, “and you can tell me about it afterward.”
+
+He lay thinking a few minutes, as he had done before, and then he spoke
+again.
+
+“I think you shall be a secret, too,” he said. “I will not tell them
+until they find out. I can always send the nurse out of the room and
+say that I want to be by myself. Do you know Martha?”
+
+“Yes, I know her very well,” said Mary. “She waits on me.”
+
+He nodded his head toward the outer corridor.
+
+“She is the one who is asleep in the other room. The nurse went away
+yesterday to stay all night with her sister and she always makes Martha
+attend to me when she wants to go out. Martha shall tell you when to
+come here.”
+
+Then Mary understood Martha’s troubled look when she had asked
+questions about the crying.
+
+“Martha knew about you all the time?” she said.
+
+“Yes; she often attends to me. The nurse likes to get away from me and
+then Martha comes.”
+
+“I have been here a long time,” said Mary. “Shall I go away now? Your
+eyes look sleepy.”
+
+“I wish I could go to sleep before you leave me,” he said rather shyly.
+
+“Shut your eyes,” said Mary, drawing her footstool closer, “and I will
+do what my Ayah used to do in India. I will pat your hand and stroke it
+and sing something quite low.”
+
+“I should like that perhaps,” he said drowsily.
+
+Somehow she was sorry for him and did not want him to lie awake, so she
+leaned against the bed and began to stroke and pat his hand and sing a
+very low little chanting song in Hindustani.
+
+“That is nice,” he said more drowsily still, and she went on chanting
+and stroking, but when she looked at him again his black lashes were
+lying close against his cheeks, for his eyes were shut and he was fast
+asleep. So she got up softly, took her candle and crept away without
+making a sound.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+A YOUNG RAJAH
+
+
+The moor was hidden in mist when the morning came, and the rain had not
+stopped pouring down. There could be no going out of doors. Martha was
+so busy that Mary had no opportunity of talking to her, but in the
+afternoon she asked her to come and sit with her in the nursery. She
+came bringing the stocking she was always knitting when she was doing
+nothing else.
+
+“What’s the matter with thee?” she asked as soon as they sat down.
+“Tha’ looks as if tha’d somethin’ to say.”
+
+“I have. I have found out what the crying was,” said Mary.
+
+Martha let her knitting drop on her knee and gazed at her with startled
+eyes.
+
+“Tha’ hasn’t!” she exclaimed. “Never!”
+
+“I heard it in the night,” Mary went on. “And I got up and went to see
+where it came from. It was Colin. I found him.”
+
+Martha’s face became red with fright.
+
+“Eh! Miss Mary!” she said half crying. “Tha’ shouldn’t have done
+it—tha’ shouldn’t! Tha’ll get me in trouble. I never told thee nothin’
+about him—but tha’ll get me in trouble. I shall lose my place and
+what’ll mother do!”
+
+“You won’t lose your place,” said Mary. “He was glad I came. We talked
+and talked and he said he was glad I came.”
+
+“Was he?” cried Martha. “Art tha’ sure? Tha’ doesn’t know what he’s
+like when anything vexes him. He’s a big lad to cry like a baby, but
+when he’s in a passion he’ll fair scream just to frighten us. He knows
+us daren’t call our souls our own.”
+
+“He wasn’t vexed,” said Mary. “I asked him if I should go away and he
+made me stay. He asked me questions and I sat on a big footstool and
+talked to him about India and about the robin and gardens. He wouldn’t
+let me go. He let me see his mother’s picture. Before I left him I sang
+him to sleep.”
+
+Martha fairly gasped with amazement.
+
+“I can scarcely believe thee!” she protested. “It’s as if tha’d walked
+straight into a lion’s den. If he’d been like he is most times he’d
+have throwed himself into one of his tantrums and roused th’ house. He
+won’t let strangers look at him.”
+
+“He let me look at him. I looked at him all the time and he looked at
+me. We stared!” said Mary.
+
+“I don’t know what to do!” cried agitated Martha. “If Mrs. Medlock
+finds out, she’ll think I broke orders and told thee and I shall be
+packed back to mother.”
+
+“He is not going to tell Mrs. Medlock anything about it yet. It’s to be
+a sort of secret just at first,” said Mary firmly. “And he says
+everybody is obliged to do as he pleases.”
+
+“Aye, that’s true enough—th’ bad lad!” sighed Martha, wiping her
+forehead with her apron.
+
+“He says Mrs. Medlock must. And he wants me to come and talk to him
+every day. And you are to tell me when he wants me.”
+
+“Me!” said Martha; “I shall lose my place—I shall for sure!”
+
+“You can’t if you are doing what he wants you to do and everybody is
+ordered to obey him,” Mary argued.
+
+“Does tha’ mean to say,” cried Martha with wide open eyes, “that he was
+nice to thee!”
+
+“I think he almost liked me,” Mary answered.
+
+“Then tha’ must have bewitched him!” decided Martha, drawing a long
+breath.
+
+“Do you mean Magic?” inquired Mary. “I’ve heard about Magic in India,
+but I can’t make it. I just went into his room and I was so surprised
+to see him I stood and stared. And then he turned round and stared at
+me. And he thought I was a ghost or a dream and I thought perhaps he
+was. And it was so queer being there alone together in the middle of
+the night and not knowing about each other. And we began to ask each
+other questions. And when I asked him if I must go away he said I must
+not.”
+
+“Th’ world’s comin’ to a end!” gasped Martha.
+
+“What is the matter with him?” asked Mary.
+
+“Nobody knows for sure and certain,” said Martha. “Mr. Craven went off
+his head like when he was born. Th’ doctors thought he’d have to be put
+in a ’sylum. It was because Mrs. Craven died like I told you. He
+wouldn’t set eyes on th’ baby. He just raved and said it’d be another
+hunchback like him and it’d better die.”
+
+“Is Colin a hunchback?” Mary asked. “He didn’t look like one.”
+
+“He isn’t yet,” said Martha. “But he began all wrong. Mother said that
+there was enough trouble and raging in th’ house to set any child
+wrong. They was afraid his back was weak an’ they’ve always been takin’
+care of it—keepin’ him lyin’ down and not lettin’ him walk. Once they
+made him wear a brace but he fretted so he was downright ill. Then a
+big doctor came to see him an’ made them take it off. He talked to th’
+other doctor quite rough—in a polite way. He said there’d been too much
+medicine and too much lettin’ him have his own way.”
+
+“I think he’s a very spoiled boy,” said Mary.
+
+“He’s th’ worst young nowt as ever was!” said Martha. “I won’t say as
+he hasn’t been ill a good bit. He’s had coughs an’ colds that’s nearly
+killed him two or three times. Once he had rheumatic fever an’ once he
+had typhoid. Eh! Mrs. Medlock did get a fright then. He’d been out of
+his head an’ she was talkin’ to th’ nurse, thinkin’ he didn’t know
+nothin’, an’ she said, ‘He’ll die this time sure enough, an’ best thing
+for him an’ for everybody.’ An’ she looked at him an’ there he was with
+his big eyes open, starin’ at her as sensible as she was herself. She
+didn’t know wha’d happen but he just stared at her an’ says, ‘You give
+me some water an’ stop talkin’.’”
+
+“Do you think he will die?” asked Mary.
+
+“Mother says there’s no reason why any child should live that gets no
+fresh air an’ doesn’t do nothin’ but lie on his back an’ read
+picture-books an’ take medicine. He’s weak and hates th’ trouble o’
+bein’ taken out o’ doors, an’ he gets cold so easy he says it makes him
+ill.”
+
+Mary sat and looked at the fire.
+
+“I wonder,” she said slowly, “if it would not do him good to go out
+into a garden and watch things growing. It did me good.”
+
+“One of th’ worst fits he ever had,” said Martha, “was one time they
+took him out where the roses is by the fountain. He’d been readin’ in a
+paper about people gettin’ somethin’ he called ‘rose cold’ an’ he began
+to sneeze an’ said he’d got it an’ then a new gardener as didn’t know
+th’ rules passed by an’ looked at him curious. He threw himself into a
+passion an’ he said he’d looked at him because he was going to be a
+hunchback. He cried himself into a fever an’ was ill all night.”
+
+“If he ever gets angry at me, I’ll never go and see him again,” said
+Mary.
+
+“He’ll have thee if he wants thee,” said Martha. “Tha’ may as well know
+that at th’ start.”
+
+Very soon afterward a bell rang and she rolled up her knitting.
+
+“I dare say th’ nurse wants me to stay with him a bit,” she said. “I
+hope he’s in a good temper.”
+
+She was out of the room about ten minutes and then she came back with a
+puzzled expression.
+
+“Well, tha’ has bewitched him,” she said. “He’s up on his sofa with his
+picture-books. He’s told the nurse to stay away until six o’clock. I’m
+to wait in the next room. Th’ minute she was gone he called me to him
+an’ says, ‘I want Mary Lennox to come and talk to me, and remember
+you’re not to tell anyone.’ You’d better go as quick as you can.”
+
+Mary was quite willing to go quickly. She did not want to see Colin as
+much as she wanted to see Dickon; but she wanted to see him very much.
+
+There was a bright fire on the hearth when she entered his room, and in
+the daylight she saw it was a very beautiful room indeed. There were
+rich colors in the rugs and hangings and pictures and books on the
+walls which made it look glowing and comfortable even in spite of the
+gray sky and falling rain. Colin looked rather like a picture himself.
+He was wrapped in a velvet dressing-gown and sat against a big brocaded
+cushion. He had a red spot on each cheek.
+
+“Come in,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about you all morning.”
+
+“I’ve been thinking about you, too,” answered Mary. “You don’t know how
+frightened Martha is. She says Mrs. Medlock will think she told me
+about you and then she will be sent away.”
+
+He frowned.
+
+“Go and tell her to come here,” he said. “She is in the next room.”
+
+Mary went and brought her back. Poor Martha was shaking in her shoes.
+Colin was still frowning.
+
+“Have you to do what I please or have you not?” he demanded.
+
+“I have to do what you please, sir,” Martha faltered, turning quite
+red.
+
+“Has Medlock to do what I please?”
+
+“Everybody has, sir,” said Martha.
+
+“Well, then, if I order you to bring Miss Mary to me, how can Medlock
+send you away if she finds it out?”
+
+“Please don’t let her, sir,” pleaded Martha.
+
+“I’ll send _her_ away if she dares to say a word about such a thing,”
+said Master Craven grandly. “She wouldn’t like that, I can tell you.”
+
+“Thank you, sir,” bobbing a curtsy, “I want to do my duty, sir.”
+
+“What I want is your duty” said Colin more grandly still. “I’ll take
+care of you. Now go away.”
+
+When the door closed behind Martha, Colin found Mistress Mary gazing at
+him as if he had set her wondering.
+
+“Why do you look at me like that?” he asked her. “What are you thinking
+about?”
+
+“I am thinking about two things.”
+
+“What are they? Sit down and tell me.”
+
+“This is the first one,” said Mary, seating herself on the big stool.
+“Once in India I saw a boy who was a Rajah. He had rubies and emeralds
+and diamonds stuck all over him. He spoke to his people just as you
+spoke to Martha. Everybody had to do everything he told them—in a
+minute. I think they would have been killed if they hadn’t.”
+
+“I shall make you tell me about Rajahs presently,” he said, “but first
+tell me what the second thing was.”
+
+“I was thinking,” said Mary, “how different you are from Dickon.”
+
+“Who is Dickon?” he said. “What a queer name!”
+
+She might as well tell him, she thought she could talk about Dickon
+without mentioning the secret garden. She had liked to hear Martha talk
+about him. Besides, she longed to talk about him. It would seem to
+bring him nearer.
+
+“He is Martha’s brother. He is twelve years old,” she explained. “He is
+not like anyone else in the world. He can charm foxes and squirrels and
+birds just as the natives in India charm snakes. He plays a very soft
+tune on a pipe and they come and listen.”
+
+There were some big books on a table at his side and he dragged one
+suddenly toward him.
+
+“There is a picture of a snake-charmer in this,” he exclaimed. “Come
+and look at it.”
+
+The book was a beautiful one with superb colored illustrations and he
+turned to one of them.
+
+“Can he do that?” he asked eagerly.
+
+“He played on his pipe and they listened,” Mary explained. “But he
+doesn’t call it Magic. He says it’s because he lives on the moor so
+much and he knows their ways. He says he feels sometimes as if he was a
+bird or a rabbit himself, he likes them so. I think he asked the robin
+questions. It seemed as if they talked to each other in soft chirps.”
+
+Colin lay back on his cushion and his eyes grew larger and larger and
+the spots on his cheeks burned.
+
+“Tell me some more about him,” he said.
+
+“He knows all about eggs and nests,” Mary went on. “And he knows where
+foxes and badgers and otters live. He keeps them secret so that other
+boys won’t find their holes and frighten them. He knows about
+everything that grows or lives on the moor.”
+
+“Does he like the moor?” said Colin. “How can he when it’s such a
+great, bare, dreary place?”
+
+“It’s the most beautiful place,” protested Mary. “Thousands of lovely
+things grow on it and there are thousands of little creatures all busy
+building nests and making holes and burrows and chippering or singing
+or squeaking to each other. They are so busy and having such fun under
+the earth or in the trees or heather. It’s their world.”
+
+“How do you know all that?” said Colin, turning on his elbow to look at
+her.
+
+“I have never been there once, really,” said Mary suddenly remembering.
+“I only drove over it in the dark. I thought it was hideous. Martha
+told me about it first and then Dickon. When Dickon talks about it you
+feel as if you saw things and heard them and as if you were standing in
+the heather with the sun shining and the gorse smelling like honey—and
+all full of bees and butterflies.”
+
+“You never see anything if you are ill,” said Colin restlessly. He
+looked like a person listening to a new sound in the distance and
+wondering what it was.
+
+“You can’t if you stay in a room,” said Mary.
+
+“I couldn’t go on the moor,” he said in a resentful tone.
+
+Mary was silent for a minute and then she said something bold.
+
+“You might—sometime.”
+
+He moved as if he were startled.
+
+“Go on the moor! How could I? I am going to die.”
+
+“How do you know?” said Mary unsympathetically. She didn’t like the way
+he had of talking about dying. She did not feel very sympathetic. She
+felt rather as if he almost boasted about it.
+
+“Oh, I’ve heard it ever since I remember,” he answered crossly. “They
+are always whispering about it and thinking I don’t notice. They wish I
+would, too.”
+
+Mistress Mary felt quite contrary. She pinched her lips together.
+
+“If they wished I would,” she said, “I wouldn’t. Who wishes you would?”
+
+“The servants—and of course Dr. Craven because he would get
+Misselthwaite and be rich instead of poor. He daren’t say so, but he
+always looks cheerful when I am worse. When I had typhoid fever his
+face got quite fat. I think my father wishes it, too.”
+
+“I don’t believe he does,” said Mary quite obstinately.
+
+That made Colin turn and look at her again.
+
+“Don’t you?” he said.
+
+And then he lay back on his cushion and was still, as if he were
+thinking. And there was quite a long silence. Perhaps they were both of
+them thinking strange things children do not usually think of.
+
+“I like the grand doctor from London, because he made them take the
+iron thing off,” said Mary at last “Did he say you were going to die?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“What did he say?”
+
+“He didn’t whisper,” Colin answered. “Perhaps he knew I hated
+whispering. I heard him say one thing quite aloud. He said, ‘The lad
+might live if he would make up his mind to it. Put him in the humor.’
+It sounded as if he was in a temper.”
+
+“I’ll tell you who would put you in the humor, perhaps,” said Mary
+reflecting. She felt as if she would like this thing to be settled one
+way or the other. “I believe Dickon would. He’s always talking about
+live things. He never talks about dead things or things that are ill.
+He’s always looking up in the sky to watch birds flying—or looking down
+at the earth to see something growing. He has such round blue eyes and
+they are so wide open with looking about. And he laughs such a big
+laugh with his wide mouth—and his cheeks are as red—as red as
+cherries.”
+
+She pulled her stool nearer to the sofa and her expression quite
+changed at the remembrance of the wide curving mouth and wide open
+eyes.
+
+“See here,” she said. “Don’t let us talk about dying; I don’t like it.
+Let us talk about living. Let us talk and talk about Dickon. And then
+we will look at your pictures.”
+
+It was the best thing she could have said. 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. And it was all so
+alive that Mary talked more than she had ever talked before—and Colin
+both talked and listened as he had never done either before. And they
+both began to laugh over nothings as children will when they are happy
+together. And they laughed so that in the end they were making as much
+noise as if they had been two ordinary healthy natural ten-year-old
+creatures—instead of a hard, little, unloving girl and a sickly boy who
+believed that he was going to die.
+
+They enjoyed themselves so much that they forgot the pictures and they
+forgot about the time. They had been laughing quite loudly over Ben
+Weatherstaff and his robin, and Colin was actually sitting up as if he
+had forgotten about his weak back, when he suddenly remembered
+something.
+
+“Do you know there is one thing we have never once thought of,” he
+said. “We are cousins.”
+
+It seemed so queer that they had talked so much and never remembered
+this simple thing that they laughed more than ever, because they had
+got into the humor to laugh at anything. And in the midst of the fun
+the door opened and in walked Dr. Craven and Mrs. Medlock.
+
+Dr. Craven started in actual alarm and Mrs. Medlock almost fell back
+because he had accidentally bumped against her.
+
+“Good Lord!” exclaimed poor Mrs. Medlock with her eyes almost starting
+out of her head. “Good Lord!”
+
+“What is this?” said Dr. Craven, coming forward. “What does it mean?”
+
+Then Mary was reminded of the boy Rajah again. Colin answered as if
+neither the doctor’s alarm nor Mrs. Medlock’s terror were of the
+slightest consequence. He was as little disturbed or frightened as if
+an elderly cat and dog had walked into the room.
+
+“This is my cousin, Mary Lennox,” he said. “I asked her to come and
+talk to me. I like her. She must come and talk to me whenever I send
+for her.”
+
+Dr. Craven turned reproachfully to Mrs. Medlock.
+
+“Oh, sir” she panted. “I don’t know how it’s happened. There’s not a
+servant on the place tha’d dare to talk—they all have their orders.”
+
+“Nobody told her anything,” said Colin. “She heard me crying and found
+me herself. I am glad she came. Don’t be silly, Medlock.”
+
+Mary saw that Dr. Craven did not look pleased, but it was quite plain
+that he dare not oppose his patient. He sat down by Colin and felt his
+pulse.
+
+“I am afraid there has been too much excitement. Excitement is not good
+for you, my boy,” he said.
+
+“I should be excited if she kept away,” answered Colin, his eyes
+beginning to look dangerously sparkling. “I am better. She makes me
+better. The nurse must bring up her tea with mine. We will have tea
+together.”
+
+Mrs. Medlock and Dr. Craven looked at each other in a troubled way, but
+there was evidently nothing to be done.
+
+“He does look rather better, sir,” ventured Mrs. Medlock.
+“But”—thinking the matter over—“he looked better this morning before
+she came into the room.”
+
+“She came into the room last night. She stayed with me a long time. She
+sang a Hindustani song to me and it made me go to sleep,” said Colin.
+“I was better when I wakened up. I wanted my breakfast. I want my tea
+now. Tell nurse, Medlock.”
+
+Dr. Craven did not stay very long. He talked to the nurse for a few
+minutes when she came into the room and said a few words of warning to
+Colin. He must not talk too much; he must not forget that he was ill;
+he must not forget that he was very easily tired. Mary thought that
+there seemed to be a number of uncomfortable things he was not to
+forget.
+
+Colin looked fretful and kept his strange black-lashed eyes fixed on
+Dr. Craven’s face.
+
+“I _want_ to forget it,” he said at last. “She makes me forget it. That
+is why I want her.”
+
+Dr. Craven did not look happy when he left the room. He gave a puzzled
+glance at the little girl sitting on the large stool. She had become a
+stiff, silent child again as soon as he entered and he could not see
+what the attraction was. The boy actually did look brighter,
+however—and he sighed rather heavily as he went down the corridor.
+
+“They are always wanting me to eat things when I don’t want to,” said
+Colin, as the nurse brought in the tea and put it on the table by the
+sofa. “Now, if you’ll eat I will. Those muffins look so nice and hot.
+Tell me about Rajahs.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+NEST BUILDING
+
+
+After another week of rain the high arch of blue sky appeared again and
+the sun which poured down was quite hot. Though there had been no
+chance to see either the secret garden or Dickon, Mistress Mary had
+enjoyed herself very much. The week had not seemed long. She had spent
+hours of every day with Colin in his room, talking about Rajahs or
+gardens or Dickon and the cottage on the moor. They had looked at the
+splendid books and pictures and sometimes Mary had read things to
+Colin, and sometimes he had read a little to her. When he was amused
+and interested she thought he scarcely looked like an invalid at all,
+except that his face was so colorless and he was always on the sofa.
+
+“You are a sly young one to listen and get out of your bed to go
+following things up like you did that night,” Mrs. Medlock said once.
+“But there’s no saying it’s not been a sort of blessing to the lot of
+us. He’s not had a tantrum or a whining fit since you made friends. The
+nurse was just going to give up the case because she was so sick of
+him, but she says she doesn’t mind staying now you’ve gone on duty with
+her,” laughing a little.
+
+In her talks with Colin, Mary had tried to be very cautious about the
+secret garden. There were certain things she wanted to find out from
+him, but she felt that she must find them out without asking him direct
+questions. In the first place, as she began to like to be with him, she
+wanted to discover whether he was the kind of boy you could tell a
+secret to. He was not in the least like Dickon, but he was evidently so
+pleased with the idea of a garden no one knew anything about that she
+thought perhaps he could be trusted. But she had not known him long
+enough to be sure. The second thing she wanted to find out was this: If
+he could be trusted—if he really could—wouldn’t it be possible to take
+him to the garden without having anyone find it out? The grand doctor
+had said that he must have fresh air and Colin had said that he would
+not mind fresh air in a secret garden. Perhaps if he had a great deal
+of fresh air and knew Dickon and the robin and saw things growing he
+might not think so much about dying. Mary had seen herself in the glass
+sometimes lately when she had realized that she looked quite a
+different creature from the child she had seen when she arrived from
+India. This child looked nicer. Even Martha had seen a change in her.
+
+“Th’ air from th’ moor has done thee good already,” she had said.
+“Tha’rt not nigh so yeller and tha’rt not nigh so scrawny. Even tha’
+hair doesn’t slamp down on tha’ head so flat. It’s got some life in it
+so as it sticks out a bit.”
+
+“It’s like me,” said Mary. “It’s growing stronger and fatter. I’m sure
+there’s more of it.”
+
+“It looks it, for sure,” said Martha, ruffling it up a little round her
+face. “Tha’rt not half so ugly when it’s that way an’ there’s a bit o’
+red in tha’ cheeks.”
+
+If gardens and fresh air had been good for her perhaps they would be
+good for Colin. But then, if he hated people to look at him, perhaps he
+would not like to see Dickon.
+
+“Why does it make you angry when you are looked at?” she inquired one
+day.
+
+“I always hated it,” he answered, “even when I was very little. Then
+when they took me to the seaside and I used to lie in my carriage
+everybody used to stare and ladies would stop and talk to my nurse and
+then they would begin to whisper and I knew then they were saying I
+shouldn’t live to grow up. Then sometimes the ladies would pat my
+cheeks and say ‘Poor child!’ Once when a lady did that I screamed out
+loud and bit her hand. She was so frightened she ran away.”
+
+“She thought you had gone mad like a dog,” said Mary, not at all
+admiringly.
+
+“I don’t care what she thought,” said Colin, frowning.
+
+“I wonder why you didn’t scream and bite me when I came into your
+room?” said Mary. 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. She drew up the blinds and opened the window
+itself and a great waft of fresh, scented air blew in upon her. The
+moor was blue and the whole world looked as if something Magic had
+happened to it. There were tender little fluting sounds here and there
+and everywhere, as if scores of birds were beginning to tune up for a
+concert. Mary put her hand out of the window and held it in the sun.
+
+“It’s warm—warm!” she said. “It will make the green points push up and
+up and up, and it will make the bulbs and roots work and struggle with
+all their might under the earth.”
+
+She kneeled down and leaned out of the window as far as she could,
+breathing big breaths and sniffing the air until she laughed because
+she remembered what Dickon’s mother had said about the end of his nose
+quivering like a rabbit’s.
+
+“It must be very early,” she said. “The little clouds are all pink and
+I’ve never seen the sky look like this. No one is up. I don’t even hear
+the stable boys.”
+
+A sudden thought made her scramble to her feet.
+
+“I can’t wait! I am going to see the garden!”
+
+She had learned to dress herself by this time and she put on her
+clothes in five minutes. She knew a small side door which she could
+unbolt herself and she flew downstairs in her stocking feet and put on
+her shoes in the hall. She unchained and unbolted and unlocked and when
+the door was open she sprang across the step with one bound, and there
+she was standing on the grass, which seemed to have turned green, and
+with the sun pouring down on her and warm sweet wafts about her and the
+fluting and twittering and singing coming from every bush and tree. She
+clasped her hands for pure joy and looked up in the sky and it was so
+blue and pink and pearly and white and flooded with springtime light
+that she felt as if she must flute and sing aloud herself and knew that
+thrushes and robins and skylarks could not possibly help it. She ran
+around the shrubs and paths towards the secret garden.
+
+“It is all different already,” she said. “The grass is greener and
+things are sticking up everywhere and things are uncurling and green
+buds of leaves are showing. This afternoon I am sure Dickon will come.”
+
+The long warm rain had done strange things to the herbaceous beds which
+bordered the walk by the lower wall. There were things sprouting and
+pushing out from the roots of clumps of plants and there were actually
+here and there glimpses of royal purple and yellow unfurling among the
+stems of crocuses. Six months before Mistress Mary would not have seen
+how the world was waking up, but now she missed nothing.
+
+When she had reached the place where the door hid itself under the ivy,
+she was startled by a curious loud sound. It was the caw—caw of a crow
+and it came from the top of the wall, and when she looked up, there sat
+a big glossy-plumaged blue-black bird, looking down at her very wisely
+indeed. She had never seen a crow so close before and he made her a
+little nervous, but the next moment he spread his wings and flapped
+away across the garden. She hoped he was not going to stay inside and
+she pushed the door open wondering if he would. When she got fairly
+into the garden she saw that he probably did intend to stay because he
+had alighted on a dwarf apple-tree and under the apple-tree was lying a
+little reddish animal with a Bushy tail, and both of them were watching
+the stooping body and rust-red head of Dickon, who was kneeling on the
+grass working hard.
+
+Mary flew across the grass to him.
+
+“Oh, Dickon! Dickon!” she cried out. “How could you get here so early!
+How could you! The sun has only just got up!”
+
+He got up himself, laughing and glowing, and tousled; his eyes like a
+bit of the sky.
+
+“Eh!” he said. “I was up long before him. How could I have stayed abed!
+Th’ world’s all fair begun again this mornin’, it has. An’ it’s workin’
+an’ hummin’ an’ scratchin’ an’ pipin’ an’ nest-buildin’ an’ breathin’
+out scents, till you’ve got to be out on it ’stead o’ lyin’ on your
+back. When th’ sun did jump up, th’ moor went mad for joy, an’ I was in
+the midst of th’ heather, an’ I run like mad myself, shoutin’ an’
+singin’. An’ I come straight here. I couldn’t have stayed away. Why,
+th’ garden was lyin’ here waitin’!”
+
+Mary put her hands on her chest, panting, as if she had been running
+herself.
+
+“Oh, Dickon! Dickon!” she said. “I’m so happy I can scarcely breathe!”
+
+Seeing him talking to a stranger, the little bushy-tailed animal rose
+from its place under the tree and came to him, and the rook, cawing
+once, flew down from its branch and settled quietly on his shoulder.
+
+“This is th’ little fox cub,” he said, rubbing the little reddish
+animal’s head. “It’s named Captain. An’ this here’s Soot. Soot he flew
+across th’ moor with me an’ Captain he run same as if th’ hounds had
+been after him. They both felt same as I did.”
+
+Neither of the creatures looked as if he were the least afraid of Mary.
+When Dickon began to walk about, Soot stayed on his shoulder and
+Captain trotted quietly close to his side.
+
+“See here!” said Dickon. “See how these has pushed up, an’ these an’
+these! An’ Eh! Look at these here!”
+
+He threw himself upon his knees and Mary went down beside him. They had
+come upon a whole clump of crocuses burst into purple and orange and
+gold. Mary bent her face down and kissed and kissed them.
+
+“You never kiss a person in that way,” she said when she lifted her
+head. “Flowers are so different.”
+
+He looked puzzled but smiled.
+
+“Eh!” he said, “I’ve kissed mother many a time that way when I come in
+from th’ moor after a day’s roamin’ an’ she stood there at th’ door in
+th’ sun, lookin’ so glad an’ comfortable.”
+
+They ran from one part of the garden to another and found so many
+wonders that they were obliged to remind themselves that they must
+whisper or speak low. He showed her swelling leafbuds on rose branches
+which had seemed dead. He showed her ten thousand new green points
+pushing through the mould. They put their eager young noses close to
+the earth and sniffed its warmed springtime breathing; they dug and
+pulled and laughed low with rapture until Mistress Mary’s hair was as
+tumbled as Dickon’s and her cheeks were almost as poppy red as his.
+
+There was every joy on earth in the secret garden that morning, and in
+the midst of them came a delight more delightful than all, because it
+was more wonderful. Swiftly something flew across the wall and darted
+through the trees to a close grown corner, a little flare of
+red-breasted bird with something hanging from its beak. Dickon stood
+quite still and put his hand on Mary almost as if they had suddenly
+found themselves laughing in a church.
+
+“We munnot stir,” he whispered in broad Yorkshire. “We munnot scarce
+breathe. I knowed he was mate-huntin’ when I seed him last. It’s Ben
+Weatherstaff’s robin. He’s buildin’ his nest. He’ll stay here if us
+don’t flight him.”
+
+They settled down softly upon the grass and sat there without moving.
+
+“Us mustn’t seem as if us was watchin’ him too close,” said Dickon.
+“He’d be out with us for good if he got th’ notion us was interferin’
+now. He’ll be a good bit different till all this is over. He’s settin’
+up housekeepin’. He’ll be shyer an’ readier to take things ill. He’s
+got no time for visitin’ an’ gossipin’. Us must keep still a bit an’
+try to look as if us was grass an’ trees an’ bushes. Then when he’s got
+used to seein’ us I’ll chirp a bit an’ he’ll know us’ll not be in his
+way.”
+
+Mistress Mary was not at all sure that she knew, as Dickon seemed to,
+how to try to look like grass and trees and bushes. But he had said the
+queer thing as if it were the simplest and most natural thing in the
+world, and she felt it must be quite easy to him, and indeed she
+watched him for a few minutes carefully, wondering if it was possible
+for him to quietly turn green and put out branches and leaves. But he
+only sat wonderfully still, and when he spoke dropped his voice to such
+a softness that it was curious that she could hear him, but she could.
+
+“It’s part o’ th’ springtime, this nest-buildin’ is,” he said. “I
+warrant it’s been goin’ on in th’ same way every year since th’ world
+was begun. They’ve got their way o’ thinkin’ and doin’ things an’ a
+body had better not meddle. You can lose a friend in springtime easier
+than any other season if you’re too curious.”
+
+“If we talk about him I can’t help looking at him,” Mary said as softly
+as possible. “We must talk of something else. There is something I want
+to tell you.”
+
+“He’ll like it better if us talks o’ somethin’ else,” said Dickon.
+“What is it tha’s got to tell me?”
+
+“Well—do you know about Colin?” she whispered.
+
+He turned his head to look at her.
+
+“What does tha’ know about him?” he asked.
+
+“I’ve seen him. I have been to talk to him every day this week. He
+wants me to come. He says I’m making him forget about being ill and
+dying,” answered Mary.
+
+Dickon looked actually relieved as soon as the surprise died away from
+his round face.
+
+“I am glad o’ that,” he exclaimed. “I’m right down glad. It makes me
+easier. I knowed I must say nothin’ about him an’ I don’t like havin’
+to hide things.”
+
+“Don’t you like hiding the garden?” said Mary.
+
+“I’ll never tell about it,” he answered. “But I says to mother,
+‘Mother,’ I says, ‘I got a secret to keep. It’s not a bad ’un, tha’
+knows that. It’s no worse than hidin’ where a bird’s nest is. Tha’
+doesn’t mind it, does tha’?’”
+
+Mary always wanted to hear about mother.
+
+“What did she say?” she asked, not at all afraid to hear.
+
+Dickon grinned sweet-temperedly.
+
+“It was just like her, what she said,” he answered. “She give my head a
+bit of a rub an’ laughed an’ she says, ‘Eh, lad, tha’ can have all th’
+secrets tha’ likes. I’ve knowed thee twelve year’.’”
+
+“How did you know about Colin?” asked Mary.
+
+“Everybody as knowed about Mester Craven knowed there was a little lad
+as was like to be a cripple, an’ they knowed Mester Craven didn’t like
+him to be talked about. Folks is sorry for Mester Craven because Mrs.
+Craven was such a pretty young lady an’ they was so fond of each other.
+Mrs. Medlock stops in our cottage whenever she goes to Thwaite an’ she
+doesn’t mind talkin’ to mother before us children, because she knows us
+has been brought up to be trusty. How did tha’ find out about him?
+Martha was in fine trouble th’ last time she came home. She said tha’d
+heard him frettin’ an’ tha’ was askin’ questions an’ she didn’t know
+what to say.”
+
+Mary told him her story about the midnight wuthering of the wind which
+had wakened her and about the faint far-off sounds of the complaining
+voice which had led her down the dark corridors with her candle and had
+ended with her opening of the door of the dimly lighted room with the
+carven four-posted bed in the corner. When she described the small
+ivory-white face and the strange black-rimmed eyes Dickon shook his
+head.
+
+“Them’s just like his mother’s eyes, only hers was always laughin’,
+they say,” he said. “They say as Mr. Craven can’t bear to see him when
+he’s awake an’ it’s because his eyes is so like his mother’s an’ yet
+looks so different in his miserable bit of a face.”
+
+“Do you think he wants to die?” whispered Mary.
+
+“No, but he wishes he’d never been born. Mother she says that’s th’
+worst thing on earth for a child. Them as is not wanted scarce ever
+thrives. Mester Craven he’d buy anythin’ as money could buy for th’
+poor lad but he’d like to forget as he’s on earth. For one thing, he’s
+afraid he’ll look at him some day and find he’s growed hunchback.”
+
+“Colin’s so afraid of it himself that he won’t sit up,” said Mary. “He
+says he’s always thinking that if he should feel a lump coming he
+should go crazy and scream himself to death.”
+
+“Eh! he oughtn’t to lie there thinkin’ things like that,” said Dickon.
+“No lad could get well as thought them sort o’ things.”
+
+The fox was lying on the grass close by him, looking up to ask for a
+pat now and then, and Dickon bent down and rubbed his neck softly and
+thought a few minutes in silence. Presently he lifted his head and
+looked round the garden.
+
+“When first we got in here,” he said, “it seemed like everything was
+gray. Look round now and tell me if tha’ doesn’t see a difference.”
+
+Mary looked and caught her breath a little.
+
+“Why!” she cried, “the gray wall is changing. It is as if a green mist
+were creeping over it. It’s almost like a green gauze veil.”
+
+“Aye,” said Dickon. “An’ it’ll be greener and greener till th’ gray’s
+all gone. Can tha’ guess what I was thinkin’?”
+
+“I know it was something nice,” said Mary eagerly. “I believe it was
+something about Colin.”
+
+“I was thinkin’ that if he was out here he wouldn’t be watchin’ for
+lumps to grow on his back; he’d be watchin’ for buds to break on th’
+rose-bushes, an’ he’d likely be healthier,” explained Dickon. “I was
+wonderin’ if us could ever get him in th’ humor to come out here an’
+lie under th’ trees in his carriage.”
+
+“I’ve been wondering that myself. I’ve thought of it almost every time
+I’ve talked to him,” said Mary. “I’ve wondered if he could keep a
+secret and I’ve wondered if we could bring him here without anyone
+seeing us. I thought perhaps you could push his carriage. The doctor
+said he must have fresh air and if he wants us to take him out no one
+dare disobey him. He won’t go out for other people and perhaps they
+will be glad if he will go out with us. He could order the gardeners to
+keep away so they wouldn’t find out.”
+
+Dickon was thinking very hard as he scratched Captain’s back.
+
+“It’d be good for him, I’ll warrant,” he said. “Us’d not be thinkin’
+he’d better never been born. Us’d be just two children watchin’ a
+garden grow, an’ he’d be another. Two lads an’ a little lass just
+lookin’ on at th’ springtime. I warrant it’d be better than doctor’s
+stuff.”
+
+“He’s been lying in his room so long and he’s always been so afraid of
+his back that it has made him queer,” said Mary. “He knows a good many
+things out of books but he doesn’t know anything else. He says he has
+been too ill to notice things and he hates going out of doors and hates
+gardens and gardeners. But he likes to hear about this garden because
+it is a secret. I daren’t tell him much but he said he wanted to see
+it.”
+
+“Us’ll have him out here sometime for sure,” said Dickon. “I could push
+his carriage well enough. Has tha’ noticed how th’ robin an’ his mate
+has been workin’ while we’ve been sittin’ here? Look at him perched on
+that branch wonderin’ where it’d be best to put that twig he’s got in
+his beak.”
+
+He made one of his low whistling calls and the robin turned his head
+and looked at him inquiringly, still holding his twig. 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. “Ben Weatherstaff scolds him and makes fun of him, and he
+hops about and looks as if he understood every word, and I know he
+likes it. Ben Weatherstaff says he is so conceited he would rather have
+stones thrown at him than not be noticed.”
+
+Dickon laughed too and went on talking.
+
+“Tha’ knows us won’t trouble thee,” he said to the robin. “Us is near
+bein’ wild things ourselves. Us is nest-buildin’ too, bless thee. Look
+out tha’ doesn’t tell on us.”
+
+And though the robin did not answer, because his beak was occupied,
+Mary knew that when he flew away with his twig to his own corner of the
+garden the darkness of his dew-bright eye meant that he would not tell
+their secret for the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+“I WON’T!” SAID MARY
+
+
+They found a great deal to do that morning and Mary was late in
+returning to the house and was also in such a hurry to get back to her
+work that she quite forgot Colin until the last moment.
+
+“Tell Colin that I can’t come and see him yet,” she said to Martha.
+“I’m very busy in the garden.”
+
+Martha looked rather frightened.
+
+“Eh! Miss Mary,” she said, “it may put him all out of humor when I tell
+him that.”
+
+But Mary was not as afraid of him as other people were and she was not
+a self-sacrificing person.
+
+“I can’t stay,” she answered. “Dickon’s waiting for me;” and she ran
+away.
+
+The afternoon was even lovelier and busier than the morning had been.
+Already nearly all the weeds were cleared out of the garden and most of
+the roses and trees had been pruned or dug about. Dickon had brought a
+spade of his own and he had taught Mary to use all her tools, so that
+by this time it was plain that though the lovely wild place was not
+likely to become a “gardener’s garden” it would be a wilderness of
+growing things before the springtime was over.
+
+“There’ll be apple blossoms an’ cherry blossoms overhead,” Dickon said,
+working away with all his might. “An’ there’ll be peach an’ plum trees
+in bloom against th’ walls, an’ th’ grass’ll be a carpet o’ flowers.”
+
+The little fox and the rook were as happy and busy as they were, and
+the robin and his mate flew backward and forward like tiny streaks of
+lightning. Sometimes the rook flapped his black wings and soared away
+over the tree-tops in the park. Each time he came back and perched near
+Dickon and cawed several times as if he were relating his adventures,
+and Dickon talked to him just as he had talked to the robin. Once when
+Dickon was so busy that he did not answer him at first, Soot flew on to
+his shoulders and gently tweaked his ear with his large beak. When Mary
+wanted to rest a little Dickon sat down with her under a tree and once
+he took his pipe out of his pocket and played the soft strange little
+notes and two squirrels appeared on the wall and looked and listened.
+
+“Tha’s a good bit stronger than tha’ was,” Dickon said, looking at her
+as she was digging. “Tha’s beginning to look different, for sure.”
+
+Mary was glowing with exercise and good spirits.
+
+“I’m getting fatter and fatter every day,” she said quite exultantly.
+“Mrs. Medlock will have to get me some bigger dresses. Martha says my
+hair is growing thicker. It isn’t so flat and stringy.”
+
+The sun was beginning to set and sending deep gold-colored rays
+slanting under the trees when they parted.
+
+“It’ll be fine tomorrow,” 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. She felt sure he would like to hear. So
+it was not very pleasant when she opened the door of her room, to see
+Martha standing waiting for her with a doleful face.
+
+“What is the matter?” she asked. “What did Colin say when you told him
+I couldn’t come?”
+
+“Eh!” said Martha, “I wish tha’d gone. He was nigh goin’ into one o’
+his tantrums. There’s been a nice to do all afternoon to keep him
+quiet. He would watch the clock all th’ time.”
+
+Mary’s lips pinched themselves together. She was no more used to
+considering other people than Colin was and she saw no reason why an
+ill-tempered boy should interfere with the thing she liked best. She
+knew nothing about the pitifulness of people who had been ill and
+nervous and who did not know that they could control their tempers and
+need not make other people ill and nervous, too. When she had had a
+headache in India she had done her best to see that everybody else also
+had a headache or something quite as bad. And she felt she was quite
+right; but of course now she felt that Colin was quite wrong.
+
+He was not on his sofa when she went into his room. He was lying flat
+on his back in bed and he did not turn his head toward her as she came
+in. This was a bad beginning and Mary marched up to him with her stiff
+manner.
+
+“Why didn’t you get up?” she said.
+
+“I did get up this morning when I thought you were coming,” he
+answered, without looking at her. “I made them put me back in bed this
+afternoon. My back ached and my head ached and I was tired. Why didn’t
+you come?”
+
+“I was working in the garden with Dickon,” said Mary.
+
+Colin frowned and condescended to look at her.
+
+“I won’t let that boy come here if you go and stay with him instead of
+coming to talk to me,” he said.
+
+Mary flew into a fine passion. She could fly into a passion without
+making a noise. She just grew sour and obstinate and did not care what
+happened.
+
+“If you send Dickon away, I’ll never come into this room again!” she
+retorted.
+
+“You’ll have to if I want you,” said Colin.
+
+“I won’t!” said Mary.
+
+“I’ll make you,” said Colin. “They shall drag you in.”
+
+“Shall they, Mr. Rajah!” said Mary fiercely. “They may drag me in but
+they can’t make me talk when they get me here. I’ll sit and clench my
+teeth and never tell you one thing. I won’t even look at you. I’ll
+stare at the floor!”
+
+They were a nice agreeable pair as they glared at each other. If they
+had been two little street boys they would have sprung at each other
+and had a rough-and-tumble fight. As it was, they did the next thing to
+it.
+
+“You are a selfish thing!” cried Colin.
+
+“What are you?” said Mary. “Selfish people always say that. Anyone is
+selfish who doesn’t do what they want. You’re more selfish than I am.
+You’re the most selfish boy I ever saw.”
+
+“I’m not!” snapped Colin. “I’m not as selfish as your fine Dickon is!
+He keeps you playing in the dirt when he knows I am all by myself. He’s
+selfish, if you like!”
+
+Mary’s eyes flashed fire.
+
+“He’s nicer than any other boy that ever lived!” she said. “He’s—he’s
+like an angel!” It might sound rather silly to say that but she did not
+care.
+
+“A nice angel!” Colin sneered ferociously. “He’s a common cottage boy
+off the moor!”
+
+“He’s better than a common Rajah!” retorted Mary. “He’s a thousand
+times better!”
+
+Because she was the stronger of the two she was beginning to get the
+better of him. The truth was that he had never had a fight with anyone
+like himself in his life and, upon the whole, it was rather good for
+him, though neither he nor Mary knew anything about that. He turned his
+head on his pillow and shut his eyes and a big tear was squeezed out
+and ran down his cheek. He was beginning to feel pathetic and sorry for
+himself—not for anyone else.
+
+“I’m not as selfish as you, because I’m always ill, and I’m sure there
+is a lump coming on my back,” he said. “And I am going to die besides.”
+
+“You’re not!” contradicted Mary unsympathetically.
+
+He opened his eyes quite wide with indignation. He had never heard such
+a thing said before. He was at once furious and slightly pleased, if a
+person could be both at one time.
+
+“I’m not?” he cried. “I am! You know I am! Everybody says so.”
+
+“I don’t believe it!” said Mary sourly. “You just say that to make
+people sorry. I believe you’re proud of it. I don’t believe it! If you
+were a nice boy it might be true—but you’re too nasty!”
+
+In spite of his invalid back Colin sat up in bed in quite a healthy
+rage.
+
+“Get out of the room!” he shouted and he caught hold of his pillow and
+threw it at her. He was not strong enough to throw it far and it only
+fell at her feet, but Mary’s face looked as pinched as a nutcracker.
+
+“I’m going,” she said. “And I won’t come back!”
+
+She walked to the door and when she reached it she turned round and
+spoke again.
+
+“I was going to tell you all sorts of nice things,” she said. “Dickon
+brought his fox and his rook and I was going to tell you all about
+them. Now I won’t tell you a single thing!”
+
+She marched out of the door and closed it behind her, and there to her
+great astonishment she found the trained nurse standing as if she had
+been listening and, more amazing still—she was laughing. She was a big
+handsome young woman who ought not to have been a trained nurse at all,
+as she could not bear invalids and she was always making excuses to
+leave Colin to Martha or anyone else who would take her place. Mary had
+never liked her, and she simply stood and gazed up at her as she stood
+giggling into her handkerchief..
+
+“What are you laughing at?” she asked her.
+
+“At you two young ones,” said the nurse. “It’s the best thing that
+could happen to the sickly pampered thing to have someone to stand up
+to him that’s as spoiled as himself;” and she laughed into her
+handkerchief again. “If he’d had a young vixen of a sister to fight
+with it would have been the saving of him.”
+
+“Is he going to die?”
+
+“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said the nurse. “Hysterics and temper
+are half what ails him.”
+
+“What are hysterics?” asked Mary.
+
+“You’ll find out if you work him into a tantrum after this—but at any
+rate you’ve given him something to have hysterics about, and I’m glad
+of it.”
+
+Mary went back to her room not feeling at all as she had felt when she
+had come in from the garden. She was cross and disappointed but not at
+all sorry for Colin. She had looked forward to telling him a great many
+things and she had meant to try to make up her mind whether it would be
+safe to trust him with the great secret. She had been beginning to
+think it would be, but now she had changed her mind entirely. She would
+never tell him and he could stay in his room and never get any fresh
+air and die if he liked! It would serve him right! She felt so sour and
+unrelenting that for a few minutes she almost forgot about Dickon and
+the green veil creeping over the world and the soft wind blowing down
+from the moor.
+
+Martha was waiting for her and the trouble in her face had been
+temporarily replaced by interest and curiosity. There was a wooden box
+on the table and its cover had been removed and revealed that it was
+full of neat packages.
+
+“Mr. Craven sent it to you,” said Martha. “It looks as if it had
+picture-books in it.”
+
+Mary remembered what he had asked her the day she had gone to his room.
+“Do you want anything—dolls—toys—books?” She opened the package
+wondering if he had sent a doll, and also wondering what she should do
+with it if he had. But he had not sent one. There were several
+beautiful books such as Colin had, and two of them were about gardens
+and were full of pictures. There were two or three games and there was
+a beautiful little writing-case with a gold monogram on it and a gold
+pen and inkstand.
+
+Everything was so nice that her pleasure began to crowd her anger out
+of her mind. She had not expected him to remember her at all and her
+hard little heart grew quite warm.
+
+“I can write better than I can print,” she said, “and the first thing I
+shall write with that pen will be a letter to tell him I am much
+obliged.”
+
+If she had been friends with Colin she would have run to show him her
+presents at once, and they would have looked at the pictures and read
+some of the gardening books and perhaps tried playing the games, and he
+would have enjoyed himself so much he would never once have thought he
+was going to die or have put his hand on his spine to see if there was
+a lump coming. He had a way of doing that which she could not bear. It
+gave her an uncomfortable frightened feeling because he always looked
+so frightened himself. He said that if he felt even quite a little lump
+some day he should know his hunch had begun to grow. Something he had
+heard Mrs. Medlock whispering to the nurse had given him the idea and
+he had thought over it in secret until it was quite firmly fixed in his
+mind. Mrs. Medlock had said his father’s back had begun to show its
+crookedness in that way when he was a child. He had never told anyone
+but Mary that most of his “tantrums” as they called them grew out of
+his hysterical hidden fear. Mary had been sorry for him when he had
+told her.
+
+“He always began to think about it when he was cross or tired,” she
+said to herself. “And he has been cross today. Perhaps—perhaps he has
+been thinking about it all afternoon.”
+
+She stood still, looking down at the carpet and thinking.
+
+“I said I would never go back again—” she hesitated, knitting her
+brows—“but perhaps, just perhaps, I will go and see—if he wants me—in
+the morning. Perhaps he’ll try to throw his pillow at me again, but—I
+think—I’ll go.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+A TANTRUM
+
+
+She had got up very early in the morning and had worked hard in the
+garden and she was tired and sleepy, so as soon as Martha had brought
+her supper and she had eaten it, she was glad to go to bed. As she laid
+her head on the pillow she murmured to herself:
+
+“I’ll go out before breakfast and work with Dickon and then afterward—I
+believe—I’ll go to see him.”
+
+She thought it was the middle of the night when she was awakened by
+such dreadful sounds that she jumped out of bed in an instant. What was
+it—what was it? The next minute she felt quite sure she knew. Doors
+were opened and shut and there were hurrying feet in the corridors and
+someone was crying and screaming at the same time, screaming and crying
+in a horrible way.
+
+“It’s Colin,” she said. “He’s having one of those tantrums the nurse
+called hysterics. How awful it sounds.”
+
+As she listened to the sobbing screams she did not wonder that people
+were so frightened that they gave him his own way in everything rather
+than hear them. She put her hands over her ears and felt sick and
+shivering.
+
+“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do,” she kept saying. “I
+can’t bear it.”
+
+Once she wondered if he would stop if she dared go to him and then she
+remembered how he had driven her out of the room and thought that
+perhaps the sight of her might make him worse. Even when she pressed
+her hands more tightly over her ears she could not keep the awful
+sounds out. She hated them so and was so terrified by them that
+suddenly they began to make her angry and she felt as if she should
+like to fly into a tantrum herself and frighten him as he was
+frightening her. She was not used to anyone’s tempers but her own. She
+took her hands from her ears and sprang up and stamped her foot.
+
+“He ought to be stopped! Somebody ought to make him stop! Somebody
+ought to beat him!” she cried out.
+
+Just then she heard feet almost running down the corridor and her door
+opened and the nurse came in. She was not laughing now by any means.
+She even looked rather pale.
+
+“He’s worked himself into hysterics,” she said in a great hurry. “He’ll
+do himself harm. No one can do anything with him. You come and try,
+like a good child. He likes you.”
+
+“He turned me out of the room this morning,” said Mary, stamping her
+foot with excitement.
+
+The stamp rather pleased the nurse. The truth was that she had been
+afraid she might find Mary crying and hiding her head under the
+bed-clothes.
+
+“That’s right,” she said. “You’re in the right humor. You go and scold
+him. Give him something new to think of. Do go, child, as quick as ever
+you can.”
+
+It was not until afterward that Mary realized that the thing had been
+funny as well as dreadful—that it was funny that all the grown-up
+people were so frightened that they came to a little girl just because
+they guessed she was almost as bad as Colin himself.
+
+She flew along the corridor and the nearer she got to the screams the
+higher her temper mounted. She felt quite wicked by the time she
+reached the door. She slapped it open with her hand and ran across the
+room to the four-posted bed.
+
+“You stop!” she almost shouted. “You stop! I hate you! Everybody hates
+you! I wish everybody would run out of the house and let you scream
+yourself to death! You _will_ scream yourself to death in a minute, and
+I wish you would!”
+
+A nice sympathetic child could neither have thought nor said such
+things, but it just happened that the shock of hearing them was the
+best possible thing for this hysterical boy whom no one had ever dared
+to restrain or contradict.
+
+He had been lying on his face beating his pillow with his hands and he
+actually almost jumped around, he turned so quickly at the sound of the
+furious little voice. His face looked dreadful, white and red and
+swollen, and he was gasping and choking; but savage little Mary did not
+care an atom.
+
+“If you scream another scream,” she said, “I’ll scream too—and I can
+scream louder than you can and I’ll frighten you, I’ll frighten you!”
+
+He actually had stopped screaming because she had startled him so. The
+scream which had been coming almost choked him. The tears were
+streaming down his face and he shook all over.
+
+“I can’t stop!” he gasped and sobbed. “I can’t—I can’t!”
+
+“You can!” shouted Mary. “Half that ails you is hysterics and
+temper—just hysterics—hysterics—hysterics!” and she stamped each time
+she said it.
+
+“I felt the lump—I felt it,” choked out Colin. “I knew I should. I
+shall have a hunch on my back and then I shall die,” and he began to
+writhe again and turned on his face and sobbed and wailed but he didn’t
+scream.
+
+“You didn’t feel a lump!” contradicted Mary fiercely. “If you did it
+was only a hysterical lump. Hysterics makes lumps. There’s nothing the
+matter with your horrid back—nothing but hysterics! Turn over and let
+me look at it!”
+
+She liked the word “hysterics” and felt somehow as if it had an effect
+on him. He was probably like herself and had never heard it before.
+
+“Nurse,” she commanded, “come here and show me his back this minute!”
+
+The nurse, Mrs. Medlock and Martha had been standing huddled together
+near the door staring at her, their mouths half open. All three had
+gasped with fright more than once. The nurse came forward as if she
+were half afraid. Colin was heaving with great breathless sobs.
+
+“Perhaps he—he won’t let me,” she hesitated in a low voice.
+
+Colin heard her, however, and he gasped out between two sobs:
+
+“Sh-show her! She-she’ll see then!”
+
+It was a poor thin back to look at when it was bared. Every rib could
+be counted and every joint of the spine, though Mistress Mary did not
+count them as she bent over and examined them with a solemn savage
+little face. She looked so sour and old-fashioned that the nurse turned
+her head aside to hide the twitching of her mouth. There was just a
+minute’s silence, for even Colin tried to hold his breath while Mary
+looked up and down his spine, and down and up, as intently as if she
+had been the great doctor from London.
+
+“There’s not a single lump there!” she said at last. “There’s not a
+lump as big as a pin—except backbone lumps, and you can only feel them
+because you’re thin. I’ve got backbone lumps myself, and they used to
+stick out as much as yours do, until I began to get fatter, and I am
+not fat enough yet to hide them. There’s not a lump as big as a pin! If
+you ever say there is again, I shall laugh!”
+
+No one but Colin himself knew what effect those crossly spoken childish
+words had on him. If he had ever had anyone to talk to about his secret
+terrors—if he had ever dared to let himself ask questions—if he had had
+childish companions and had not lain on his back in the huge closed
+house, breathing an atmosphere heavy with the fears of people who were
+most of them ignorant and tired of him, he would have found out that
+most of his fright and illness was created by himself. But he had lain
+and thought of himself and his aches and weariness for hours and days
+and months and years. And now that an angry unsympathetic little girl
+insisted obstinately that he was not as ill as he thought he was he
+actually felt as if she might be speaking the truth.
+
+“I didn’t know,” ventured the nurse, “that he thought he had a lump on
+his spine. His back is weak because he won’t try to sit up. I could
+have told him there was no lump there.” Colin gulped and turned his
+face a little to look at her.
+
+“C-could you?” he said pathetically.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“There!” said Mary, and she gulped too.
+
+Colin turned on his face again and but for his long-drawn broken
+breaths, which were the dying down of his storm of sobbing, he lay
+still for a minute, though great tears streamed down his face and wet
+the pillow. Actually the tears meant that a curious great relief had
+come to him. Presently he turned and looked at the nurse again and
+strangely enough he was not like a Rajah at all as he spoke to her.
+
+“Do you think—I could—live to grow up?” he said.
+
+The nurse was neither clever nor soft-hearted but she could repeat some
+of the London doctor’s words.
+
+“You probably will if you will do what you are told to do and not give
+way to your temper, and stay out a great deal in the fresh air.”
+
+Colin’s tantrum had passed and he was weak and worn out with crying and
+this perhaps made him feel gentle. He put out his hand a little toward
+Mary, and I am glad to say that, her own tantum having passed, she was
+softened too and met him half-way with her hand, so that it was a sort
+of making up.
+
+“I’ll—I’ll go out with you, Mary,” he said. “I shan’t hate fresh air if
+we can find—” He remembered just in time to stop himself from saying
+“if we can find the secret garden” and he ended, “I shall like to go
+out with you if Dickon will come and push my chair. I do so want to see
+Dickon and the fox and the crow.”
+
+The nurse remade the tumbled bed and shook and straightened the
+pillows. Then she made Colin a cup of beef tea and gave a cup to Mary,
+who really was very glad to get it after her excitement. Mrs. Medlock
+and Martha gladly slipped away, and after everything was neat and calm
+and in order the nurse looked as if she would very gladly slip away
+also. She was a healthy young woman who resented being robbed of her
+sleep and she yawned quite openly as she looked at Mary, who had pushed
+her big footstool close to the four-posted bed and was holding Colin’s
+hand.
+
+“You must go back and get your sleep out,” she said. “He’ll drop off
+after a while—if he’s not too upset. Then I’ll lie down myself in the
+next room.”
+
+“Would you like me to sing you that song I learned from my Ayah?” Mary
+whispered to Colin.
+
+His hand pulled hers gently and he turned his tired eyes on her
+appealingly.
+
+“Oh, yes!” he answered. “It’s such a soft song. I shall go to sleep in
+a minute.”
+
+“I will put him to sleep,” Mary said to the yawning nurse. “You can go
+if you like.”
+
+“Well,” said the nurse, with an attempt at reluctance. “If he doesn’t
+go to sleep in half an hour you must call me.”
+
+“Very well,” answered Mary.
+
+The nurse was out of the room in a minute and as soon as she was gone
+Colin pulled Mary’s hand again.
+
+“I almost told,” he said; “but I stopped myself in time. I won’t talk
+and I’ll go to sleep, but you said you had a whole lot of nice things
+to tell me. Have you—do you think you have found out anything at all
+about the way into the secret garden?”
+
+Mary looked at his poor little tired face and swollen eyes and her
+heart relented.
+
+“Ye-es,” she answered, “I think I have. And if you will go to sleep I
+will tell you tomorrow.” His hand quite trembled.
+
+“Oh, Mary!” he said. “Oh, Mary! If I could get into it I think I should
+live to grow up! Do you suppose that instead of singing the Ayah
+song—you could just tell me softly as you did that first day what you
+imagine it looks like inside? I am sure it will make me go to sleep.”
+
+“Yes,” answered Mary. “Shut your eyes.”
+
+He closed his eyes and lay quite still and she held his hand and began
+to speak very slowly and in a very low voice.
+
+“I think it has been left alone so long—that it has grown all into a
+lovely tangle. I think the roses have climbed and climbed and climbed
+until they hang from the branches and walls and creep over the
+ground—almost like a strange gray mist. Some of them have died but
+many—are alive and when the summer comes there will be curtains and
+fountains of roses. I think the ground is full of daffodils and
+snowdrops and lilies and iris working their way out of the dark. Now
+the spring has begun—perhaps—perhaps—”
+
+The soft drone of her voice was making him stiller and stiller and she
+saw it and went on.
+
+“Perhaps they are coming up through the grass—perhaps there are
+clusters of purple crocuses and gold ones—even now. Perhaps the leaves
+are beginning to break out and uncurl—and perhaps—the gray is changing
+and a green gauze veil is creeping—and creeping over—everything. And
+the birds are coming to look at it—because it is—so safe and still. And
+perhaps—perhaps—perhaps—” very softly and slowly indeed, “the robin has
+found a mate—and is building a nest.”
+
+And Colin was asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+“THA’ MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME”
+
+
+Of course Mary did not waken early the next morning. She slept late
+because she was tired, and when Martha brought her breakfast she told
+her that though Colin was quite quiet he was ill and feverish as he
+always was after he had worn himself out with a fit of crying. Mary ate
+her breakfast slowly as she listened.
+
+“He says he wishes tha’ would please go and see him as soon as tha’
+can,” Martha said. “It’s queer what a fancy he’s took to thee. Tha’ did
+give it him last night for sure—didn’t tha? Nobody else would have
+dared to do it. Eh! poor lad! He’s been spoiled till salt won’t save
+him. Mother says as th’ two worst things as can happen to a child is
+never to have his own way—or always to have it. She doesn’t know which
+is th’ worst. Tha’ was in a fine temper tha’self, too. But he says to
+me when I went into his room, ‘Please ask Miss Mary if she’ll please
+come an’ talk to me?’ Think o’ him saying please! Will you go, Miss?”
+
+“I’ll run and see Dickon first,” said Mary. “No, I’ll go and see Colin
+first and tell him—I know what I’ll tell him,” with a sudden
+inspiration.
+
+She had her hat on when she appeared in Colin’s room and for a second
+he looked disappointed. He was in bed. His face was pitifully white and
+there were dark circles round his eyes.
+
+“I’m glad you came,” he said. “My head aches and I ache all over
+because I’m so tired. Are you going somewhere?”
+
+Mary went and leaned against his bed.
+
+“I won’t be long,” she said. “I’m going to Dickon, but I’ll come back.
+Colin, it’s—it’s something about the garden.”
+
+His whole face brightened and a little color came into it.
+
+“Oh! is it?” he cried out. “I dreamed about it all night. I heard you
+say something about gray changing into green, and I dreamed I was
+standing in a place all filled with trembling little green leaves—and
+there were birds on nests everywhere and they looked so soft and still.
+I’ll lie and think about it until you come back.”
+
+In five minutes Mary was with Dickon in their garden. The fox and the
+crow were with him again and this time he had brought two tame
+squirrels.
+
+“I came over on the pony this mornin’,” he said. “Eh! he is a good
+little chap—Jump is! I brought these two in my pockets. This here one
+he’s called Nut an’ this here other one’s called Shell.”
+
+When he said “Nut” one squirrel leaped on to his right shoulder and
+when he said “Shell” the other one leaped on to his left shoulder.
+
+When they sat down on the grass with Captain curled at their feet, Soot
+solemnly listening on a tree and Nut and Shell nosing about close to
+them, it seemed to Mary that it would be scarcely bearable to leave
+such delightfulness, but when she began to tell her story somehow the
+look in Dickon’s funny face gradually changed her mind. She could see
+he felt sorrier for Colin than she did. He looked up at the sky and all
+about him.
+
+“Just listen to them birds—th’ world seems full of ’em—all whistlin’
+an’ pipin’,” he said. “Look at ’em dartin’ about, an’ hearken at ’em
+callin’ to each other. Come springtime seems like as if all th’ world’s
+callin’. The leaves is uncurlin’ so you can see ’em—an’, my word, th’
+nice smells there is about!” sniffing with his happy turned-up nose.
+“An’ that poor lad lyin’ shut up an’ seein’ so little that he gets to
+thinkin’ o’ things as sets him screamin’. Eh! my! we mun get him out
+here—we mun get him watchin’ an listenin’ an’ sniffin’ up th’ air an’
+get him just soaked through wi’ sunshine. An’ we munnot lose no time
+about it.”
+
+When he was very much interested he often spoke quite broad Yorkshire
+though at other times he tried to modify his dialect so that Mary could
+better understand. But she loved his broad Yorkshire and had in fact
+been trying to learn to speak it herself. So she spoke a little now.
+
+“Aye, that we mun,” she said (which meant “Yes, indeed, we must”).
+“I’ll tell thee what us’ll do first,” she proceeded, and Dickon
+grinned, because when the little wench tried to twist her tongue into
+speaking Yorkshire it amused him very much. “He’s took a graidely fancy
+to thee. He wants to see thee and he wants to see Soot an’ Captain.
+When I go back to the house to talk to him I’ll ax him if tha’ canna’
+come an’ see him tomorrow mornin’—an’ bring tha’ creatures wi’ thee—an’
+then—in a bit, when there’s more leaves out, an’ happen a bud or two,
+we’ll get him to come out an’ tha’ shall push him in his chair an’
+we’ll bring him here an’ show him everything.”
+
+When she stopped she was quite proud of herself. She had never made a
+long speech in Yorkshire before and she had remembered very well.
+
+“Tha’ mun talk a bit o’ Yorkshire like that to Mester Colin,” Dickon
+chuckled. “Tha’ll make him laugh an’ there’s nowt as good for ill folk
+as laughin’ is. Mother says she believes as half a hour’s good laugh
+every mornin’ ’ud cure a chap as was makin’ ready for typhus fever.”
+
+“I’m going to talk Yorkshire to him this very day,” said Mary,
+chuckling herself.
+
+The garden had reached the time when every day and every night it
+seemed as if Magicians were passing through it drawing loveliness out
+of the earth and the boughs with wands. It was hard to go away and
+leave it all, particularly as Nut had actually crept on to her dress
+and Shell had scrambled down the trunk of the apple-tree they sat under
+and stayed there looking at her with inquiring eyes. But she went back
+to the house and when she sat down close to Colin’s bed he began to
+sniff as Dickon did though not in such an experienced way.
+
+“You smell like flowers and—and fresh things,” he cried out quite
+joyously. “What is it you smell of? It’s cool and warm and sweet all at
+the same time.”
+
+“It’s th’ wind from th’ moor,” said Mary. “It comes o’ sittin’ on th’
+grass under a tree wi’ Dickon an’ wi’ Captain an’ Soot an’ Nut an’
+Shell. It’s th’ springtime an’ out o’ doors an’ sunshine as smells so
+graidely.”
+
+She said it as broadly as she could, and you do not know how broadly
+Yorkshire sounds until you have heard someone speak it. Colin began to
+laugh.
+
+“What are you doing?” he said. “I never heard you talk like that
+before. How funny it sounds.”
+
+“I’m givin’ thee a bit o’ Yorkshire,” answered Mary triumphantly. “I
+canna’ talk as graidely as Dickon an’ Martha can but tha’ sees I can
+shape a bit. Doesn’t tha’ understand a bit o’ Yorkshire when tha’ hears
+it? An’ tha’ a Yorkshire lad thysel’ bred an’ born! Eh! I wonder tha’rt
+not ashamed o’ thy face.”
+
+And then she began to laugh too and they both laughed until they could
+not stop themselves and they laughed until the room echoed and Mrs.
+Medlock opening the door to come in drew back into the corridor and
+stood listening amazed.
+
+“Well, upon my word!” she said, speaking rather broad Yorkshire herself
+because there was no one to hear her and she was so astonished.
+“Whoever heard th’ like! Whoever on earth would ha’ thought it!”
+
+There was so much to talk about. It seemed as if Colin could never hear
+enough of Dickon and Captain and Soot and Nut and Shell and the pony
+whose name was Jump. Mary had run round into the wood with Dickon to
+see Jump. He was a tiny little shaggy moor pony with thick locks
+hanging over his eyes and with a pretty face and a nuzzling velvet
+nose. He was rather thin with living on moor grass but he was as tough
+and wiry as if the muscle in his little legs had been made of steel
+springs. He had lifted his head and whinnied softly the moment he saw
+Dickon and he had trotted up to him and put his head across his
+shoulder and then Dickon had talked into his ear and Jump had talked
+back in odd little whinnies and puffs and snorts. Dickon had made him
+give Mary his small front hoof and kiss her on her cheek with his
+velvet muzzle.
+
+“Does he really understand everything Dickon says?” Colin asked.
+
+“It seems as if he does,” answered Mary. “Dickon says anything will
+understand if you’re friends with it for sure, but you have to be
+friends for sure.”
+
+Colin lay quiet a little while and his strange gray eyes seemed to be
+staring at the wall, but Mary saw he was thinking.
+
+“I wish I was friends with things,” he said at last, “but I’m not. I
+never had anything to be friends with, and I can’t bear people.”
+
+“Can’t you bear me?” asked Mary.
+
+“Yes, I can,” he answered. “It’s funny but I even like you.”
+
+“Ben Weatherstaff said I was like him,” said Mary. “He said he’d
+warrant we’d both got the same nasty tempers. I think you are like him
+too. We are all three alike—you and I and Ben Weatherstaff. He said we
+were neither of us much to look at and we were as sour as we looked.
+But I don’t feel as sour as I used to before I knew the robin and
+Dickon.”
+
+“Did you feel as if you hated people?”
+
+“Yes,” answered Mary without any affectation. “I should have detested
+you if I had seen you before I saw the robin and Dickon.”
+
+Colin put out his thin hand and touched her.
+
+“Mary,” he said, “I wish I hadn’t said what I did about sending Dickon
+away. I hated you when you said he was like an angel and I laughed at
+you but—but perhaps he is.”
+
+“Well, it was rather funny to say it,” she admitted frankly, “because
+his nose does turn up and he has a big mouth and his clothes have
+patches all over them and he talks broad Yorkshire, but—but if an angel
+did come to Yorkshire and live on the moor—if there was a Yorkshire
+angel—I believe he’d understand the green things and know how to make
+them grow and he would know how to talk to the wild creatures as Dickon
+does and they’d know he was friends for sure.”
+
+“I shouldn’t mind Dickon looking at me,” said Colin; “I want to see
+him.”
+
+“I’m glad you said that,” answered Mary, “because—because—”
+
+Quite suddenly it came into her mind that this was the minute to tell
+him. Colin knew something new was coming.
+
+“Because what?” he cried eagerly.
+
+Mary was so anxious that she got up from her stool and came to him and
+caught hold of both his hands.
+
+“Can I trust you? I trusted Dickon because birds trusted him. Can I
+trust you—for sure—_for sure?_” she implored.
+
+Her face was so solemn that he almost whispered his answer.
+
+“Yes—yes!”
+
+“Well, Dickon will come to see you tomorrow morning, and he’ll bring
+his creatures with him.”
+
+“Oh! Oh!” Colin cried out in delight.
+
+“But that’s not all,” Mary went on, almost pale with solemn excitement.
+“The rest is better. There is a door into the garden. I found it. It is
+under the ivy on the wall.”
+
+If he had been a strong healthy boy Colin would probably have shouted
+“Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!” but he was weak and rather hysterical; his
+eyes grew bigger and bigger and he gasped for breath.
+
+“Oh! Mary!” he cried out with a half sob. “Shall I see it? Shall I get
+into it? Shall I _live_ to get into it?” and he clutched her hands and
+dragged her toward him.
+
+“Of course you’ll see it!” snapped Mary indignantly. “Of course you’ll
+live to get into it! Don’t be silly!”
+
+And she was so un-hysterical and natural and childish that she brought
+him to his senses and he began to laugh at himself and a few minutes
+afterward she was sitting on her stool again telling him not what she
+imagined the secret garden to be like but what it really was, and
+Colin’s aches and tiredness were forgotten and he was listening
+enraptured.
+
+“It is just what you thought it would be,” he said at last. “It sounds
+just as if you had really seen it. You know I said that when you told
+me first.”
+
+Mary hesitated about two minutes and then boldly spoke the truth.
+
+“I had seen it—and I had been in,” she said. “I found the key and got
+in weeks ago. But I daren’t tell you—I daren’t because I was so afraid
+I couldn’t trust you—_for sure!_”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+“IT HAS COME!”
+
+
+Of course Dr. Craven had been sent for the morning after Colin had had
+his tantrum. He was always sent for at once when such a thing occurred
+and he always found, when he arrived, a white shaken boy lying on his
+bed, sulky and still so hysterical that he was ready to break into
+fresh sobbing at the least word. In fact, Dr. Craven dreaded and
+detested the difficulties of these visits. On this occasion he was away
+from Misselthwaite Manor until afternoon.
+
+“How is he?” he asked Mrs. Medlock rather irritably when he arrived.
+“He will break a blood-vessel in one of those fits some day. The boy is
+half insane with hysteria and self-indulgence.”
+
+“Well, sir,” answered Mrs. Medlock, “you’ll scarcely believe your eyes
+when you see him. That plain sour-faced child that’s almost as bad as
+himself has just bewitched him. How she’s done it there’s no telling.
+The Lord knows she’s nothing to look at and you scarcely ever hear her
+speak, but she did what none of us dare do. She just flew at him like a
+little cat last night, and stamped her feet and ordered him to stop
+screaming, and somehow she startled him so that he actually did stop,
+and this afternoon—well just come up and see, sir. It’s past
+crediting.”
+
+The scene which Dr. Craven beheld when he entered his patient’s room
+was indeed rather astonishing to him. As Mrs. Medlock opened the door
+he heard laughing and chattering. Colin was on his sofa in his
+dressing-gown and he was sitting up quite straight looking at a picture
+in one of the garden books and talking to the plain child who at that
+moment could scarcely be called plain at all because her face was so
+glowing with enjoyment.
+
+“Those long spires of blue ones—we’ll have a lot of those,” Colin was
+announcing. “They’re called Del-phin-iums.”
+
+“Dickon says they’re larkspurs made big and grand,” cried Mistress
+Mary. “There are clumps there already.”
+
+Then they saw Dr. Craven and stopped. Mary became quite still and Colin
+looked fretful.
+
+“I am sorry to hear you were ill last night, my boy,” Dr. Craven said a
+trifle nervously. He was rather a nervous man.
+
+“I’m better now—much better,” Colin answered, rather like a Rajah. “I’m
+going out in my chair in a day or two if it is fine. I want some fresh
+air.”
+
+Dr. Craven sat down by him and felt his pulse and looked at him
+curiously.
+
+“It must be a very fine day,” he said, “and you must be very careful
+not to tire yourself.”
+
+“Fresh air won’t tire me,” said the young Rajah.
+
+As there had been occasions when this same young gentleman had shrieked
+aloud with rage and had insisted that fresh air would give him cold and
+kill him, it is not to be wondered at that his doctor felt somewhat
+startled.
+
+“I thought you did not like fresh air,” he said.
+
+“I don’t when I am by myself,” replied the Rajah; “but my cousin is
+going out with me.”
+
+“And the nurse, of course?” suggested Dr. Craven.
+
+“No, I will not have the nurse,” so magnificently that Mary could not
+help remembering how the young native Prince had looked with his
+diamonds and emeralds and pearls stuck all over him and the great
+rubies on the small dark hand he had waved to command his servants to
+approach with salaams and receive his orders.
+
+“My cousin knows how to take care of me. I am always better when she is
+with me. She made me better last night. A very strong boy I know will
+push my carriage.”
+
+Dr. Craven felt rather alarmed. If this tiresome hysterical boy should
+chance to get well he himself would lose all chance of inheriting
+Misselthwaite; but he was not an unscrupulous man, though he was a weak
+one, and he did not intend to let him run into actual danger.
+
+“He must be a strong boy and a steady boy,” he said. “And I must know
+something about him. Who is he? What is his name?”
+
+“It’s Dickon,” Mary spoke up suddenly. She felt somehow that everybody
+who knew the moor must know Dickon. And she was right, too. She saw
+that in a moment Dr. Craven’s serious face relaxed into a relieved
+smile.
+
+“Oh, Dickon,” he said. “If it is Dickon you will be safe enough. He’s
+as strong as a moor pony, is Dickon.”
+
+“And he’s trusty,” said Mary. “He’s th’ trustiest lad i’ Yorkshire.”
+She had been talking Yorkshire to Colin and she forgot herself.
+
+“Did Dickon teach you that?” asked Dr. Craven, laughing outright.
+
+“I’m learning it as if it was French,” said Mary rather coldly. “It’s
+like a native dialect in India. Very clever people try to learn them. I
+like it and so does Colin.”
+
+“Well, well,” he said. “If it amuses you perhaps it won’t do you any
+harm. Did you take your bromide last night, Colin?”
+
+“No,” Colin answered. “I wouldn’t take it at first and after Mary made
+me quiet she talked me to sleep—in a low voice—about the spring
+creeping into a garden.”
+
+“That sounds soothing,” said Dr. Craven, more perplexed than ever and
+glancing sideways at Mistress Mary sitting on her stool and looking
+down silently at the carpet. “You are evidently better, but you must
+remember—”
+
+“I don’t want to remember,” interrupted the Rajah, appearing again.
+“When I lie by myself and remember I begin to have pains everywhere and
+I think of things that make me begin to scream because I hate them so.
+If there was a doctor anywhere who could make you forget you were ill
+instead of remembering it I would have him brought here.” And he waved
+a thin hand which ought really to have been covered with royal signet
+rings made of rubies. “It is because my cousin makes me forget that she
+makes me better.”
+
+Dr. Craven had never made such a short stay after a “tantrum”; usually
+he was obliged to remain a very long time and do a great many things.
+This afternoon he did not give any medicine or leave any new orders and
+he was spared any disagreeable scenes. When he went downstairs he
+looked very thoughtful and when he talked to Mrs. Medlock in the
+library she felt that he was a much puzzled man.
+
+“Well, sir,” she ventured, “could you have believed it?”
+
+“It is certainly a new state of affairs,” said the doctor. “And there’s
+no denying it is better than the old one.”
+
+“I believe Susan Sowerby’s right—I do that,” said Mrs. Medlock. “I
+stopped in her cottage on my way to Thwaite yesterday and had a bit of
+talk with her. And she says to me, ‘Well, Sarah Ann, she mayn’t be a
+good child, an’ she mayn’t be a pretty one, but she’s a child, an’
+children needs children.’ We went to school together, Susan Sowerby and
+me.”
+
+“She’s the best sick nurse I know,” said Dr. Craven. “When I find her
+in a cottage I know the chances are that I shall save my patient.”
+
+Mrs. Medlock smiled. She was fond of Susan Sowerby.
+
+“She’s got a way with her, has Susan,” she went on quite volubly. “I’ve
+been thinking all morning of one thing she said yesterday. She says,
+‘Once when I was givin’ th’ children a bit of a preach after they’d
+been fightin’ I ses to ’em all, “When I was at school my jography told
+as th’ world was shaped like a orange an’ I found out before I was ten
+that th’ whole orange doesn’t belong to nobody. No one owns more than
+his bit of a quarter an’ there’s times it seems like there’s not enow
+quarters to go round. But don’t you—none o’ you—think as you own th’
+whole orange or you’ll find out you’re mistaken, an’ you won’t find it
+out without hard knocks.” ‘What children learns from children,’ she
+says, ‘is that there’s no sense in grabbin’ at th’ whole orange—peel
+an’ all. If you do you’ll likely not get even th’ pips, an’ them’s too
+bitter to eat.’”
+
+“She’s a shrewd woman,” said Dr. Craven, putting on his coat.
+
+“Well, she’s got a way of saying things,” ended Mrs. Medlock, much
+pleased. “Sometimes I’ve said to her, ‘Eh! Susan, if you was a
+different woman an’ didn’t talk such broad Yorkshire I’ve seen the
+times when I should have said you was clever.’”
+
+
+That night Colin slept without once awakening and when he opened his
+eyes in the morning he lay still and smiled without knowing it—smiled
+because he felt so curiously comfortable. It was actually nice to be
+awake, and he turned over and stretched his limbs luxuriously. He felt
+as if tight strings which had held him had loosened themselves and let
+him go. He did not know that Dr. Craven would have said that his nerves
+had relaxed and rested themselves. Instead of lying and staring at the
+wall and wishing he had not awakened, his mind was full of the plans he
+and Mary had made yesterday, of pictures of the garden and of Dickon
+and his wild creatures. It was so nice to have things to think about.
+And he had not been awake more than ten minutes when he heard feet
+running along the corridor and Mary was at the door. The next minute
+she was in the room and had run across to his bed, bringing with her a
+waft of fresh air full of the scent of the morning.
+
+“You’ve been out! You’ve been out! There’s that nice smell of leaves!”
+he cried.
+
+She had been running and her hair was loose and blown and she was
+bright with the air and pink-cheeked, though he could not see it.
+
+“It’s so beautiful!” she said, a little breathless with her speed. “You
+never saw anything so beautiful! It has _come!_ I thought it had come
+that other morning, but it was only coming. It is here now! It has
+come, the Spring! Dickon says so!”
+
+“Has it?” cried Colin, and though he really knew nothing about it he
+felt his heart beat. He actually sat up in bed.
+
+“Open the window!” he added, laughing half with joyful excitement and
+half at his own fancy. “Perhaps we may hear golden trumpets!”
+
+And though he laughed, Mary was at the window in a moment and in a
+moment more it was opened wide and freshness and softness and scents
+and birds’ songs were pouring through.
+
+“That’s fresh air,” she said. “Lie on your back and draw in long
+breaths of it. That’s what Dickon does when he’s lying on the moor. He
+says he feels it in his veins and it makes him strong and he feels as
+if he could live forever and ever. Breathe it and breathe it.”
+
+She was only repeating what Dickon had told her, but she caught Colin’s
+fancy.
+
+“’Forever and ever’! Does it make him feel like that?” he said, and he
+did as she told him, drawing in long deep breaths over and over again
+until he felt that something quite new and delightful was happening to
+him.
+
+Mary was at his bedside again.
+
+“Things are crowding up out of the earth,” she ran on in a hurry. “And
+there are flowers uncurling and buds on everything and the green veil
+has covered nearly all the gray and the birds are in such a hurry about
+their nests for fear they may be too late that some of them are even
+fighting for places in the secret garden. And the rose-bushes look as
+wick as wick can be, and there are primroses in the lanes and woods,
+and the seeds we planted are up, and Dickon has brought the fox and the
+crow and the squirrels and a new-born lamb.”
+
+And then she paused for breath. The new-born lamb Dickon had found
+three days before lying by its dead mother among the gorse bushes on
+the moor. It was not the first motherless lamb he had found and he knew
+what to do with it. He had taken it to the cottage wrapped in his
+jacket and he had let it lie near the fire and had fed it with warm
+milk. It was a soft thing with a darling silly baby face and legs
+rather long for its body. Dickon had carried it over the moor in his
+arms and its feeding bottle was in his pocket with a squirrel, and when
+Mary had sat under a tree with its limp warmness huddled on her lap she
+had felt as if she were too full of strange joy to speak. A lamb—a
+lamb! A living lamb who lay on your lap like a baby!
+
+She was describing it with great joy and Colin was listening and
+drawing in long breaths of air when the nurse entered. She started a
+little at the sight of the open window. She had sat stifling in the
+room many a warm day because her patient was sure that open windows
+gave people cold.
+
+“Are you sure you are not chilly, Master Colin?” she inquired.
+
+“No,” was the answer. “I am breathing long breaths of fresh air. It
+makes you strong. I am going to get up to the sofa for breakfast. My
+cousin will have breakfast with me.”
+
+The nurse went away, concealing a smile, to give the order for two
+breakfasts. She found the servants’ hall a more amusing place than the
+invalid’s chamber and just now everybody wanted to hear the news from
+upstairs. There was a great deal of joking about the unpopular young
+recluse who, as the cook said, “had found his master, and good for
+him.” The servants’ hall had been very tired of the tantrums, and the
+butler, who was a man with a family, had more than once expressed his
+opinion that the invalid would be all the better “for a good hiding.”
+
+When Colin was on his sofa and the breakfast for two was put upon the
+table he made an announcement to the nurse in his most Rajah-like
+manner.
+
+“A boy, and a fox, and a crow, and two squirrels, and a new-born lamb,
+are coming to see me this morning. I want them brought upstairs as soon
+as they come,” he said. “You are not to begin playing with the animals
+in the servants’ hall and keep them there. I want them here.”
+
+The nurse gave a slight gasp and tried to conceal it with a cough.
+
+“Yes, sir,” she answered.
+
+“I’ll tell you what you can do,” added Colin, waving his hand. “You can
+tell Martha to bring them here. The boy is Martha’s brother. His name
+is Dickon and he is an animal charmer.”
+
+“I hope the animals won’t bite, Master Colin,” said the nurse.
+
+“I told you he was a charmer,” said Colin austerely. “Charmers’ animals
+never bite.”
+
+“There are snake-charmers in India,” said Mary. “And they can put their
+snakes’ heads in their mouths.”
+
+“Goodness!” shuddered the nurse.
+
+They ate their breakfast with the morning air pouring in upon them.
+Colin’s breakfast was a very good one and Mary watched him with serious
+interest.
+
+“You will begin to get fatter just as I did,” she said. “I never wanted
+my breakfast when I was in India and now I always want it.”
+
+“I wanted mine this morning,” said Colin. “Perhaps it was the fresh
+air. When do you think Dickon will come?”
+
+He was not long in coming. In about ten minutes Mary held up her hand.
+
+“Listen!” she said. “Did you hear a caw?”
+
+Colin listened and heard it, the oddest sound in the world to hear
+inside a house, a hoarse “caw-caw.”
+
+“Yes,” he answered.
+
+“That’s Soot,” said Mary. “Listen again. Do you hear a bleat—a tiny
+one?”
+
+“Oh, yes!” cried Colin, quite flushing.
+
+“That’s the new-born lamb,” said Mary. “He’s coming.”
+
+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 came in smiling his nicest wide smile. The new-born lamb was in
+his arms and the little red fox trotted by his side. Nut sat on his
+left shoulder and Soot on his right and Shell’s head and paws peeped
+out of his coat pocket.
+
+Colin slowly sat up and stared and stared—as he had stared when he
+first saw Mary; but this was a stare of wonder and delight. The truth
+was that in spite of all he had heard he had not in the least
+understood what this boy would be like and that his fox and his crow
+and his squirrels and his lamb were so near to him and his friendliness
+that they seemed almost to be part of himself. Colin had never talked
+to a boy in his life and he was so overwhelmed by his own pleasure and
+curiosity that he did not even think of speaking.
+
+But Dickon did not feel the least shy or awkward. He had not felt
+embarrassed because the crow had not known his language and had only
+stared and had not spoken to him the first time they met. Creatures
+were always like that until they found out about you. He walked over to
+Colin’s sofa and put the new-born lamb quietly on his lap, and
+immediately the little creature turned to the warm velvet dressing-gown
+and began to nuzzle and nuzzle into its folds and butt its tight-curled
+head with soft impatience against his side. Of course no boy could have
+helped speaking then.
+
+“What is it doing?” cried Colin. “What does it want?”
+
+“It wants its mother,” said Dickon, smiling more and more. “I brought
+it to thee a bit hungry because I knowed tha’d like to see it feed.”
+
+He knelt down by the sofa and took a feeding-bottle from his pocket.
+
+“Come on, little ’un,” he said, turning the small woolly white head
+with a gentle brown hand. “This is what tha’s after. Tha’ll get more
+out o’ this than tha’ will out o’ silk velvet coats. There now,” and he
+pushed the rubber tip of the bottle into the nuzzling mouth and the
+lamb began to suck it with ravenous ecstasy.
+
+After that there was no wondering what to say. By the time the lamb
+fell asleep questions poured forth and Dickon answered them all. He
+told them how he had found the lamb just as the sun was rising three
+mornings ago. He had been standing on the moor listening to a skylark
+and watching him swing higher and higher into the sky until he was only
+a speck in the heights of blue.
+
+“I’d almost lost him but for his song an’ I was wonderin’ how a chap
+could hear it when it seemed as if he’d get out o’ th’ world in a
+minute—an’ just then I heard somethin’ else far off among th’ gorse
+bushes. It was a weak bleatin’ an’ I knowed it was a new lamb as was
+hungry an’ I knowed it wouldn’t be hungry if it hadn’t lost its mother
+somehow, so I set off searchin’. Eh! I did have a look for it. I went
+in an’ out among th’ gorse bushes an’ round an’ round an’ I always
+seemed to take th’ wrong turnin’. But at last I seed a bit o’ white by
+a rock on top o’ th’ moor an’ I climbed up an’ found th’ little ’un
+half dead wi’ cold an’ clemmin’.”
+
+While he talked, Soot flew solemnly in and out of the open window and
+cawed remarks about the scenery while Nut and Shell made excursions
+into the big trees outside and ran up and down trunks and explored
+branches. Captain curled up near Dickon, who sat on the hearth-rug from
+preference.
+
+They looked at the pictures in the gardening books and Dickon knew all
+the flowers by their country names and knew exactly which ones were
+already growing in the secret garden.
+
+“I couldna’ say that there name,” he said, pointing to one under which
+was written “Aquilegia,” “but us calls that a columbine, an’ that there
+one it’s a snapdragon and they both grow wild in hedges, but these is
+garden ones an’ they’re bigger an’ grander. There’s some big clumps o’
+columbine in th’ garden. They’ll look like a bed o’ blue an’ white
+butterflies flutterin’ when they’re out.”
+
+“I’m going to see them,” cried Colin. “I am going to see them!”
+
+“Aye, that tha’ mun,” said Mary quite seriously. “An’ tha’ munnot lose
+no time about it.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+“I SHALL LIVE FOREVER—AND EVER—AND EVER!”
+
+
+But they were obliged to wait more than a week because first there came
+some very windy days and then Colin was threatened with a cold, which
+two things happening one after the other would no doubt have thrown him
+into a rage but that there was so much careful and mysterious planning
+to do and almost every day Dickon came in, if only for a few minutes,
+to talk about what was happening on the moor and in the lanes and
+hedges and on the borders of streams. The things he had to tell about
+otters’ and badgers’ and water-rats’ houses, not to mention birds’
+nests and field-mice and their burrows, were enough to make you almost
+tremble with excitement when you heard all the intimate details from an
+animal charmer and realized with what thrilling eagerness and anxiety
+the whole busy underworld was working.
+
+“They’re same as us,” said Dickon, “only they have to build their homes
+every year. An’ it keeps ’em so busy they fair scuffle to get ’em
+done.”
+
+The most absorbing thing, however, was the preparations to be made
+before Colin could be transported with sufficient secrecy to the
+garden. No one must see the chair-carriage and Dickon and Mary after
+they turned a certain corner of the shrubbery and entered upon the walk
+outside the ivied walls. As each day passed, Colin had become more and
+more fixed in his feeling that the mystery surrounding the garden was
+one of its greatest charms. Nothing must spoil that. No one must ever
+suspect that they had a secret. People must think that he was simply
+going out with Mary and Dickon because he liked them and did not object
+to their looking at him. They had long and quite delightful talks about
+their route. They would go up this path and down that one and cross the
+other and go round among the fountain flower-beds as if they were
+looking at the “bedding-out plants” the head gardener, Mr. Roach, had
+been having arranged. That would seem such a rational thing to do that
+no one would think it at all mysterious. They would turn into the
+shrubbery walks and lose themselves until they came to the long walls.
+It was almost as serious and elaborately thought out as the plans of
+march made by great generals in time of war.
+
+Rumors of the new and curious things which were occurring in the
+invalid’s apartments had of course filtered through the servants’ hall
+into the stable yards and out among the gardeners, but notwithstanding
+this, Mr. Roach was startled one day when he received orders from
+Master Colin’s room to the effect that he must report himself in the
+apartment no outsider had ever seen, as the invalid himself desired to
+speak to him.
+
+“Well, well,” he said to himself as he hurriedly changed his coat,
+“what’s to do now? His Royal Highness that wasn’t to be looked at
+calling up a man he’s never set eyes on.”
+
+Mr. Roach was not without curiosity. He had never caught even a glimpse
+of the boy and had heard a dozen exaggerated stories about his uncanny
+looks and ways and his insane tempers. The thing he had heard oftenest
+was that he might die at any moment and there had been numerous
+fanciful descriptions of a humped back and helpless limbs, given by
+people who had never seen him.
+
+“Things are changing in this house, Mr. Roach,” said Mrs. Medlock, as
+she led him up the back staircase to the corridor on to which opened
+the hitherto mysterious chamber.
+
+“Let’s hope they’re changing for the better, Mrs. Medlock,” he
+answered.
+
+“They couldn’t well change for the worse,” she continued; “and queer as
+it all is there’s them as finds their duties made a lot easier to stand
+up under. Don’t you be surprised, Mr. Roach, if you find yourself in
+the middle of a menagerie and Martha Sowerby’s Dickon more at home than
+you or me could ever be.”
+
+There really was a sort of Magic about Dickon, as Mary always privately
+believed. When Mr. Roach heard his name he smiled quite leniently.
+
+“He’d be at home in Buckingham Palace or at the bottom of a coal mine,”
+he said. “And yet it’s not impudence, either. He’s just fine, is that
+lad.”
+
+It was perhaps well he had been prepared or he might have been
+startled. When the bedroom door was opened a large crow, which seemed
+quite at home perched on the high back of a carven chair, announced the
+entrance of a visitor by saying “Caw—Caw” quite loudly. In spite of
+Mrs. Medlock’s warning, Mr. 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.
+The little girl from India was sitting on a big footstool looking on.
+
+“Here is Mr. Roach, Master Colin,” said Mrs. Medlock.
+
+The young Rajah turned and looked his servitor over—at least that was
+what the head gardener felt happened.
+
+“Oh, you are Roach, are you?” he said. “I sent for you to give you some
+very important orders.”
+
+“Very good, sir,” answered Roach, wondering if he was to receive
+instructions to fell all the oaks in the park or to transform the
+orchards into water-gardens.
+
+“I am going out in my chair this afternoon,” said Colin. “If the fresh
+air agrees with me I may go out every day. When I go, none of the
+gardeners are to be anywhere near the Long Walk by the garden walls. No
+one is to be there. I shall go out about two o’clock and everyone must
+keep away until I send word that they may go back to their work.”
+
+“Very good, sir,” replied Mr. Roach, much relieved to hear that the
+oaks might remain and that the orchards were safe.
+
+“Mary,” said Colin, turning to her, “what is that thing you say in
+India when you have finished talking and want people to go?”
+
+“You say, ‘You have my permission to go,’” answered Mary.
+
+The Rajah waved his hand.
+
+“You have my permission to go, Roach,” he said. “But, remember, this is
+very important.”
+
+“Caw—Caw!” remarked the crow hoarsely but not impolitely.
+
+“Very good, sir. Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Roach, and Mrs. Medlock took
+him out of the room.
+
+Outside in the corridor, being a rather good-natured man, he smiled
+until he almost laughed.
+
+“My word!” he said, “he’s got a fine lordly way with him, hasn’t he?
+You’d think he was a whole Royal Family rolled into one—Prince Consort
+and all.”
+
+“Eh!” protested Mrs. Medlock, “we’ve had to let him trample all over
+everyone of us ever since he had feet and he thinks that’s what folks
+was born for.”
+
+“Perhaps he’ll grow out of it, if he lives,” suggested Mr. Roach.
+
+“Well, there’s one thing pretty sure,” said Mrs. Medlock. “If he does
+live and that Indian child stays here I’ll warrant she teaches him that
+the whole orange does not belong to him, as Susan Sowerby says. And
+he’ll be likely to find out the size of his own quarter.”
+
+Inside the room Colin was leaning back on his cushions.
+
+“It’s all safe now,” he said. “And this afternoon I shall see it—this
+afternoon I shall be in it!”
+
+Dickon went back to the garden with his creatures and Mary stayed with
+Colin. She did not think he looked tired but he was very quiet before
+their lunch came and he was quiet while they were eating it. She
+wondered why and asked him about it.
+
+“What big eyes you’ve got, Colin,” she said. “When you are thinking
+they get as big as saucers. What are you thinking about now?”
+
+“I can’t help thinking about what it will look like,” he answered.
+
+“The garden?” asked Mary.
+
+“The springtime,” he said. “I was thinking that I’ve really never seen
+it before. I scarcely ever went out and when I did go I never looked at
+it. I didn’t even think about it.”
+
+“I never saw it in India because there wasn’t any,” said Mary.
+
+Shut in and morbid as his life had been, Colin had more imagination
+than she had and at least he had spent a good deal of time looking at
+wonderful books and pictures.
+
+“That morning when you ran in and said ‘It’s come! It’s come!’, you
+made me feel quite queer. It sounded as if things were coming with a
+great procession and big bursts and wafts of music. I’ve a picture like
+it in one of my books—crowds of lovely people and children with
+garlands and branches with blossoms on them, everyone laughing and
+dancing and crowding and playing on pipes. That was why I said,
+‘Perhaps we shall hear golden trumpets’ and told you to throw open the
+window.”
+
+“How funny!” said Mary. “That’s really just what it feels like. And if
+all the flowers and leaves and green things and birds and wild
+creatures danced past at once, what a crowd it would be! I’m sure
+they’d dance and sing and flute and that would be the wafts of music.”
+
+They both laughed but it was not because the idea was laughable but
+because they both so liked it.
+
+A little later the nurse made Colin ready. She noticed that instead of
+lying like a log while his clothes were put on he sat up and made some
+efforts to help himself, and he talked and laughed with Mary all the
+time.
+
+“This is one of his good days, sir,” she said to Dr. Craven, who
+dropped in to inspect him. “He’s in such good spirits that it makes him
+stronger.”
+
+“I’ll call in again later in the afternoon, after he has come in,” said
+Dr. Craven. “I must see how the going out agrees with him. I wish,” in
+a very low voice, “that he would let you go with him.”
+
+“I’d rather give up the case this moment, sir, than even stay here
+while it’s suggested,” answered the nurse. With sudden firmness.
+
+“I hadn’t really decided to suggest it,” said the doctor, with his
+slight nervousness. “We’ll try the experiment. Dickon’s a lad I’d trust
+with a new-born child.”
+
+The strongest footman in the house carried Colin downstairs and put him
+in his wheeled chair near which Dickon waited outside. After the
+manservant had arranged his rugs and cushions the Rajah waved his hand
+to him and to the nurse.
+
+“You have my permission to go,” he said, and they both disappeared
+quickly and it must be confessed giggled when they were safely inside
+the house.
+
+Dickon began to push the wheeled chair slowly and steadily. Mistress
+Mary walked beside it and Colin leaned back and lifted his face to the
+sky. The arch of it looked very high and the small snowy clouds seemed
+like white birds floating on outspread wings below its crystal
+blueness. The wind swept in soft big breaths down from the moor and was
+strange with a wild clear scented sweetness. Colin kept lifting his
+thin chest to draw it in, and his big eyes looked as if it were they
+which were listening—listening, instead of his ears.
+
+“There are so many sounds of singing and humming and calling out,” he
+said. “What is that scent the puffs of wind bring?”
+
+“It’s gorse on th’ moor that’s openin’ out,” answered Dickon. “Eh! th’
+bees are at it wonderful today.”
+
+Not a human creature was to be caught sight of in the paths they took.
+In fact every gardener or gardener’s lad had been witched away. But
+they wound in and out among the shrubbery and out and round the
+fountain beds, following their carefully planned route for the mere
+mysterious pleasure of it. But when at last they turned into the Long
+Walk by the ivied walls the excited sense of an approaching thrill made
+them, for some curious reason they could not have explained, begin to
+speak in whispers.
+
+“This is it,” breathed Mary. “This is where I used to walk up and down
+and wonder and wonder.”
+
+“Is it?” cried Colin, and his eyes began to search the ivy with eager
+curiousness. “But I can see nothing,” he whispered. “There is no door.”
+
+“That’s what I thought,” said Mary.
+
+Then there was a lovely breathless silence and the chair wheeled on.
+
+“That is the garden where Ben Weatherstaff works,” said Mary.
+
+“Is it?” said Colin.
+
+A few yards more and Mary whispered again.
+
+“This is where the robin flew over the wall,” she said.
+
+“Is it?” cried Colin. “Oh! I wish he’d come again!”
+
+“And that,” said Mary with solemn delight, pointing under a big lilac
+bush, “is where he perched on the little heap of earth and showed me
+the key.”
+
+Then Colin sat up.
+
+“Where? Where? There?” he cried, and his eyes were as big as the wolf’s
+in Red Riding-Hood, when Red Riding-Hood felt called upon to remark on
+them. Dickon stood still and the wheeled chair stopped.
+
+“And this,” said Mary, stepping on to the bed close to the ivy, “is
+where I went to talk to him when he chirped at me from the top of the
+wall. And this is the ivy the wind blew back,” and she took hold of the
+hanging green curtain.
+
+“Oh! is it—is it!” gasped Colin.
+
+“And here is the handle, and here is the door. Dickon push him in—push
+him in quickly!”
+
+And Dickon did it with one strong, steady, splendid push.
+
+But Colin had actually dropped back against his cushions, even though
+he gasped with delight, and he had covered his eyes with his hands and
+held them there shutting out everything until they were inside and the
+chair stopped as if by magic and the door was closed. Not till then did
+he take them away and look round and round and round as Dickon and Mary
+had done. And over walls and earth and trees and swinging sprays and
+tendrils the fair green veil of tender little leaves had crept, and in
+the grass under the trees and the gray urns in the alcoves and here and
+there everywhere were touches or splashes of gold and purple and white
+and the trees were showing pink and snow above his head and there were
+fluttering of wings and faint sweet pipes and humming and scents and
+scents. And the sun fell warm upon his face like a hand with a lovely
+touch. And in wonder Mary and Dickon stood and stared at him. He looked
+so strange and different because a pink glow of color had actually
+crept all over him—ivory face and neck and hands and all.
+
+“I shall get well! I shall get well!” he cried out. “Mary! Dickon! I
+shall get well! And I shall live forever and ever and ever!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+BEN WEATHERSTAFF
+
+
+One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only
+now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever
+and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn
+dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one’s head far back
+and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and
+flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost
+makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange
+unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun—which has been happening
+every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One
+knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one
+stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold
+stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying
+slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much
+one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night
+with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and
+sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look
+in someone’s eyes.
+
+And it was like that with Colin when he first saw and heard and felt
+the Springtime inside the four high walls of a hidden garden. That
+afternoon the whole world seemed to devote itself to being perfect and
+radiantly beautiful and kind to one boy. Perhaps out of pure heavenly
+goodness the spring came and crowded everything it possibly could into
+that one place. More than once Dickon paused in what he was doing and
+stood still with a sort of growing wonder in his eyes, shaking his head
+softly.
+
+“Eh! it is graidely,” he said. “I’m twelve goin’ on thirteen an’
+there’s a lot o’ afternoons in thirteen years, but seems to me like I
+never seed one as graidely as this ’ere.”
+
+“Aye, it is a graidely one,” said Mary, and she sighed for mere joy.
+“I’ll warrant it’s the graidelest one as ever was in this world.”
+
+“Does tha’ think,” said Colin with dreamy carefulness, “as happen it
+was made loike this ’ere all o’ purpose for me?”
+
+“My word!” cried Mary admiringly, “that there is a bit o’ good
+Yorkshire. Tha’rt shapin’ first-rate—that tha’ art.”
+
+And delight reigned.
+
+They drew the chair under the plum-tree, which was snow-white with
+blossoms and musical with bees. It was like a king’s canopy, a fairy
+king’s. There were flowering cherry-trees near and apple-trees whose
+buds were pink and white, and here and there one had burst open wide.
+Between the blossoming branches of the canopy bits of blue sky looked
+down like wonderful eyes.
+
+Mary and Dickon worked a little here and there and Colin watched them.
+They brought him things to look at—buds which were opening, buds which
+were tight closed, bits of twig whose leaves were just showing green,
+the feather of a woodpecker which had dropped on the grass, the empty
+shell of some bird early hatched. Dickon pushed the chair slowly round
+and round the garden, stopping every other moment to let him look at
+wonders springing out of the earth or trailing down from trees. It was
+like being taken in state round the country of a magic king and queen
+and shown all the mysterious riches it contained.
+
+“I wonder if we shall see the robin?” said Colin.
+
+“Tha’ll see him often enow after a bit,” answered Dickon. “When th’
+eggs hatches out th’ little chap he’ll be kep’ so busy it’ll make his
+head swim. Tha’ll see him flyin’ backward an’ for’ard carryin’ worms
+nigh as big as himsel’ an’ that much noise goin’ on in th’ nest when he
+gets there as fair flusters him so as he scarce knows which big mouth
+to drop th’ first piece in. An’ gapin’ beaks an’ squawks on every side.
+Mother says as when she sees th’ work a robin has to keep them gapin’
+beaks filled, she feels like she was a lady with nothin’ to do. She
+says she’s seen th’ little chaps when it seemed like th’ sweat must be
+droppin’ off ’em, though folk can’t see it.”
+
+This made them giggle so delightedly that they were obliged to cover
+their mouths with their hands, remembering that they must not be heard.
+Colin had been instructed as to the law of whispers and low voices
+several days before. He liked the mysteriousness of it and did his
+best, but in the midst of excited enjoyment it is rather difficult
+never to laugh above a whisper.
+
+Every moment of the afternoon was full of new things and every hour the
+sunshine grew more golden. The wheeled chair had been drawn back under
+the canopy and Dickon had sat down on the grass and had just drawn out
+his pipe when Colin saw something he had not had time to notice before.
+
+“That’s a very old tree over there, isn’t it?” he said.
+
+Dickon looked across the grass at the tree and Mary looked and there
+was a brief moment of stillness.
+
+“Yes,” answered Dickon, after it, and his low voice had a very gentle
+sound.
+
+Mary gazed at the tree and thought.
+
+“The branches are quite gray and there’s not a single leaf anywhere,”
+Colin went on. “It’s quite dead, isn’t it?”
+
+“Aye,” admitted Dickon. “But them roses as has climbed all over it will
+near hide every bit o’ th’ dead wood when they’re full o’ leaves an’
+flowers. It won’t look dead then. It’ll be th’ prettiest of all.”
+
+Mary still gazed at the tree and thought.
+
+“It looks as if a big branch had been broken off,” said Colin. “I
+wonder how it was done.”
+
+“It’s been done many a year,” answered Dickon. “Eh!” with a sudden
+relieved start and laying his hand on Colin. “Look at that robin! There
+he is! He’s been foragin’ for his mate.”
+
+Colin was almost too late but he just caught sight of him, the flash of
+red-breasted bird with something in his beak. He darted through the
+greenness and into the close-grown corner and was out of sight. Colin
+leaned back on his cushion again, laughing a little.
+
+“He’s taking her tea to her. Perhaps it’s five o’clock. I think I’d
+like some tea myself.”
+
+And so they were safe.
+
+“It was Magic which sent the robin,” said Mary secretly to Dickon
+afterward. “I know it was Magic.” For both she and Dickon had been
+afraid Colin might ask something about the tree whose branch had broken
+off ten years ago and they had talked it over together and Dickon had
+stood and rubbed his head in a troubled way.
+
+“We mun look as if it wasn’t no different from th’ other trees,” he had
+said. “We couldn’t never tell him how it broke, poor lad. If he says
+anything about it we mun—we mun try to look cheerful.”
+
+“Aye, that we mun,” had answered Mary.
+
+But she had not felt as if she looked cheerful when she gazed at the
+tree. She wondered and wondered in those few moments if there was any
+reality in that other thing Dickon had said. He had gone on rubbing his
+rust-red hair in a puzzled way, but a nice comforted look had begun to
+grow in his blue eyes.
+
+“Mrs. Craven was a very lovely young lady,” he had gone on rather
+hesitatingly. “An’ mother she thinks maybe she’s about Misselthwaite
+many a time lookin’ after Mester Colin, same as all mothers do when
+they’re took out o’ th’ world. They have to come back, tha’ sees.
+Happen she’s been in the garden an’ happen it was her set us to work,
+an’ told us to bring him here.”
+
+Mary had thought he meant something about Magic. She was a great
+believer in Magic. Secretly she quite believed that Dickon worked
+Magic, of course good Magic, on everything near him and that was why
+people liked him so much and wild creatures knew he was their friend.
+She wondered, indeed, if it were not possible that his gift had brought
+the robin just at the right moment when Colin asked that dangerous
+question. She felt that his Magic was working all the afternoon and
+making Colin look like an entirely different boy. It did not seem
+possible that he could be the crazy creature who had screamed and
+beaten and bitten his pillow. Even his ivory whiteness seemed to
+change. The faint glow of color which had shown on his face and neck
+and hands when he first got inside the garden really never quite died
+away. He looked as if he were made of flesh instead of ivory or wax.
+
+They saw the robin carry food to his mate two or three times, and it
+was so suggestive of afternoon tea that Colin felt they must have some.
+
+“Go and make one of the men servants bring some in a basket to the
+rhododendron walk,” he said. “And then you and Dickon can bring it
+here.”
+
+It was an agreeable idea, easily carried out, and when the white cloth
+was spread upon the grass, with hot tea and buttered toast and
+crumpets, a delightfully hungry meal was eaten, and several birds on
+domestic errands paused to inquire what was going on and were led into
+investigating crumbs with great activity. Nut and Shell whisked up
+trees with pieces of cake and Soot took the entire half of a buttered
+crumpet into a corner and pecked at and examined and turned it over and
+made hoarse remarks about it until he decided to swallow it all
+joyfully in one gulp.
+
+The afternoon was dragging towards its mellow hour. The sun was
+deepening the gold of its lances, the bees were going home and the
+birds were flying past less often. Dickon and Mary were sitting on the
+grass, the tea-basket was repacked ready to be taken back to the house,
+and Colin was lying against his cushions with his heavy locks pushed
+back from his forehead and his face looking quite a natural color.
+
+“I don’t want this afternoon to go,” he said; “but I shall come back
+tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, and the day after.”
+
+“You’ll get plenty of fresh air, won’t you?” said Mary.
+
+“I’m going to get nothing else,” he answered. “I’ve seen the spring now
+and I’m going to see the summer. I’m going to see everything grow here.
+I’m going to grow here myself.”
+
+“That tha’ will,” said Dickon. “Us’ll have thee walkin’ about here an’
+diggin’ same as other folk afore long.”
+
+Colin flushed tremendously.
+
+“Walk!” he said. “Dig! Shall I?”
+
+Dickon’s glance at him was delicately cautious. Neither he nor Mary had
+ever asked if anything was the matter with his legs.
+
+“For sure tha’ will,” he said stoutly. “Tha—tha’s got legs o’ thine
+own, same as other folks!”
+
+Mary was rather frightened until she heard Colin’s answer.
+
+“Nothing really ails them,” he said, “but they are so thin and weak.
+They shake so that I’m afraid to try to stand on them.”
+
+Both Mary and Dickon drew a relieved breath.
+
+“When tha’ stops bein’ afraid tha’lt stand on ’em,” Dickon said with
+renewed cheer. “An’ tha’lt stop bein’ afraid in a bit.”
+
+“I shall?” said Colin, and he lay still as if he were wondering about
+things.
+
+They were really very quiet for a little while. The sun was dropping
+lower. It was that hour when everything stills itself, and they really
+had had a busy and exciting afternoon. Colin looked as if he were
+resting luxuriously. Even the creatures had ceased moving about and had
+drawn together and were resting near them. Soot had perched on a low
+branch and drawn up one leg and dropped the gray film drowsily over his
+eyes. Mary privately thought he looked as if he might snore in a
+minute.
+
+In the midst of this stillness it was rather startling when Colin half
+lifted his head and exclaimed in a loud suddenly alarmed whisper:
+
+“Who is that man?”
+
+Dickon and Mary scrambled to their feet.
+
+“Man!” they both cried in low quick voices.
+
+Colin pointed to the high wall.
+
+“Look!” he whispered excitedly. “Just look!”
+
+Mary and Dickon wheeled about and looked. There was Ben Weatherstaff’s
+indignant face glaring at them over the wall from the top of a ladder!
+He actually shook his fist at Mary.
+
+“If I wasn’t a bachelder, an’ tha’ was a wench o’ mine,” he cried, “I’d
+give thee a hidin’!”
+
+He mounted another step threateningly as if it were his energetic
+intention to jump down and deal with her; but as she came toward him he
+evidently thought better of it and stood on the top step of his ladder
+shaking his fist down at her.
+
+“I never thowt much o’ thee!” he harangued. “I couldna’ abide thee th’
+first time I set eyes on thee. A scrawny buttermilk-faced young besom,
+allus askin’ questions an’ pokin’ tha’ nose where it wasna, wanted. I
+never knowed how tha’ got so thick wi’ me. If it hadna’ been for th’
+robin— Drat him—”
+
+“Ben Weatherstaff,” called out Mary, finding her breath. She stood
+below him and called up to him with a sort of gasp. “Ben Weatherstaff,
+it was the robin who showed me the way!”
+
+Then it did seem as if Ben really would scramble down on her side of
+the wall, he was so outraged.
+
+“Tha’ young bad ’un!” he called down at her. “Layin’ tha’ badness on a
+robin—not but what he’s impidint enow for anythin’. Him showin’ thee
+th’ way! Him! Eh! tha’ young nowt”—she could see his next words burst
+out because he was overpowered by curiosity—“however i’ this world did
+tha’ get in?”
+
+“It was the robin who showed me the way,” she protested obstinately.
+“He didn’t know he was doing it but he did. And I can’t tell you from
+here while you’re shaking your fist at me.”
+
+He stopped shaking his fist very suddenly at that very moment and his
+jaw actually dropped as he stared over her head at something he saw
+coming over the grass toward him.
+
+At the first sound of his torrent of words Colin had been so surprised
+that he had only sat up and listened as if he were spellbound. But in
+the midst of it he had recovered himself and beckoned imperiously to
+Dickon.
+
+“Wheel me over there!” he commanded. “Wheel me quite close and stop
+right in front of him!”
+
+And this, if you please, this is what Ben Weatherstaff beheld and which
+made his jaw drop. A wheeled chair with luxurious cushions and robes
+which came toward him looking rather like some sort of State Coach
+because a young Rajah leaned back in it with royal command in his great
+black-rimmed eyes and a thin white hand extended haughtily toward him.
+And it stopped right under Ben Weatherstaff’s nose. It was really no
+wonder his mouth dropped open.
+
+“Do you know who I am?” demanded the Rajah.
+
+How Ben Weatherstaff stared! His red old eyes fixed themselves on what
+was before him as if he were seeing a ghost. He gazed and gazed and
+gulped a lump down his throat and did not say a word.
+
+“Do you know who I am?” demanded Colin still more imperiously.
+“Answer!”
+
+Ben Weatherstaff put his gnarled hand up and passed it over his eyes
+and over his forehead and then he did answer in a queer shaky voice.
+
+“Who tha’ art?” he said. “Aye, that I do—wi’ tha’ mother’s eyes starin’
+at me out o’ tha’ face. Lord knows how tha’ come here. But tha’rt th’
+poor cripple.”
+
+Colin forgot that he had ever had a back. His face flushed scarlet and
+he sat bolt upright.
+
+“I’m not a cripple!” he cried out furiously. “I’m not!”
+
+“He’s not!” cried Mary, almost shouting up the wall in her fierce
+indignation. “He’s not got a lump as big as a pin! I looked and there
+was none there—not one!”
+
+Ben Weatherstaff passed his hand over his forehead again and gazed as
+if he could never gaze enough. His hand shook and his mouth shook and
+his voice shook. He was an ignorant old man and a tactless old man and
+he could only remember the things he had heard.
+
+“Tha’—tha’ hasn’t got a crooked back?” he said hoarsely.
+
+“No!” shouted Colin.
+
+“Tha’—tha’ hasn’t got crooked legs?” quavered Ben more hoarsely yet.
+
+It was too much. The strength which Colin usually threw into his
+tantrums rushed through him now in a new way. Never yet had he been
+accused of crooked legs—even in whispers—and the perfectly simple
+belief in their existence which was revealed by Ben Weatherstaff’s
+voice was more than Rajah flesh and blood could endure. His anger and
+insulted pride made him forget everything but this one moment and
+filled him with a power he had never known before, an almost unnatural
+strength.
+
+“Come here!” he shouted to Dickon, and he actually began to tear the
+coverings off his lower limbs and disentangle himself. “Come here! Come
+here! This minute!”
+
+Dickon was by his side in a second. Mary caught her breath in a short
+gasp and felt herself turn pale.
+
+“He can do it! He can do it! He can do it! He can!” she gabbled over to
+herself under her breath as fast as ever she could.
+
+There was a brief fierce scramble, the rugs were tossed on the ground,
+Dickon held Colin’s arm, the thin legs were out, the thin feet were on
+the grass. Colin was standing upright—upright—as straight as an arrow
+and looking strangely tall—his head thrown back and his strange eyes
+flashing lightning.
+
+“Look at me!” he flung up at Ben Weatherstaff. “Just look at me—you!
+Just look at me!”
+
+“He’s as straight as I am!” cried Dickon. “He’s as straight as any lad
+i’ Yorkshire!”
+
+What Ben Weatherstaff did Mary thought queer beyond measure. He choked
+and gulped and suddenly tears ran down his weather-wrinkled cheeks as
+he struck his old hands together.
+
+“Eh!” he burst forth, “th’ lies folk tells! Tha’rt as thin as a lath
+an’ as white as a wraith, but there’s not a knob on thee. Tha’lt make a
+mon yet. God bless thee!”
+
+Dickon held Colin’s arm strongly but the boy had not begun to falter.
+He stood straighter and straighter and looked Ben Weatherstaff in the
+face.
+
+“I’m your master,” he said, “when my father is away. And you are to
+obey me. This is my garden. Don’t dare to say a word about it! You get
+down from that ladder and go out to the Long Walk and Miss Mary will
+meet you and bring you here. I want to talk to you. We did not want
+you, but now you will have to be in the secret. Be quick!”
+
+Ben Weatherstaff’s crabbed old face was still wet with that one queer
+rush of tears. It seemed as if he could not take his eyes from thin
+straight Colin standing on his feet with his head thrown back.
+
+“Eh! lad,” he almost whispered. “Eh! my lad!” And then remembering
+himself he suddenly touched his hat gardener fashion and said, “Yes,
+sir! Yes, sir!” and obediently disappeared as he descended the ladder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN
+
+
+When his head was out of sight Colin turned to Mary.
+
+“Go and meet him,” he said; and Mary flew across the grass to the door
+under the ivy.
+
+Dickon was watching him with sharp eyes. There were scarlet spots on
+his cheeks and he looked amazing, but he showed no signs of falling.
+
+“I can stand,” he said, and his head was still held up and he said it
+quite grandly.
+
+“I told thee tha’ could as soon as tha’ stopped bein’ afraid,” answered
+Dickon. “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.
+
+“Aye,” he said slowly, “there couldna’ be bigger Magic than that
+there—there couldna’ be.”
+
+He drew himself up straighter than ever.
+
+“I’m going to walk to that tree,” he said, pointing to one a few feet
+away from him. “I’m going to be standing when Weatherstaff comes here.
+I can rest against the tree if I like. When I want to sit down I will
+sit down, but not before. Bring a rug from the chair.”
+
+He walked to the tree and though Dickon held his arm he was wonderfully
+steady. When he stood against the tree trunk it was not too plain that
+he supported himself against it, and he still held himself so straight
+that he looked tall.
+
+When Ben Weatherstaff came through the door in the wall he saw him
+standing there and he heard Mary muttering something under her breath.
+
+“What art sayin’?” he asked rather testily because he did not want his
+attention distracted from the long thin straight boy figure and proud
+face.
+
+But she did not tell him. What she was saying was this:
+
+“You can do it! You can do it! I told you you could! You can do it! You
+can do it! You _can!_”
+
+She was saying it to Colin because she wanted to make Magic and keep
+him on his feet looking like that. She could not bear that he should
+give in before Ben Weatherstaff. He did not give in. She was uplifted
+by a sudden feeling that he looked quite beautiful in spite of his
+thinness. He fixed his eyes on Ben Weatherstaff in his funny imperious
+way.
+
+“Look at me!” he commanded. “Look at me all over! Am I a hunchback?
+Have I got crooked legs?”
+
+Ben Weatherstaff had not quite got over his emotion, but he had
+recovered a little and answered almost in his usual way.
+
+“Not tha’,” he said. “Nowt o’ th’ sort. What’s tha’ been doin’ with
+thysel’—hidin’ out o’ sight an’ lettin’ folk think tha’ was cripple an’
+half-witted?”
+
+“Half-witted!” said Colin angrily. “Who thought that?”
+
+“Lots o’ fools,” said Ben. “Th’ world’s full o’ jackasses brayin’ an’
+they never bray nowt but lies. What did tha’ shut thysel’ up for?”
+
+“Everyone thought I was going to die,” said Colin shortly. “I’m not!”
+
+And he said it with such decision Ben Weatherstaff looked him over, up
+and down, down and up.
+
+“Tha’ die!” he said with dry exultation. “Nowt o’ th’ sort! Tha’s got
+too much pluck in thee. When I seed thee put tha’ legs on th’ ground in
+such a hurry I knowed tha’ was all right. Sit thee down on th’ rug a
+bit young Mester an’ give me thy orders.”
+
+There was a queer mixture of crabbed tenderness and shrewd
+understanding in his manner. Mary had poured out speech as rapidly as
+she could as they had come down the Long Walk. The chief thing to be
+remembered, she had told him, was that Colin was getting well—getting
+well. The garden was doing it. No one must let him remember about
+having humps and dying.
+
+The Rajah condescended to seat himself on a rug under the tree.
+
+“What work do you do in the gardens, Weatherstaff?” he inquired.
+
+“Anythin’ I’m told to do,” answered old Ben. “I’m kep’ on by
+favor—because she liked me.”
+
+“She?” said Colin.
+
+“Tha’ mother,” answered Ben Weatherstaff.
+
+“My mother?” said Colin, and he looked about him quietly. “This was her
+garden, wasn’t it?”
+
+“Aye, it was that!” and Ben Weatherstaff looked about him too. “She
+were main fond of it.”
+
+“It is my garden now. I am fond of it. I shall come here every day,”
+announced Colin. “But it is to be a secret. My orders are that no one
+is to know that we come here. Dickon and my cousin have worked and made
+it come alive. I shall send for you sometimes to help—but you must come
+when no one can see you.”
+
+Ben Weatherstaff’s face twisted itself in a dry old smile.
+
+“I’ve come here before when no one saw me,” he said.
+
+“What!” exclaimed Colin. “When?”
+
+“Th’ last time I was here,” rubbing his chin and looking round, “was
+about two year’ ago.”
+
+“But no one has been in it for ten years!” cried Colin.
+
+“There was no door!”
+
+“I’m no one,” said old Ben dryly. “An’ I didn’t come through th’ door.
+I come over th’ wall. Th’ rheumatics held me back th’ last two year’.”
+
+“Tha’ come an’ did a bit o’ prunin’!” cried Dickon. “I couldn’t make
+out how it had been done.”
+
+“She was so fond of it—she was!” said Ben Weatherstaff slowly. “An’ she
+was such a pretty young thing. She says to me once, ‘Ben,’ says she
+laughin’, ‘if ever I’m ill or if I go away you must take care of my
+roses.’ When she did go away th’ orders was no one was ever to come
+nigh. But I come,” with grumpy obstinacy. “Over th’ wall I come—until
+th’ rheumatics stopped me—an’ I did a bit o’ work once a year. She’d
+gave her order first.”
+
+“It wouldn’t have been as wick as it is if tha’ hadn’t done it,” said
+Dickon. “I did wonder.”
+
+“I’m glad you did it, Weatherstaff,” said Colin. “You’ll know how to
+keep the secret.”
+
+“Aye, I’ll know, sir,” answered Ben. “An’ it’ll be easier for a man wi’
+rheumatics to come in at th’ door.”
+
+On the grass near the tree Mary had dropped her trowel. Colin stretched
+out his hand and took it up. An odd expression came into his face and
+he began to scratch at the earth. His thin hand was weak enough but
+presently as they watched him—Mary with quite breathless interest—he
+drove the end of the trowel into the soil and turned some over.
+
+“You can do it! You can do it!” said Mary to herself. “I tell you, you
+can!”
+
+Dickon’s round eyes were full of eager curiousness but he said not a
+word. Ben Weatherstaff looked on with interested face.
+
+Colin persevered. After he had turned a few trowelfuls of soil he spoke
+exultantly to Dickon in his best Yorkshire.
+
+“Tha’ said as tha’d have me walkin’ about here same as other folk—an’
+tha’ said tha’d have me diggin’. I thowt tha’ was just leein’ to please
+me. This is only th’ first day an’ I’ve walked—an’ here I am diggin’.”
+
+Ben Weatherstaff’s mouth fell open again when he heard him, but he
+ended by chuckling.
+
+“Eh!” he said, “that sounds as if tha’d got wits enow. Tha’rt a
+Yorkshire lad for sure. An’ tha’rt diggin’, too. How’d tha’ like to
+plant a bit o’ somethin’? I can get thee a rose in a pot.”
+
+“Go and get it!” said Colin, digging excitedly. “Quick! Quick!”
+
+It was done quickly enough indeed. Ben Weatherstaff went his way
+forgetting rheumatics. Dickon took his spade and dug the hole deeper
+and wider than a new digger with thin white hands could make it. Mary
+slipped out to run and bring back a watering-can. When Dickon had
+deepened the hole Colin went on turning the soft earth over and over.
+He looked up at the sky, flushed and glowing with the strangely new
+exercise, slight as it was.
+
+“I want to do it before the sun goes quite—quite down,” he said.
+
+Mary thought that perhaps the sun held back a few minutes just on
+purpose. Ben Weatherstaff brought the rose in its pot from the
+greenhouse. He hobbled over the grass as fast as he could. He had begun
+to be excited, too. He knelt down by the hole and broke the pot from
+the mould.
+
+“Here, lad,” he said, handing the plant to Colin. “Set it in the earth
+thysel’ same as th’ king does when he goes to a new place.”
+
+The thin white hands shook a little and Colin’s flush grew deeper as he
+set the rose in the mould and held it while old Ben made firm the
+earth. It was filled in and pressed down and made steady. Mary was
+leaning forward on her hands and knees. Soot had flown down and marched
+forward to see what was being done. Nut and Shell chattered about it
+from a cherry-tree.
+
+“It’s planted!” said Colin at last. “And the sun is only slipping over
+the edge. Help me up, Dickon. I want to be standing when it goes.
+That’s part of the Magic.”
+
+And Dickon helped him, and the Magic—or whatever it was—so gave him
+strength that when the sun did slip over the edge and end the strange
+lovely afternoon for them there he actually stood on his two
+feet—laughing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+MAGIC
+
+
+Dr. Craven had been waiting some time at the house when they returned
+to it. He had indeed begun to wonder if it might not be wise to send
+someone out to explore the garden paths. When Colin was brought back to
+his room the poor man looked him over seriously.
+
+“You should not have stayed so long,” he said. “You must not overexert
+yourself.”
+
+“I am not tired at all,” said Colin. “It has made me well. Tomorrow I
+am going out in the morning as well as in the afternoon.”
+
+“I am not sure that I can allow it,” answered Dr. Craven. “I am afraid
+it would not be wise.”
+
+“It would not be wise to try to stop me,” said Colin quite seriously.
+“I am going.”
+
+Even Mary had found out that one of Colin’s chief peculiarities was
+that he did not know in the least what a rude little brute he was with
+his way of ordering people about. He had lived on a sort of desert
+island all his life and as he had been the king of it he had made his
+own manners and had had no one to compare himself with. Mary had indeed
+been rather like him herself and since she had been at Misselthwaite
+had gradually discovered that her own manners had not been of the kind
+which is usual or popular. Having made this discovery she naturally
+thought it of enough interest to communicate to Colin. So she sat and
+looked at him curiously for a few minutes after Dr. Craven had gone.
+She wanted to make him ask her why she was doing it and of course she
+did.
+
+“What are you looking at me for?” he said.
+
+“I’m thinking that I am rather sorry for Dr. Craven.”
+
+“So am I,” said Colin calmly, but not without an air of some
+satisfaction. “He won’t get Misselthwaite at all now I’m not going to
+die.”
+
+“I’m sorry for him because of that, of course,” said Mary, “but I was
+thinking just then that it must have been very horrid to have had to be
+polite for ten years to a boy who was always rude. I would never have
+done it.”
+
+“Am I rude?” Colin inquired undisturbedly.
+
+“If you had been his own boy and he had been a slapping sort of man,”
+said Mary, “he would have slapped you.”
+
+“But he daren’t,” said Colin.
+
+“No, he daren’t,” answered Mistress Mary, thinking the thing out quite
+without prejudice. “Nobody ever dared to do anything you didn’t
+like—because you were going to die and things like that. You were such
+a poor thing.”
+
+“But,” announced Colin stubbornly, “I am not going to be a poor thing.
+I won’t let people think I’m one. I stood on my feet this afternoon.”
+
+“It is always having your own way that has made you so queer,” Mary
+went on, thinking aloud.
+
+Colin turned his head, frowning.
+
+“Am I queer?” he demanded.
+
+“Yes,” answered Mary, “very. But you needn’t be cross,” she added
+impartially, “because so am I queer—and so is Ben Weatherstaff. But I
+am not as queer as I was before I began to like people and before I
+found the garden.”
+
+“I don’t want to be queer,” said Colin. “I am not going to be,” and he
+frowned again with determination.
+
+He was a very proud boy. He lay thinking for a while and then Mary saw
+his beautiful smile begin and gradually change his whole face.
+
+“I shall stop being queer,” he said, “if I go every day to the garden.
+There is Magic in there—good Magic, you know, Mary. I am sure there
+is.”
+
+“So am I,” said Mary.
+
+“Even if it isn’t real Magic,” Colin said, “we can pretend it is.
+_Something_ is there—_something!_”
+
+“It’s Magic,” said Mary, “but not black. It’s as white as snow.”
+
+They always called it Magic and indeed it seemed like it in the months
+that followed—the wonderful months—the radiant months—the amazing ones.
+Oh! the things which happened in that garden! If you have never had a
+garden you cannot understand, and if you have had a garden you will
+know that it would take a whole book to describe all that came to pass
+there. At first it seemed that green things would never cease pushing
+their way through the earth, in the grass, in the beds, even in the
+crevices of the walls. Then the green things began to show buds and the
+buds began to unfurl and show color, every shade of blue, every shade
+of purple, every tint and hue of crimson. In its happy days flowers had
+been tucked away into every inch and hole and corner. Ben Weatherstaff
+had seen it done and had himself scraped out mortar from between the
+bricks of the wall and made pockets of earth for lovely clinging things
+to grow on. Iris and white lilies rose out of the grass in sheaves, and
+the green alcoves filled themselves with amazing armies of the blue and
+white flower lances of tall delphiniums or columbines or campanulas.
+
+“She was main fond o’ them—she was,” Ben Weatherstaff said. “She liked
+them things as was allus pointin’ up to th’ blue sky, she used to tell.
+Not as she was one o’ them as looked down on th’ earth—not her. She
+just loved it but she said as th’ blue sky allus looked so joyful.”
+
+The seeds Dickon and Mary had planted grew as if fairies had tended
+them. Satiny poppies of all tints danced in the breeze by the score,
+gaily defying flowers which had lived in the garden for years and which
+it might be confessed seemed rather to wonder how such new people had
+got there. And the roses—the roses! Rising out of the grass, tangled
+round the sun-dial, wreathing the tree trunks and hanging from their
+branches, climbing up the walls and spreading over them with long
+garlands falling in cascades—they came alive day by day, hour by hour.
+Fair fresh leaves, and buds—and buds—tiny at first but swelling and
+working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent
+delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden
+air.
+
+Colin saw it all, watching each change as it took place. Every morning
+he was brought out and every hour of each day when it didn’t rain he
+spent in the garden. Even gray days pleased him. He would lie on the
+grass “watching things growing,” he said. If you watched long enough,
+he declared, you could see buds unsheath themselves. Also you could
+make the acquaintance of strange busy insect things running about on
+various unknown but evidently serious errands, sometimes carrying tiny
+scraps of straw or feather or food, or climbing blades of grass as if
+they were trees from whose tops one could look out to explore the
+country. A mole throwing up its mound at the end of its burrow and
+making its way out at last with the long-nailed paws which looked so
+like elfish hands, had absorbed him one whole morning. Ants’ ways,
+beetles’ ways, bees’ ways, frogs’ ways, birds’ ways, plants’ ways, gave
+him a new world to explore and when Dickon revealed them all and added
+foxes’ ways, otters’ ways, ferrets’ ways, squirrels’ ways, and trout’
+and water-rats’ and badgers’ ways, there was no end to the things to
+talk about and think over.
+
+And this was not the half of the Magic. The fact that he had really
+once stood on his feet had set Colin thinking tremendously and when
+Mary told him of the spell she had worked he was excited and approved
+of it greatly. He talked of it constantly.
+
+“Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world,” he said wisely
+one day, “but people don’t know what it is like or how to make it.
+Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen
+until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment.”
+
+The next morning when they went to the secret garden he sent at once
+for Ben Weatherstaff. Ben came as quickly as he could and found the
+Rajah standing on his feet under a tree and looking very grand but also
+very beautifully smiling.
+
+“Good morning, Ben Weatherstaff,” he said. “I want you and Dickon and
+Miss Mary to stand in a row and listen to me because I am going to tell
+you something very important.”
+
+“Aye, aye, sir!” answered Ben Weatherstaff, touching his forehead. (One
+of the long concealed charms of Ben Weatherstaff was that in his
+boyhood he had once run away to sea and had made voyages. So he could
+reply like a sailor.)
+
+“I am going to try a scientific experiment,” explained the Rajah. “When
+I grow up I am going to make great scientific discoveries and I am
+going to begin now with this experiment.”
+
+“Aye, aye, sir!” said Ben Weatherstaff promptly, though this was the
+first time he had heard of great scientific discoveries.
+
+It was the first time Mary had heard of them, either, but even at this
+stage she had begun to realize that, queer as he was, Colin had read
+about a great many singular things and was somehow a very convincing
+sort of boy. When he held up his head and fixed his strange eyes on you
+it seemed as if you believed him almost in spite of yourself though he
+was only ten years old—going on eleven. At this moment he was
+especially convincing because he suddenly felt the fascination of
+actually making a sort of speech like a grown-up person.
+
+“The great scientific discoveries I am going to make,” he went on,
+“will be about Magic. Magic is a great thing and scarcely anyone knows
+anything about it except a few people in old books—and Mary a little,
+because she was born in India where there are fakirs. I believe Dickon
+knows some Magic, but perhaps he doesn’t know he knows it. He charms
+animals and people. I would never have let him come to see me if he had
+not been an animal charmer—which is a boy charmer, too, because a boy
+is an animal. I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not
+sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us—like
+electricity and horses and steam.”
+
+This sounded so imposing that Ben Weatherstaff became quite excited and
+really could not keep still.
+
+“Aye, aye, sir,” he said and he began to stand up quite straight.
+
+“When Mary found this garden it looked quite dead,” the orator
+proceeded. “Then something began pushing things up out of the soil and
+making things out of nothing. One day things weren’t there and another
+they were. I had never watched things before and it made me feel very
+curious. Scientific people are always curious and I am going to be
+scientific. I keep saying to myself, ‘What is it? What is it?’ It’s
+something. It can’t be nothing! I don’t know its name so I call it
+Magic. I have never seen the sun rise but Mary and Dickon have and from
+what they tell me I am sure that is Magic too. Something pushes it up
+and draws it. Sometimes since I’ve been in the garden I’ve looked up
+through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being
+happy as if something were pushing and drawing in my chest and making
+me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things
+out of nothing. Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees,
+flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it
+must be all around us. In this garden—in all the places. The Magic in
+this garden has made me stand up and know I am going to live to be a
+man. I am going to make the scientific experiment of trying to get some
+and put it in myself and make it push and draw me and make me strong. I
+don’t know how to do it but I think that if you keep thinking about it
+and calling it perhaps it will come. Perhaps that is the first baby way
+to get it. When I was going to try to stand that first time Mary kept
+saying to herself as fast as she could, ‘You can do it! You can do it!’
+and I did. I had to try myself at the same time, of course, but her
+Magic helped me—and so did Dickon’s. Every morning and evening and as
+often in the daytime as I can remember I am going to say, ‘Magic is in
+me! Magic is making me well! I am going to be as strong as Dickon, as
+strong as Dickon!’ And you must all do it, too. That is my experiment
+Will you help, Ben Weatherstaff?”
+
+“Aye, aye, sir!” said Ben Weatherstaff. “Aye, aye!”
+
+“If you keep doing it every day as regularly as soldiers go through
+drill we shall see what will happen and find out if the experiment
+succeeds. You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking
+about them until they stay in your mind forever and I think it will be
+the same with Magic. If you keep calling it to come to you and help you
+it will get to be part of you and it will stay and do things.”
+
+“I once heard an officer in India tell my mother that there were fakirs
+who said words over and over thousands of times,” said Mary.
+
+“I’ve heard Jem Fettleworth’s wife say th’ same thing over thousands o’
+times—callin’ Jem a drunken brute,” said Ben Weatherstaff dryly.
+“Summat allus come o’ that, sure enough. He gave her a good hidin’ an’
+went to th’ Blue Lion an’ got as drunk as a lord.”
+
+Colin drew his brows together and thought a few minutes. Then he
+cheered up.
+
+“Well,” he said, “you see something did come of it. She used the wrong
+Magic until she made him beat her. If she’d used the right Magic and
+had said something nice perhaps he wouldn’t have got as drunk as a lord
+and perhaps—perhaps he might have bought her a new bonnet.”
+
+Ben Weatherstaff chuckled and there was shrewd admiration in his little
+old eyes.
+
+“Tha’rt a clever lad as well as a straight-legged one, Mester Colin,”
+he said. “Next time I see Bess Fettleworth I’ll give her a bit of a
+hint o’ what Magic will do for her. She’d be rare an’ pleased if th’
+sinetifik ’speriment worked—an’ so ’ud Jem.”
+
+Dickon had stood listening to the lecture, his round eyes shining with
+curious delight. Nut and Shell were on his shoulders and he held a
+long-eared white rabbit in his arm and stroked and stroked it softly
+while it laid its ears along its back and enjoyed itself.
+
+“Do you think the experiment will work?” Colin asked him, wondering
+what he was thinking. He so often wondered what Dickon was thinking
+when he saw him looking at him or at one of his “creatures” with his
+happy wide smile.
+
+He smiled now and his smile was wider than usual.
+
+“Aye,” he answered, “that I do. It’ll work same as th’ seeds do when
+th’ sun shines on ’em. It’ll work for sure. Shall us begin it now?”
+
+Colin was delighted and so was Mary. Fired by recollections of fakirs
+and devotees in illustrations Colin suggested that they should all sit
+cross-legged under the tree which made a canopy.
+
+“It will be like sitting in a sort of temple,” said Colin. “I’m rather
+tired and I want to sit down.”
+
+“Eh!” said Dickon, “tha’ mustn’t begin by sayin’ tha’rt tired. Tha’
+might spoil th’ Magic.”
+
+Colin turned and looked at him—into his innocent round eyes.
+
+“That’s true,” he said slowly. “I must only think of the Magic.”
+
+It all seemed most majestic and mysterious when they sat down in their
+circle. Ben Weatherstaff felt as if he had somehow been led into
+appearing at a prayer-meeting. Ordinarily he was very fixed in being
+what he called “agen’ prayer-meetin’s” but this being the Rajah’s
+affair he did not resent it and was indeed inclined to be gratified at
+being called upon to assist. Mistress Mary felt solemnly enraptured.
+Dickon held his rabbit in his arm, and perhaps he made some charmer’s
+signal no one heard, for when he sat down, cross-legged like the rest,
+the crow, the fox, the squirrels and the lamb slowly drew near and made
+part of the circle, settling each into a place of rest as if of their
+own desire.
+
+“The ‘creatures’ have come,” said Colin gravely. “They want to help
+us.”
+
+Colin really looked quite beautiful, Mary thought. He held his head
+high as if he felt like a sort of priest and his strange eyes had a
+wonderful look in them. The light shone on him through the tree canopy.
+
+“Now we will begin,” he said. “Shall we sway backward and forward,
+Mary, as if we were dervishes?”
+
+“I canna’ do no swayin’ back’ard and for’ard,” said Ben Weatherstaff.
+“I’ve got th’ rheumatics.”
+
+“The Magic will take them away,” said Colin in a High Priest tone, “but
+we won’t sway until it has done it. We will only chant.”
+
+“I canna’ do no chantin’” said Ben Weatherstaff a trifle testily. “They
+turned me out o’ th’ church choir th’ only time I ever tried it.”
+
+No one smiled. They were all too much in earnest. Colin’s face was not
+even crossed by a shadow. He was thinking only of the Magic.
+
+“Then I will chant,” he said. And he began, looking like a strange boy
+spirit. “The sun is shining—the sun is shining. That is the Magic. The
+flowers are growing—the roots are stirring. That is the Magic. Being
+alive is the Magic—being strong is the Magic. The Magic is in me—the
+Magic is in me. It is in me—it is in me. It’s in everyone of us. It’s
+in Ben Weatherstaff’s back. Magic! Magic! Come and help!”
+
+He said it a great many times—not a thousand times but quite a goodly
+number. Mary listened entranced. She felt as if it were at once queer
+and beautiful and she wanted him to go on and on. Ben Weatherstaff
+began to feel soothed into a sort of dream which was quite agreeable.
+The humming of the bees in the blossoms mingled with the chanting voice
+and drowsily melted into a doze. Dickon sat cross-legged with his
+rabbit asleep on his arm and a hand resting on the lamb’s back. Soot
+had pushed away a squirrel and huddled close to him on his shoulder,
+the gray film dropped over his eyes. At last Colin stopped.
+
+“Now I am going to walk round the garden,” he announced.
+
+Ben Weatherstaff’s head had just dropped forward and he lifted it with
+a jerk.
+
+“You have been asleep,” said Colin.
+
+“Nowt o’ th’ sort,” mumbled Ben. “Th’ sermon was good enow—but I’m
+bound to get out afore th’ collection.”
+
+He was not quite awake yet.
+
+“You’re not in church,” said Colin.
+
+“Not me,” said Ben, straightening himself. “Who said I were? I heard
+every bit of it. You said th’ Magic was in my back. Th’ doctor calls it
+rheumatics.”
+
+The Rajah waved his hand.
+
+“That was the wrong Magic,” he said. “You will get better. You have my
+permission to go to your work. But come back tomorrow.”
+
+“I’d like to see thee walk round the garden,” grunted Ben.
+
+It was not an unfriendly grunt, but it was a grunt. In fact, being a
+stubborn old party and not having entire faith in Magic he had made up
+his mind that if he were sent away he would climb his ladder and look
+over the wall so that he might be ready to hobble back if there were
+any stumbling.
+
+The Rajah did not object to his staying and so the procession was
+formed. It really did look like a procession. Colin was at its head
+with Dickon on one side and Mary on the other. Ben Weatherstaff walked
+behind, and the “creatures” trailed after them, the lamb and the fox
+cub keeping close to Dickon, the white rabbit hopping along or stopping
+to nibble and Soot following with the solemnity of a person who felt
+himself in charge.
+
+It was a procession which moved slowly but with dignity. Every few
+yards it stopped to rest. Colin leaned on Dickon’s arm and privately
+Ben Weatherstaff kept a sharp lookout, but now and then Colin took his
+hand from its support and walked a few steps alone. His head was held
+up all the time and he looked very grand.
+
+“The Magic is in me!” he kept saying. “The Magic is making me strong! I
+can feel it! I can feel it!”
+
+It seemed very certain that something was upholding and uplifting him.
+He sat on the seats in the alcoves, and once or twice he sat down on
+the grass and several times he paused in the path and leaned on Dickon,
+but he would not give up until he had gone all round the garden. When
+he returned to the canopy tree his cheeks were flushed and he looked
+triumphant.
+
+“I did it! The Magic worked!” he cried. “That is my first scientific
+discovery.”
+
+“What will Dr. Craven say?” broke out Mary.
+
+“He won’t say anything,” Colin answered, “because he will not be told.
+This is to be the biggest secret of all. No one is to know anything
+about it until I have grown so strong that I can walk and run like any
+other boy. I shall come here every day in my chair and I shall be taken
+back in it. I won’t have people whispering and asking questions and I
+won’t let my father hear about it until the experiment has quite
+succeeded. Then sometime when he comes back to Misselthwaite I shall
+just walk into his study and say ‘Here I am; I am like any other boy. I
+am quite well and I shall live to be a man. It has been done by a
+scientific experiment.’”
+
+“He will think he is in a dream,” cried Mary. “He won’t believe his
+eyes.”
+
+Colin flushed triumphantly. He had made himself believe that he was
+going to get well, which was really more than half the battle, if he
+had been aware of it. And the thought which stimulated him more than
+any other was this imagining what his father would look like when he
+saw that he had a son who was as straight and strong as other fathers’
+sons. One of his darkest miseries in the unhealthy morbid past days had
+been his hatred of being a sickly weak-backed boy whose father was
+afraid to look at him.
+
+“He’ll be obliged to believe them,” he said.
+
+“One of the things I am going to do, after the Magic works and before I
+begin to make scientific discoveries, is to be an athlete.”
+
+“We shall have thee takin’ to boxin’ in a week or so,” said Ben
+Weatherstaff. “Tha’lt end wi’ winnin’ th’ Belt an’ bein’ champion
+prize-fighter of all England.”
+
+Colin fixed his eyes on him sternly.
+
+“Weatherstaff,” he said, “that is disrespectful. You must not take
+liberties because you are in the secret. However much the Magic works I
+shall not be a prize-fighter. I shall be a Scientific Discoverer.”
+
+“Ax pardon—ax pardon, sir” answered Ben, touching his forehead in
+salute. “I ought to have seed it wasn’t a jokin’ matter,” but his eyes
+twinkled and secretly he was immensely pleased. He really did not mind
+being snubbed since the snubbing meant that the lad was gaining
+strength and spirit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+“LET THEM LAUGH”
+
+
+The secret garden was not the only one Dickon worked in. Round the
+cottage on the moor there was a piece of ground enclosed by a low wall
+of rough stones. Early in the morning and late in the fading twilight
+and on all the days Colin and Mary did not see him, Dickon worked there
+planting or tending potatoes and cabbages, turnips and carrots and
+herbs for his mother. In the company of his “creatures” he did wonders
+there and was never tired of doing them, it seemed. 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 anyone else’s an’ they’ve got a flavor
+with ’em as nobody’s has.”
+
+When she found a moment to spare she liked to go out and talk to him.
+After supper there was still a long clear twilight to work in and that
+was her quiet time. She could sit upon the low rough wall and look on
+and hear stories of the day. She loved this time. There were not only
+vegetables in this garden. Dickon had bought penny packages of flower
+seeds now and then and sown bright sweet-scented things among
+gooseberry bushes and even cabbages and he grew borders of mignonette
+and pinks and pansies and things whose seeds he could save year after
+year or whose roots would bloom each spring and spread in time into
+fine clumps. The low wall was one of the prettiest things in Yorkshire
+because he had tucked moorland foxglove and ferns and rock-cress and
+hedgerow flowers into every crevice until only here and there glimpses
+of the stones were to be seen.
+
+“All a chap’s got to do to make ’em thrive, mother,” he would say, “is
+to be friends with ’em for sure. They’re just like th’ ‘creatures.’ If
+they’re thirsty give ’em drink and if they’re hungry give ’em a bit o’
+food. They want to live same as we do. If they died I should feel as if
+I’d been a bad lad and somehow treated them heartless.”
+
+It was in these twilight hours that Mrs. Sowerby heard of all that
+happened at Misselthwaite Manor. At first she was only told that
+“Mester Colin” had taken a fancy to going out into the grounds with
+Miss Mary and that it was doing him good. But it was not long before it
+was agreed between the two children that Dickon’s mother might “come
+into the secret.” Somehow it was not doubted that she was “safe for
+sure.”
+
+So one beautiful still evening Dickon told the whole story, with all
+the thrilling details of the buried key and the robin and the gray haze
+which had seemed like deadness and the secret Mistress Mary had planned
+never to reveal. The coming of Dickon and how it had been told to him,
+the doubt of Mester Colin and the final drama of his introduction to
+the hidden domain, combined with the incident of Ben Weatherstaff’s
+angry face peering over the wall and Mester Colin’s sudden indignant
+strength, made Mrs. Sowerby’s nice-looking face quite change color
+several times.
+
+“My word!” she said. “It was a good thing that little lass came to th’
+Manor. It’s been th’ makin’ o’ her an’ th’ savin, o’ him. Standin’ on
+his feet! An’ us all thinkin’ he was a poor half-witted lad with not a
+straight bone in him.”
+
+She asked a great many questions and her blue eyes were full of deep
+thinking.
+
+“What do they make of it at th’ Manor—him being so well an’ cheerful
+an’ never complainin’?” she inquired.
+
+“They don’t know what to make of it,” answered Dickon. “Every day as
+comes round his face looks different. It’s fillin’ out and doesn’t look
+so sharp an’ th’ waxy color is goin’. But he has to do his bit o’
+complainin’,” with a highly entertained grin.
+
+“What for, i’ Mercy’s name?” asked Mrs. Sowerby.
+
+Dickon chuckled.
+
+“He does it to keep them from guessin’ what’s happened. If the doctor
+knew he’d found out he could stand on his feet he’d likely write and
+tell Mester Craven. Mester Colin’s savin’ th’ secret to tell himself.
+He’s goin’ to practise his Magic on his legs every day till his father
+comes back an’ then he’s goin’ to march into his room an’ show him he’s
+as straight as other lads. But him an’ Miss Mary thinks it’s best plan
+to do a bit o’ groanin’ an’ frettin’ now an’ then to throw folk off th’
+scent.”
+
+Mrs. Sowerby was laughing a low comfortable laugh long before he had
+finished his last sentence.
+
+“Eh!” she said, “that pair’s enjoyin’ theirselves I’ll warrant. They’ll
+get a good bit o’ actin’ out of it an’ there’s nothin’ children likes
+as much as play actin’. Let’s hear what they do, Dickon lad.”
+
+Dickon stopped weeding and sat up on his heels to tell her. His eyes
+were twinkling with fun.
+
+“Mester Colin is carried down to his chair every time he goes out,” he
+explained. “An’ he flies out at John, th’ footman, for not carryin’ him
+careful enough. He makes himself as helpless lookin’ as he can an’
+never lifts his head until we’re out o’ sight o’ th’ house. An’ he
+grunts an’ frets a good bit when he’s bein’ settled into his chair. Him
+an’ Miss Mary’s both got to enjoyin’ it an’ when he groans an’
+complains she’ll say, ‘Poor Colin! Does it hurt you so much? Are you so
+weak as that, poor Colin?’—but th’ trouble is that sometimes they can
+scarce keep from burstin’ out laughin’. When we get safe into the
+garden they laugh till they’ve no breath left to laugh with. An’ they
+have to stuff their faces into Mester Colin’s cushions to keep the
+gardeners from hearin’, if any of, ’em’s about.”
+
+“Th’ more they laugh th’ better for ’em!” said Mrs. Sowerby, still
+laughing herself. “Good healthy child laughin’s better than pills any
+day o’ th’ year. That pair’ll plump up for sure.”
+
+“They are plumpin’ up,” said Dickon. “They’re that hungry they don’t
+know how to get enough to eat without makin’ talk. Mester Colin says if
+he keeps sendin’ for more food they won’t believe he’s an invalid at
+all. Miss Mary says she’ll let him eat her share, but he says that if
+she goes hungry she’ll get thin an’ they mun both get fat at once.”
+
+Mrs. Sowerby laughed so heartily at the revelation of this difficulty
+that she quite rocked backward and forward in her blue cloak, and
+Dickon laughed with her.
+
+“I’ll tell thee what, lad,” Mrs. Sowerby said when she could speak.
+“I’ve thought of a way to help ’em. When tha’ goes to ’em in th’
+mornin’s tha’ shall take a pail o’ good new milk an’ I’ll bake ’em a
+crusty cottage loaf or some buns wi’ currants in ’em, same as you
+children like. Nothin’s so good as fresh milk an’ bread. Then they
+could take off th’ edge o’ their hunger while they were in their garden
+an’ th, fine food they get indoors ’ud polish off th’ corners.”
+
+“Eh! mother!” said Dickon admiringly, “what a wonder tha’ art! Tha’
+always sees a way out o’ things. They was quite in a pother yesterday.
+They didn’t see how they was to manage without orderin’ up more
+food—they felt that empty inside.”
+
+“They’re two young ’uns growin’ fast, an’ health’s comin’ back to both
+of ’em. Children like that feels like young wolves an’ food’s flesh an’
+blood to ’em,” said Mrs. Sowerby. Then she smiled Dickon’s own curving
+smile. “Eh! but they’re enjoyin’ theirselves for sure,” she said.
+
+She was quite right, the comfortable wonderful mother creature—and she
+had never been more so than when she said their “play actin’” would be
+their joy. Colin and Mary found it one of their most thrilling sources
+of entertainment. The idea of protecting themselves from suspicion had
+been unconsciously suggested to them first by the puzzled nurse and
+then by Dr. Craven himself.
+
+“Your appetite. Is improving very much, Master Colin,” the nurse had
+said one day. “You used to eat nothing, and so many things disagreed
+with you.”
+
+“Nothing disagrees with me now” replied Colin, and then seeing the
+nurse looking at him curiously he suddenly remembered that perhaps he
+ought not to appear too well just yet. “At least things don’t so often
+disagree with me. It’s the fresh air.”
+
+“Perhaps it is,” said the nurse, still looking at him with a mystified
+expression. “But I must talk to Dr. Craven about it.”
+
+“How she stared at you!” said Mary when she went away. “As if she
+thought there must be something to find out.”
+
+“I won’t have her finding out things,” said Colin. “No one must begin
+to find out yet.”
+
+When Dr. Craven came that morning he seemed puzzled, also. He asked a
+number of questions, to Colin’s great annoyance.
+
+“You stay out in the garden a great deal,” he suggested. “Where do you
+go?”
+
+Colin put on his favorite air of dignified indifference to opinion.
+
+“I will not let anyone know where I go,” he answered. “I go to a place
+I like. Everyone has orders to keep out of the way. I won’t be watched
+and stared at. You know that!”
+
+“You seem to be out all day but I do not think it has done you harm—I
+do not think so. The nurse says that you eat much more than you have
+ever done before.”
+
+“Perhaps,” said Colin, prompted by a sudden inspiration, “perhaps it is
+an unnatural appetite.”
+
+“I do not think so, as your food seems to agree with you,” said Dr.
+Craven. “You are gaining flesh rapidly and your color is better.”
+
+“Perhaps—perhaps I am bloated and feverish,” said Colin, assuming a
+discouraging air of gloom. “People who are not going to live are
+often—different.”
+
+Dr. Craven shook his head. He was holding Colin’s wrist and he pushed
+up his sleeve and felt his arm.
+
+“You are not feverish,” he said thoughtfully, “and such flesh as you
+have gained is healthy. If you can keep this up, my boy, we need not
+talk of dying. Your father will be happy to hear of this remarkable
+improvement.”
+
+“I won’t have him told!” Colin broke forth fiercely. “It will only
+disappoint him if I get worse again—and I may get worse this very
+night. I might have a raging fever. I feel as if I might be beginning
+to have one now. I won’t have letters written to my father—I won’t—I
+won’t! You are making me angry and you know that is bad for me. I feel
+hot already. I hate being written about and being talked over as much
+as I hate being stared at!”
+
+“Hush-h! my boy,” Dr. Craven soothed him. “Nothing shall be written
+without your permission. You are too sensitive about things. You must
+not undo the good which has been done.”
+
+He said no more about writing to Mr. Craven and when he saw the nurse
+he privately warned her that such a possibility must not be mentioned
+to the patient.
+
+“The boy is extraordinarily better,” he said. “His advance seems almost
+abnormal. But of course he is doing now of his own free will what we
+could not make him do before. Still, he excites himself very easily and
+nothing must be said to irritate him.”
+
+Mary and Colin were much alarmed and talked together anxiously. From
+this time dated their plan of “play actin’.”
+
+“I may be obliged to have a tantrum,” said Colin regretfully. “I don’t
+want to have one and I’m not miserable enough now to work myself into a
+big one. Perhaps I couldn’t have one at all. That lump doesn’t come in
+my throat now and I keep thinking of nice things instead of horrible
+ones. But if they talk about writing to my father I shall have to do
+something.”
+
+He made up his mind to eat less, but unfortunately it was not possible
+to carry out this brilliant idea when he wakened each morning with an
+amazing appetite and the table near his sofa was set with a breakfast
+of home-made bread and fresh butter, snow-white eggs, raspberry jam and
+clotted cream. Mary always breakfasted with him and when they found
+themselves at the table—particularly if there were delicate slices of
+sizzling ham sending forth tempting odors from under a hot silver
+cover—they would look into each other’s eyes in desperation.
+
+“I think we shall have to eat it all this morning, Mary,” Colin always
+ended by saying. “We can send away some of the lunch and a great deal
+of the dinner.”
+
+But they never found they could send away anything and the highly
+polished condition of the empty plates returned to the pantry awakened
+much comment.
+
+“I do wish,” Colin would say also, “I do wish the slices of ham were
+thicker, and one muffin each is not enough for anyone.”
+
+“It’s enough for a person who is going to die,” answered Mary when
+first she heard this, “but it’s not enough for a person who is going to
+live. I sometimes feel as if I could eat three when those nice fresh
+heather and gorse smells from the moor come pouring in at the open
+window.”
+
+The morning that Dickon—after they had been enjoying themselves in the
+garden for about two hours—went behind a big rosebush and brought forth
+two tin pails and revealed that one was full of rich new milk with
+cream on the top of it, and that the other held cottage-made currant
+buns folded in a clean blue and white napkin, buns so carefully tucked
+in that they were still hot, there was a riot of surprised joyfulness.
+What a wonderful thing for Mrs. Sowerby to think of! What a kind,
+clever woman she must be! How good the buns were! And what delicious
+fresh milk!
+
+“Magic is in her just as it is in Dickon,” said Colin. “It makes her
+think of ways to do things—nice things. She is a Magic person. Tell her
+we are grateful, Dickon—extremely grateful.”
+
+He was given to using rather grown-up phrases at times. He enjoyed
+them. He liked this so much that he improved upon it.
+
+“Tell her she has been most bounteous and our gratitude is extreme.”
+
+And then forgetting his grandeur he fell to and stuffed himself with
+buns and drank milk out of the pail in copious draughts in the manner
+of any hungry little boy who had been taking unusual exercise and
+breathing in moorland air and whose breakfast was more than two hours
+behind him.
+
+This was the beginning of many agreeable incidents of the same kind.
+They actually awoke to the fact that as Mrs. Sowerby had fourteen
+people to provide food for she might not have enough to satisfy two
+extra appetites every day. So they asked her to let them send some of
+their shillings to buy things.
+
+Dickon made the stimulating discovery that in the wood in the park
+outside the garden where Mary had first found him piping to the wild
+creatures there was a deep little hollow where you could build a sort
+of tiny oven with stones and roast potatoes and eggs in it. Roasted
+eggs were a previously unknown luxury and very hot potatoes with salt
+and fresh butter in them were fit for a woodland king—besides being
+deliciously satisfying. You could buy both potatoes and eggs and eat as
+many as you liked without feeling as if you were taking food out of the
+mouths of fourteen people.
+
+Every beautiful morning the Magic was worked by the mystic circle under
+the plum-tree which provided a canopy of thickening green leaves after
+its brief blossom-time was ended. After the ceremony Colin always took
+his walking exercise and throughout the day he exercised his newly
+found power at intervals. Each day he grew stronger and could walk more
+steadily and cover more ground. And each day his belief in the Magic
+grew stronger—as well it might. He tried one experiment after another
+as he felt himself gaining strength and it was Dickon who showed him
+the best things of all.
+
+“Yesterday,” he said one morning after an absence, “I went to Thwaite
+for mother an’ near th’ Blue Cow Inn I seed Bob Haworth. He’s the
+strongest chap on th’ moor. He’s the champion wrestler an’ he can jump
+higher than any other chap an’ throw th’ hammer farther. He’s gone all
+th’ way to Scotland for th’ sports some years. He’s knowed me ever
+since I was a little ’un an’ he’s a friendly sort an’ I axed him some
+questions. Th’ gentry calls him a athlete and I thought o’ thee, Mester
+Colin, and I says, ‘How did tha’ make tha’ muscles stick out that way,
+Bob? Did tha’ do anythin’ extra to make thysel’ so strong?’ An’ he says
+‘Well, yes, lad, I did. A strong man in a show that came to Thwaite
+once showed me how to exercise my arms an’ legs an’ every muscle in my
+body. An’ I says, ‘Could a delicate chap make himself stronger with
+’em, Bob?’ an’ he laughed an’ says, ‘Art tha’ th’ delicate chap?’ an’ I
+says, ‘No, but I knows a young gentleman that’s gettin’ well of a long
+illness an’ I wish I knowed some o’ them tricks to tell him about.’ I
+didn’t say no names an’ he didn’t ask none. He’s friendly same as I
+said an’ he stood up an’ showed me good-natured like, an’ I imitated
+what he did till I knowed it by heart.”
+
+Colin had been listening excitedly.
+
+“Can you show me?” he cried. “Will you?”
+
+“Aye, to be sure,” Dickon answered, getting up. “But he says tha’ mun
+do ’em gentle at first an’ be careful not to tire thysel’. Rest in
+between times an’ take deep breaths an’ don’t overdo.”
+
+“I’ll be careful,” said Colin. “Show me! Show me! Dickon, you are the
+most Magic boy in the world!”
+
+Dickon stood up on the grass and slowly went through a carefully
+practical but simple series of muscle exercises. Colin watched them
+with widening eyes. He could do a few while he was sitting down.
+Presently he did a few gently while he stood upon his already steadied
+feet. Mary began to do them also. Soot, who was watching the
+performance, became much disturbed and left his branch and hopped about
+restlessly because he could not do them too.
+
+From that time the exercises were part of the day’s duties as much as
+the Magic was. It became possible for both Colin and Mary to do more of
+them each time they tried, and such appetites were the results that but
+for the basket Dickon put down behind the bush each morning when he
+arrived they would have been lost. But the little oven in the hollow
+and Mrs. Sowerby’s bounties were so satisfying that Mrs. Medlock and
+the nurse and Dr. Craven became mystified again. You can trifle with
+your breakfast and seem to disdain your dinner if you are full to the
+brim with roasted eggs and potatoes and richly frothed new milk and
+oatcakes and buns and heather honey and clotted cream.
+
+“They are eating next to nothing,” said the nurse. “They’ll die of
+starvation if they can’t be persuaded to take some nourishment. And yet
+see how they look.”
+
+“Look!” exclaimed Mrs. Medlock indignantly. “Eh! I’m moithered to death
+with them. They’re a pair of young Satans. Bursting their jackets one
+day and the next turning up their noses at the best meals Cook can
+tempt them with. Not a mouthful of that lovely young fowl and bread
+sauce did they set a fork into yesterday—and the poor woman fair
+_invented_ a pudding for them—and back it’s sent. She almost cried.
+She’s afraid she’ll be blamed if they starve themselves into their
+graves.”
+
+Dr. Craven came and looked at Colin long and carefully, He wore an
+extremely worried expression when the nurse talked with him and showed
+him the almost untouched tray of breakfast she had saved for him to
+look at—but it was even more worried when he sat down by Colin’s sofa
+and examined him. He had been called to London on business and had not
+seen the boy for nearly two weeks. When young things begin to gain
+health they gain it rapidly. The waxen tinge had left, Colins skin and
+a warm rose showed through it; his beautiful eyes were clear and the
+hollows under them and in his cheeks and temples had filled out. His
+once dark, heavy locks had begun to look as if they sprang healthily
+from his forehead and were soft and warm with life. His lips were
+fuller and of a normal color. In fact as an imitation of a boy who was
+a confirmed invalid he was a disgraceful sight. Dr. Craven held his
+chin in his hand and thought him over.
+
+“I am sorry to hear that you do not eat anything,” he said. “That will
+not do. You will lose all you have gained—and you have gained
+amazingly. You ate so well a short time ago.”
+
+“I told you it was an unnatural appetite,” answered Colin.
+
+Mary was sitting on her stool nearby and she suddenly made a very queer
+sound which she tried so violently to repress that she ended by almost
+choking.
+
+“What is the matter?” said Dr. Craven, turning to look at her.
+
+Mary became quite severe in her manner.
+
+“It was something between a sneeze and a cough,” she replied with
+reproachful dignity, “and it got into my throat.”
+
+“But,” she said afterward to Colin, “I couldn’t stop myself. It just
+burst out because all at once I couldn’t help remembering that last big
+potato you ate and the way your mouth stretched when you bit through
+that thick lovely crust with jam and clotted cream on it.”
+
+“Is there any way in which those children can get food secretly?” Dr.
+Craven inquired of Mrs. Medlock.
+
+“There’s no way unless they dig it out of the earth or pick it off the
+trees,” Mrs. Medlock answered. “They stay out in the grounds all day
+and see no one but each other. And if they want anything different to
+eat from what’s sent up to them they need only ask for it.”
+
+“Well,” said Dr. Craven, “so long as going without food agrees with
+them we need not disturb ourselves. The boy is a new creature.”
+
+“So is the girl,” said Mrs. Medlock. “She’s begun to be downright
+pretty since she’s filled out and lost her ugly little sour look. Her
+hair’s grown thick and healthy looking and she’s got a bright color.
+The glummest, ill-natured little thing she used to be and now her and
+Master Colin laugh together like a pair of crazy young ones. Perhaps
+they’re growing fat on that.”
+
+“Perhaps they are,” said Dr. Craven. “Let them laugh.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+THE CURTAIN
+
+
+And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed
+new miracles. In the robin’s nest there were Eggs and the robin’s mate
+sat upon them keeping them warm with her feathery little breast and
+careful wings. At first she was very nervous and the robin himself was
+indignantly watchful. Even Dickon did not go near the close-grown
+corner in those days, but waited until by the quiet working of some
+mysterious spell he seemed to have conveyed to the soul of the little
+pair that in the garden there was nothing which was not quite like
+themselves—nothing which did not understand the wonderfulness of what
+was happening to them—the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking
+beauty and solemnity of Eggs. If there had been one person in that
+garden who had not known through all his or her innermost being that if
+an Egg were taken away or hurt the whole world would whirl round and
+crash through space and come to an end—if there had been even one who
+did not feel it and act accordingly there could have been no happiness
+even in that golden springtime air. But they all knew it and felt it
+and the robin and his mate knew they knew it.
+
+At first the robin watched Mary and Colin with sharp anxiety. For some
+mysterious reason he knew he need not watch Dickon. The first moment he
+set his dew-bright black eye on Dickon he knew he was not a stranger
+but a sort of robin without beak or feathers. He could speak robin
+(which is a quite distinct language not to be mistaken for any other).
+To speak robin to a robin is like speaking French to a Frenchman.
+Dickon always spoke it to the robin himself, so the queer gibberish he
+used when he spoke to humans did not matter in the least. The robin
+thought he spoke this gibberish to them because they were not
+intelligent enough to understand feathered speech. His movements also
+were robin. They never startled one by being sudden enough to seem
+dangerous or threatening. Any robin could understand Dickon, so his
+presence was not even disturbing.
+
+But at the outset it seemed necessary to be on guard against the other
+two. In the first place the boy creature did not come into the garden
+on his legs. He was pushed in on a thing with wheels and the skins of
+wild animals were thrown over him. That in itself was doubtful. Then
+when he began to stand up and move about he did it in a queer
+unaccustomed way and the others seemed to have to help him. The robin
+used to secrete himself in a bush and watch this anxiously, his head
+tilted first on one side and then on the other. He thought that the
+slow movements might mean that he was preparing to pounce, as cats do.
+When cats are preparing to pounce they creep over the ground very
+slowly. The robin talked this over with his mate a great deal for a few
+days but after that he decided not to speak of the subject because her
+terror was so great that he was afraid it might be injurious to the
+Eggs.
+
+When the boy began to walk by himself and even to move more quickly it
+was an immense relief. But for a long time—or it seemed a long time to
+the robin—he was a source of some anxiety. He did not act as the other
+humans did. He seemed very fond of walking but he had a way of sitting
+or lying down for a while and then getting up in a disconcerting manner
+to begin again.
+
+One day the robin remembered that when he himself had been made to
+learn to fly by his parents he had done much the same sort of thing. He
+had taken short flights of a few yards and then had been obliged to
+rest. So it occurred to him that this boy was learning to fly—or rather
+to walk. He mentioned this to his mate and when he told her that the
+Eggs would probably conduct themselves in the same way after they were
+fledged she was quite comforted and even became eagerly interested and
+derived great pleasure from watching the boy over the edge of her
+nest—though she always thought that the Eggs would be much cleverer and
+learn more quickly. But then she said indulgently that humans were
+always more clumsy and slow than Eggs and most of them never seemed
+really to learn to fly at all. You never met them in the air or on
+tree-tops.
+
+After a while the boy began to move about as the others did, but all
+three of the children at times did unusual things. They would stand
+under the trees and move their arms and legs and heads about in a way
+which was neither walking nor running nor sitting down. They went
+through these movements at intervals every day and the robin was never
+able to explain to his mate what they were doing or tying to do. He
+could only say that he was sure that the Eggs would never flap about in
+such a manner; but as the boy who could speak robin so fluently was
+doing the thing with them, birds could be quite sure that the actions
+were not of a dangerous nature. Of course neither the robin nor his
+mate had ever heard of the champion wrestler, Bob Haworth, and his
+exercises for making the muscles stand out like lumps. Robins are not
+like human beings; their muscles are always exercised from the first
+and so they develop themselves in a natural manner. If you have to fly
+about to find every meal you eat, your muscles do not become atrophied
+(atrophied means wasted away through want of use).
+
+When the boy was walking and running about and digging and weeding like
+the others, the nest in the corner was brooded over by a great peace
+and content. Fears for the Eggs became things of the past. Knowing that
+your Eggs were as safe as if they were locked in a bank vault and the
+fact that you could watch so many curious things going on made setting
+a most entertaining occupation. On wet days the Eggs’ mother sometimes
+felt even a little dull because the children did not come into the
+garden.
+
+But even on wet days it could not be said that Mary and Colin were
+dull. One morning when the rain streamed down unceasingly and Colin was
+beginning to feel a little restive, as he was obliged to remain on his
+sofa because it was not safe to get up and walk about, Mary had an
+inspiration.
+
+“Now that I am a real boy,” Colin had said, “my legs and arms and all
+my body are so full of Magic that I can’t keep them still. They want to
+be doing things all the time. Do you know that when I waken in the
+morning, Mary, when it’s quite early and the birds are just shouting
+outside and everything seems just shouting for joy—even the trees and
+things we can’t really hear—I feel as if I must jump out of bed and
+shout myself. If I did it, just think what would happen!”
+
+Mary giggled inordinately.
+
+“The nurse would come running and Mrs. Medlock would come running and
+they would be sure you had gone crazy and they’d send for the doctor,”
+she said.
+
+Colin giggled himself. He could see how they would all look—how
+horrified by his outbreak and how amazed to see him standing upright.
+
+“I wish my father would come home,” he said. “I want to tell him
+myself. I’m always thinking about it—but we couldn’t go on like this
+much longer. I can’t stand lying still and pretending, and besides I
+look too different. I wish it wasn’t raining today.”
+
+It was then Mistress Mary had her inspiration.
+
+“Colin,” she began mysteriously, “do you know how many rooms there are
+in this house?”
+
+“About a thousand, I suppose,” he answered.
+
+“There’s about a hundred no one ever goes into,” said Mary. “And one
+rainy day I went and looked into ever so many of them. No one ever
+knew, though Mrs. Medlock nearly found me out. I lost my way when I was
+coming back and I stopped at the end of your corridor. That was the
+second time I heard you crying.”
+
+Colin started up on his sofa.
+
+“A hundred rooms no one goes into,” he said. “It sounds almost like a
+secret garden. Suppose we go and look at them. Wheel me in my chair and
+nobody would know we went.”
+
+“That’s what I was thinking,” said Mary. “No one would dare to follow
+us. There are galleries where you could run. We could do our exercises.
+There is a little Indian room where there is a cabinet full of ivory
+elephants. There are all sorts of rooms.”
+
+“Ring the bell,” said Colin.
+
+When the nurse came in he gave his orders.
+
+“I want my chair,” he said. “Miss Mary and I are going to look at the
+part of the house which is not used. John can push me as far as the
+picture-gallery because there are some stairs. Then he must go away and
+leave us alone until I send for him again.”
+
+Rainy days lost their terrors that morning. When the footman had
+wheeled the chair into the picture-gallery and left the two together in
+obedience to orders, Colin and Mary looked at each other delighted. As
+soon as Mary had made sure that John was really on his way back to his
+own quarters below stairs, Colin got out of his chair.
+
+“I am going to run from one end of the gallery to the other,” he said,
+“and then I am going to jump and then we will do Bob Haworth’s
+exercises.”
+
+And they did all these things and many others. They looked at the
+portraits and found the plain little girl dressed in green brocade and
+holding the parrot on her finger.
+
+“All these,” said Colin, “must be my relations. They lived a long time
+ago. That parrot one, I believe, is one of my great, great, great,
+great aunts. She looks rather like you, Mary—not as you look now but as
+you looked when you came here. Now you are a great deal fatter and
+better looking.”
+
+“So are you,” said Mary, and they both laughed.
+
+They went to the Indian room and amused themselves with the ivory
+elephants. They found the rose-colored brocade boudoir and the hole in
+the cushion the mouse had left, but the mice had grown up and run away
+and the hole was empty. They saw more rooms and made more discoveries
+than Mary had made on her first pilgrimage. They found new corridors
+and corners and flights of steps and new old pictures they liked and
+weird old things they did not know the use of. It was a curiously
+entertaining morning and the feeling of wandering about in the same
+house with other people but at the same time feeling as if one were
+miles away from them was a fascinating thing.
+
+“I’m glad we came,” Colin said. “I never knew I lived in such a big
+queer old place. I like it. We will ramble about every rainy day. We
+shall always be finding new queer corners and things.”
+
+That morning they had found among other things such good appetites that
+when they returned to Colin’s room it was not possible to send the
+luncheon away untouched.
+
+When the nurse carried the tray downstairs she slapped it down on the
+kitchen dresser so that Mrs. Loomis, the cook, could see the highly
+polished dishes and plates.
+
+“Look at that!” she said. “This is a house of mystery, and those two
+children are the greatest mysteries in it.”
+
+“If they keep that up every day,” said the strong young footman John,
+“there’d be small wonder that he weighs twice as much today as he did a
+month ago. I should have to give up my place in time, for fear of doing
+my muscles an injury.”
+
+That afternoon Mary noticed that something new had happened in Colin’s
+room. She had noticed it the day before but had said nothing because
+she thought the change might have been made by chance. She said nothing
+today but she sat and looked fixedly at the picture over the mantel.
+She could look at it because the curtain had been drawn aside. That was
+the change she noticed.
+
+“I know what you want me to tell you,” said Colin, after she had stared
+a few minutes. “I always know when you want me to tell you something.
+You are wondering why the curtain is drawn back. I am going to keep it
+like that.”
+
+“Why?” asked Mary.
+
+“Because it doesn’t make me angry any more to see her laughing. I
+wakened when it was bright moonlight two nights ago and felt as if the
+Magic was filling the room and making everything so splendid that I
+couldn’t lie still. I got up and looked out of the window. The room was
+quite light and there was a patch of moonlight on the curtain and
+somehow that made me go and pull the cord. She looked right down at me
+as if she were laughing because she was glad I was standing there. It
+made me like to look at her. I want to see her laughing like that all
+the time. I think she must have been a sort of Magic person perhaps.”
+
+“You are so like her now,” said Mary, “that sometimes I think perhaps
+you are her ghost made into a boy.”
+
+That idea seemed to impress Colin. He thought it over and then answered
+her slowly.
+
+“If I were her ghost—my father would be fond of me,” he said.
+
+“Do you want him to be fond of you?” inquired Mary.
+
+“I used to hate it because he was not fond of me. If he grew fond of me
+I think I should tell him about the Magic. It might make him more
+cheerful.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+“IT’S MOTHER!”
+
+
+Their belief in the Magic was an abiding thing. After the morning’s
+incantations Colin sometimes gave them Magic lectures.
+
+“I like to do it,” he explained, “because when I grow up and make great
+scientific discoveries I shall be obliged to lecture about them and so
+this is practise. I can only give short lectures now because I am very
+young, and besides Ben Weatherstaff would feel as if he were in church
+and he would go to sleep.”
+
+“Th’ best thing about lecturin’,” said Ben, “is that a chap can get up
+an’ say aught he pleases an’ no other chap can answer him back. I
+wouldn’t be agen’ lecturin’ a bit mysel’ sometimes.”
+
+But when Colin held forth under his tree old Ben fixed devouring eyes
+on him and kept them there. He looked him over with critical affection.
+It was not so much the lecture which interested him as the legs which
+looked straighter and stronger each day, the boyish head which held
+itself up so well, the once sharp chin and hollow cheeks which had
+filled and rounded out and the eyes which had begun to hold the light
+he remembered in another pair. Sometimes when Colin felt Ben’s earnest
+gaze meant that he was much impressed he wondered what he was
+reflecting on and once when he had seemed quite entranced he questioned
+him.
+
+“What are you thinking about, Ben Weatherstaff?” he asked.
+
+“I was thinkin’” answered Ben, “as I’d warrant tha’s gone up three or
+four pound this week. I was lookin’ at tha’ calves an’ tha’ shoulders.
+I’d like to get thee on a pair o’ scales.”
+
+“It’s the Magic and—and Mrs. Sowerby’s buns and milk and things,” said
+Colin. “You see the scientific experiment has succeeded.”
+
+That morning Dickon was too late to hear the lecture. When he came he
+was ruddy with running and his funny face looked more twinkling than
+usual. As they had a good deal of weeding to do after the rains they
+fell to work. They always had plenty to do after a warm deep sinking
+rain. The moisture which was good for the flowers was also good for the
+weeds which thrust up tiny blades of grass and points of leaves which
+must be pulled up before their roots took too firm hold. Colin was as
+good at weeding as anyone in these days and he could lecture while he
+was doing it.
+
+“The Magic works best when you work, yourself,” he said this morning.
+“You can feel it in your bones and muscles. I am going to read books
+about bones and muscles, but I am going to write a book about Magic. I
+am making it up now. I keep finding out things.”
+
+It was not very long after he had said this that he laid down his
+trowel and stood up on his feet. He had been silent for several minutes
+and they had seen that he was thinking out lectures, as he often did.
+When he dropped his trowel and stood upright it seemed to Mary and
+Dickon as if a sudden strong thought had made him do it. He stretched
+himself out to his tallest height and he threw out his arms exultantly.
+Color glowed in his face and his strange eyes widened with joyfulness.
+All at once he had realized something to the full.
+
+“Mary! Dickon!” he cried. “Just look at me!”
+
+They stopped their weeding and looked at him.
+
+“Do you remember that first morning you brought me in here?” he
+demanded.
+
+Dickon was looking at him very hard. Being an animal charmer he could
+see more things than most people could and many of them were things he
+never talked about. He saw some of them now in this boy.
+
+“Aye, that we do,” he answered.
+
+Mary looked hard too, but she said nothing.
+
+“Just this minute,” said Colin, “all at once I remembered it
+myself—when I looked at my hand digging with the trowel—and I had to
+stand up on my feet to see if it was real. And it is real! I’m
+_well_—I’m _well!_”
+
+“Aye, that th’ art!” said Dickon.
+
+“I’m well! I’m well!” said Colin again, and his face went quite red all
+over.
+
+He had known it before in a way, he had hoped it and felt it and
+thought about it, but just at that minute something had rushed all
+through him—a sort of rapturous belief and realization and it had been
+so strong that he could not help calling out.
+
+“I shall live forever and ever and ever!” he cried grandly. “I shall
+find out thousands and thousands of things. I shall find out about
+people and creatures and everything that grows—like Dickon—and I shall
+never stop making Magic. I’m well! I’m well! I feel—I feel as if I want
+to shout out something—something thankful, joyful!”
+
+Ben Weatherstaff, who had been working near a rose-bush, glanced round
+at him.
+
+“Tha’ might sing th’ Doxology,” he suggested in his dryest grunt. He
+had no opinion of the Doxology and he did not make the suggestion with
+any particular reverence.
+
+But Colin was of an exploring mind and he knew nothing about the
+Doxology.
+
+“What is that?” he inquired.
+
+“Dickon can sing it for thee, I’ll warrant,” replied Ben Weatherstaff.
+
+Dickon answered with his all-perceiving animal charmer’s smile.
+
+“They sing it i’ church,” he said. “Mother says she believes th’
+skylarks sings it when they gets up i’ th’ mornin’.”
+
+“If she says that, it must be a nice song,” Colin answered. “I’ve never
+been in a church myself. I was always too ill. Sing it, Dickon. I want
+to hear it.”
+
+Dickon was quite simple and unaffected about it. He understood what
+Colin felt better than Colin did himself. He understood by a sort of
+instinct so natural that he did not know it was understanding. He
+pulled off his cap and looked round still smiling.
+
+“Tha’ must take off tha’ cap,” he said to Colin, “an’ so mun tha’,
+Ben—an’ tha’ mun stand up, tha’ knows.”
+
+Colin took off his cap and the sun shone on and warmed his thick hair
+as he watched Dickon intently. Ben Weatherstaff scrambled up from his
+knees and bared his head too with a sort of puzzled half-resentful look
+on his old face as if he didn’t know exactly why he was doing this
+remarkable thing.
+
+Dickon stood out among the trees and rose-bushes and began to sing in
+quite a simple matter-of-fact way and in a nice strong boy voice:
+
+“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
+Praise Him all creatures here below,
+Praise Him above ye Heavenly Host,
+Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
+            Amen.”
+
+When he had finished, Ben Weatherstaff was standing quite still with
+his jaws set obstinately but with a disturbed look in his eyes fixed on
+Colin. Colin’s face was thoughtful and appreciative.
+
+“It is a very nice song,” he said. “I like it. Perhaps it means just
+what I mean when I want to shout out that I am thankful to the Magic.”
+He stopped and thought in a puzzled way. “Perhaps they are both the
+same thing. How can we know the exact names of everything? Sing it
+again, Dickon. Let us try, Mary. I want to sing it, too. It’s my song.
+How does it begin? ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow’?”
+
+And they sang it again, and Mary and Colin lifted their voices as
+musically as they could and Dickon’s swelled quite loud and
+beautiful—and at the second line Ben Weatherstaff raspingly cleared his
+throat and at the third line he joined in with such vigor that it
+seemed almost savage and when the “Amen” came to an end Mary observed
+that the very same thing had happened to him which had happened when he
+found out that Colin was not a cripple—his chin was twitching and he
+was staring and winking and his leathery old cheeks were wet.
+
+“I never seed no sense in th’ Doxology afore,” he said hoarsely, “but I
+may change my mind i’ time. I should say tha’d gone up five pound this
+week Mester Colin—five on ’em!”
+
+Colin was looking across the garden at something attracting his
+attention and his expression had become a startled one.
+
+“Who is coming in here?” he said quickly. “Who is it?”
+
+The door in the ivied wall had been pushed gently open and a woman had
+entered. She had come in with the last line of their song and she had
+stood still listening and looking at them. With the ivy behind her, the
+sunlight drifting through the trees and dappling her long blue cloak,
+and her nice fresh face smiling across the greenery she was rather like
+a softly colored illustration in one of Colin’s books. She had
+wonderful affectionate eyes which seemed to take everything in—all of
+them, even Ben Weatherstaff and the “creatures” and every flower that
+was in bloom. Unexpectedly as she had appeared, not one of them felt
+that she was an intruder at all. Dickon’s eyes lighted like lamps.
+
+“It’s mother—that’s who it is!” he cried and went across the grass at a
+run.
+
+Colin began to move toward her, too, and Mary went with him. They both
+felt their pulses beat faster.
+
+“It’s mother!” Dickon said again when they met halfway. “I knowed tha’
+wanted to see her an’ I told her where th’ door was hid.”
+
+Colin held out his hand with a sort of flushed royal shyness but his
+eyes quite devoured her face.
+
+“Even when I was ill I wanted to see you,” he said, “you and Dickon and
+the secret garden. I’d never wanted to see anyone or anything before.”
+
+The sight of his uplifted face brought about a sudden change in her
+own. She flushed and the corners of her mouth shook and a mist seemed
+to sweep over her eyes.
+
+“Eh! dear lad!” she broke out tremulously. “Eh! dear lad!” as if she
+had not known she were going to say it. She did not say, “Mester
+Colin,” but just “dear lad” quite suddenly. She might have said it to
+Dickon in the same way if she had seen something in his face which
+touched her. Colin liked it.
+
+“Are you surprised because I am so well?” he asked.
+
+She put her hand on his shoulder and smiled the mist out of her eyes.
+
+“Aye, that I am!” she said; “but tha’rt so like thy mother tha’ made my
+heart jump.”
+
+“Do you think,” said Colin a little awkwardly, “that will make my
+father like me?”
+
+“Aye, for sure, dear lad,” she answered and she gave his shoulder a
+soft quick pat. “He mun come home—he mun come home.”
+
+“Susan Sowerby,” said Ben Weatherstaff, getting close to her. “Look at
+th’ lad’s legs, wilt tha’? They was like drumsticks i’ stockin’ two
+month’ ago—an’ I heard folk tell as they was bandy an’ knock-kneed both
+at th’ same time. Look at ’em now!”
+
+Susan Sowerby laughed a comfortable laugh.
+
+“They’re goin’ to be fine strong lad’s legs in a bit,” she said. “Let
+him go on playin’ an’ workin’ in the garden an’ eatin’ hearty an’
+drinkin’ plenty o’ good sweet milk an’ there’ll not be a finer pair i’
+Yorkshire, thank God for it.”
+
+She put both hands on Mistress Mary’s shoulders and looked her little
+face over in a motherly fashion.
+
+“An’ thee, too!” she said. “Tha’rt grown near as hearty as our
+’Lisabeth Ellen. I’ll warrant tha’rt like thy mother too. Our Martha
+told me as Mrs. Medlock heard she was a pretty woman. Tha’lt be like a
+blush rose when tha’ grows up, my little lass, bless thee.”
+
+She did not mention that when Martha came home on her “day out” and
+described the plain sallow child she had said that she had no
+confidence whatever in what Mrs. Medlock had heard. “It doesn’t stand
+to reason that a pretty woman could be th’ mother o’ such a fou’ little
+lass,” she had added obstinately.
+
+Mary had not had time to pay much attention to her changing face. She
+had only known that she looked “different” and seemed to have a great
+deal more hair and that it was growing very fast. But remembering her
+pleasure in looking at the Mem Sahib in the past she was glad to hear
+that she might some day look like her.
+
+Susan Sowerby went round their garden with them and was told the whole
+story of it and shown every bush and tree which had come alive. Colin
+walked on one side of her and Mary on the other. Each of them kept
+looking up at her comfortable rosy face, secretly curious about the
+delightful feeling she gave them—a sort of warm, supported feeling. It
+seemed as if she understood them as Dickon understood his “creatures.”
+She stooped over the flowers and talked about them as if they were
+children. Soot followed her and once or twice cawed at her and flew
+upon her shoulder as if it were Dickon’s. When they told her about the
+robin and the first flight of the young ones she laughed a motherly
+little mellow laugh in her throat.
+
+“I suppose learnin’ ’em to fly is like learnin’ children to walk, but
+I’m feared I should be all in a worrit if mine had wings instead o’
+legs,” she said.
+
+It was because she seemed such a wonderful woman in her nice moorland
+cottage way that at last she was told about the Magic.
+
+“Do you believe in Magic?” asked Colin after he had explained about
+Indian fakirs. “I do hope you do.”
+
+“That I do, lad,” she answered. “I never knowed it by that name but
+what does th’ name matter? I warrant they call it a different name i’
+France an’ a different one i’ Germany. Th’ same thing as set th’ seeds
+swellin’ an’ th’ sun shinin’ made thee a well lad an’ it’s th’ Good
+Thing. It isn’t like us poor fools as think it matters if us is called
+out of our names. Th’ Big Good Thing doesn’t stop to worrit, bless
+thee. It goes on makin’ worlds by th’ million—worlds like us. Never
+thee stop believin’ in th’ Big Good Thing an’ knowin’ th’ world’s full
+of it—an’ call it what tha’ likes. Tha’ wert singin’ to it when I come
+into th’ garden.”
+
+“I felt so joyful,” said Colin, opening his beautiful strange eyes at
+her. “Suddenly I felt how different I was—how strong my arms and legs
+were, you know—and how I could dig and stand—and I jumped up and wanted
+to shout out something to anything that would listen.”
+
+“Th’ Magic listened when tha’ sung th’ Doxology. It would ha’ listened
+to anything tha’d sung. It was th’ joy that mattered. Eh! lad,
+lad—what’s names to th’ Joy Maker,” and she gave his shoulders a quick
+soft pat again.
+
+She had packed a basket which held a regular feast this morning, and
+when the hungry hour came and Dickon brought it out from its hiding
+place, she sat down with them under their tree and watched them devour
+their food, laughing and quite gloating over their appetites. She was
+full of fun and made them laugh at all sorts of odd things. She told
+them stories in broad Yorkshire and taught them new words. She laughed
+as if she could not help it when they told her of the increasing
+difficulty there was in pretending that Colin was still a fretful
+invalid.
+
+“You see we can’t help laughing nearly all the time when we are
+together,” explained Colin. “And it doesn’t sound ill at all. We try to
+choke it back but it will burst out and that sounds worse than ever.”
+
+“There’s one thing that comes into my mind so often,” said Mary, “and I
+can scarcely ever hold in when I think of it suddenly. I keep thinking
+suppose Colin’s face should get to look like a full moon. It isn’t like
+one yet but he gets a tiny bit fatter every day—and suppose some
+morning it should look like one—what should we do!”
+
+“Bless us all, I can see tha’ has a good bit o’ play actin’ to do,”
+said Susan Sowerby. “But tha’ won’t have to keep it up much longer.
+Mester Craven’ll come home.”
+
+“Do you think he will?” asked Colin. “Why?”
+
+Susan Sowerby chuckled softly.
+
+“I suppose it ’ud nigh break thy heart if he found out before tha’ told
+him in tha’ own way,” she said. “Tha’s laid awake nights plannin’ it.”
+
+“I couldn’t bear anyone else to tell him,” said Colin. “I think about
+different ways every day, I think now I just want to run into his
+room.”
+
+“That’d be a fine start for him,” said Susan Sowerby. “I’d like to see
+his face, lad. I would that! He mun come back—that he mun.”
+
+One of the things they talked of was the visit they were to make to her
+cottage. They planned it all. They were to drive over the moor and
+lunch out of doors among the heather. They would see all the twelve
+children and Dickon’s garden and would not come back until they were
+tired.
+
+Susan Sowerby got up at last to return to the house and Mrs. Medlock.
+It was time for Colin to be wheeled back also. But before he got into
+his chair he stood quite close to Susan and fixed his eyes on her with
+a kind of bewildered adoration and he suddenly caught hold of the fold
+of her blue cloak and held it fast.
+
+“You are just what I—what I wanted,” he said. “I wish you were my
+mother—as well as Dickon’s!”
+
+All at once Susan Sowerby bent down and drew him with her warm arms
+close against the bosom under the blue cloak—as if he had been Dickon’s
+brother. The quick mist swept over her eyes.
+
+“Eh! dear lad!” she said. “Thy own mother’s in this ’ere very garden, I
+do believe. She couldna’ keep out of it. Thy father mun come back to
+thee—he mun!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+IN THE GARDEN
+
+
+In each century since the beginning of the world wonderful things have
+been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out
+than in any century before. In this new century hundreds of things
+still more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refuse
+to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to
+hope it can be done, then they see it can be done—then it is done and
+all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of the new
+things people began to find out in the last century was that
+thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as
+good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad
+thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a
+scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after
+it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.
+
+So long as Mistress Mary’s mind was full of disagreeable thoughts about
+her dislikes and sour opinions of people and her determination not to
+be pleased by or interested in anything, she was a yellow-faced,
+sickly, bored and wretched child. Circumstances, however, were very
+kind to her, though she was not at all aware of it. They began to push
+her about for her own good. When her mind gradually filled itself with
+robins, and moorland cottages crowded with children, with queer crabbed
+old gardeners and common little Yorkshire housemaids, with springtime
+and with secret gardens coming alive day by day, and also with a moor
+boy and his “creatures,” there was no room left for the disagreeable
+thoughts which affected her liver and her digestion and made her yellow
+and tired.
+
+So long as Colin shut himself up in his room and thought only of his
+fears and weakness and his detestation of people who looked at him and
+reflected hourly on humps and early death, he was a hysterical
+half-crazy little hypochondriac who knew nothing of the sunshine and
+the spring and also did not know that he could get well and could stand
+upon his feet if he tried to do it. When new beautiful thoughts began
+to push out the old hideous ones, life began to come back to him, his
+blood ran healthily through his veins and strength poured into him like
+a flood. His scientific experiment was quite practical and simple and
+there was nothing weird about it at all. Much more surprising things
+can happen to anyone who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought
+comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it
+out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things
+cannot be in one place.
+
+“Where you tend a rose, my lad,
+A thistle cannot grow.”
+
+While the secret garden was coming alive and two children were coming
+alive with it, there was a man wandering about certain far-away
+beautiful places in the Norwegian fiords and the valleys and mountains
+of Switzerland and he was a man who for ten years had kept his mind
+filled with dark and heart-broken thinking. He had not been courageous;
+he had never tried to put any other thoughts in the place of the dark
+ones. He had wandered by blue lakes and thought them; he had lain on
+mountain-sides with sheets of deep blue gentians blooming all about him
+and flower breaths filling all the air and he had thought them. A
+terrible sorrow had fallen upon him when he had been happy and he had
+let his soul fill itself with blackness and had refused obstinately to
+allow any rift of light to pierce through. He had forgotten and
+deserted his home and his duties. When he traveled about, darkness so
+brooded over him that the sight of him was a wrong done to other people
+because it was as if he poisoned the air about him with gloom. Most
+strangers thought he must be either half mad or a man with some hidden
+crime on his soul. He, was a tall man with a drawn face and crooked
+shoulders and the name he always entered on hotel registers was,
+“Archibald Craven, Misselthwaite Manor, Yorkshire, England.”
+
+He had traveled far and wide since the day he saw Mistress Mary in his
+study and told her she might have her “bit of earth.” He had been in
+the most beautiful places in Europe, though he had remained nowhere
+more than a few days. He had chosen the quietest and remotest spots. He
+had been on the tops of mountains whose heads were in the clouds and
+had looked down on other mountains when the sun rose and touched them
+with such light as made it seem as if the world were just being born.
+
+But the light had never seemed to touch himself until one day when he
+realized that for the first time in ten years a strange thing had
+happened. He was in a wonderful valley in the Austrian Tyrol and he had
+been walking alone through such beauty as might have lifted, any man’s
+soul out of shadow. He had walked a long way and it had not lifted his.
+But at last he had felt tired and had thrown himself down to rest on a
+carpet of moss by a stream. It was a clear little stream which ran
+quite merrily along on its narrow way through the luscious damp
+greenness. Sometimes it made a sound rather like very low laughter as
+it bubbled over and round stones. He saw birds come and dip their heads
+to drink in it and then flick their wings and fly away. It seemed like
+a thing alive and yet its tiny voice made the stillness seem deeper.
+The valley was very, very still.
+
+As he sat gazing into the clear running of the water, Archibald Craven
+gradually felt his mind and body both grow quiet, as quiet as the
+valley itself. He wondered if he were going to sleep, but he was not.
+He sat and gazed at the sunlit water and his eyes began to see things
+growing at its edge. There was one lovely mass of blue forget-me-nots
+growing so close to the stream that its leaves were wet and at these he
+found himself looking as he remembered he had looked at such things
+years ago. He was actually thinking tenderly how lovely it was and what
+wonders of blue its hundreds of little blossoms were. He did not know
+that just that simple thought was slowly filling his mind—filling and
+filling it until other things were softly pushed aside. It was as if a
+sweet clear spring had begun to rise in a stagnant pool and had risen
+and risen until at last it swept the dark water away. But of course he
+did not think of this himself. He only knew that the valley seemed to
+grow quieter and quieter as he sat and stared at the bright delicate
+blueness. He did not know how long he sat there or what was happening
+to him, but at last he moved as if he were awakening and he got up
+slowly and stood on the moss carpet, drawing a long, deep, soft breath
+and wondering at himself. Something seemed to have been unbound and
+released in him, very quietly.
+
+“What is it?” he said, almost in a whisper, and he passed his hand over
+his forehead. “I almost feel as if—I were alive!”
+
+I do not know enough about the wonderfulness of undiscovered things to
+be able to explain how this had happened to him. Neither does anyone
+else yet. He did not understand at all himself—but he remembered this
+strange hour months afterward when he was at Misselthwaite again and he
+found out quite by accident that on this very day Colin had cried out
+as he went into the secret garden:
+
+“I am going to live forever and ever and ever!”
+
+The singular calmness remained with him the rest of the evening and he
+slept a new reposeful sleep; but it was not with him very long. He did
+not know that it could be kept. By the next night he had opened the
+doors wide to his dark thoughts and they had come trooping and rushing
+back. He left the valley and went on his wandering way again. But,
+strange as it seemed to him, there were minutes—sometimes
+half-hours—when, without his knowing why, the black burden seemed to
+lift itself again and he knew he was a living man and not a dead one.
+Slowly—slowly—for no reason that he knew of—he was “coming alive” with
+the garden.
+
+As the golden summer changed into the deep golden autumn he went to the
+Lake of Como. There he found the loveliness of a dream. He spent his
+days upon the crystal blueness of the lake or he walked back into the
+soft thick verdure of the hills and tramped until he was tired so that
+he might sleep. But by this time he had begun to sleep better, he knew,
+and his dreams had ceased to be a terror to him.
+
+“Perhaps,” he thought, “my body is growing stronger.”
+
+It was growing stronger but—because of the rare peaceful hours when his
+thoughts were changed—his soul was slowly growing stronger, too. He
+began to think of Misselthwaite and wonder if he should not go home.
+Now and then he wondered vaguely about his boy and asked himself what
+he should feel when he went and stood by the carved four-posted bed
+again and looked down at the sharply chiseled ivory-white face while it
+slept and, the black lashes rimmed so startlingly the close-shut eyes.
+He shrank from it.
+
+One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned the moon
+was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and silver. The
+stillness of lake and shore and wood was so wonderful that he did not
+go into the villa he lived in. He walked down to a little bowered
+terrace at the water’s edge and sat upon a seat and breathed in all the
+heavenly scents of the night. He felt the strange calmness stealing
+over him and it grew deeper and deeper until he fell asleep.
+
+He did not know when he fell asleep and when he began to dream; his
+dream was so real that he did not feel as if he were dreaming. He
+remembered afterward how intensely wide awake and alert he had thought
+he was. He thought that as he sat and breathed in the scent of the late
+roses and listened to the lapping of the water at his feet he heard a
+voice calling. It was sweet and clear and happy and far away. It seemed
+very far, but he heard it as distinctly as if it had been at his very
+side.
+
+“Archie! Archie! Archie!” it said, and then again, sweeter and clearer
+than before, “Archie! Archie!”
+
+He thought he sprang to his feet not even startled. It was such a real
+voice and it seemed so natural that he should hear it.
+
+“Lilias! Lilias!” he answered. “Lilias! where are you?”
+
+“In the garden,” it came back like a sound from a golden flute. “In the
+garden!”
+
+And then the dream ended. But he did not awaken. He slept soundly and
+sweetly all through the lovely night. When he did awake at last it was
+brilliant morning and a servant was standing staring at him. He was an
+Italian servant and was accustomed, as all the servants of the villa
+were, to accepting without question any strange thing his foreign
+master might do. No one ever knew when he would go out or come in or
+where he would choose to sleep or if he would roam about the garden or
+lie in the boat on the lake all night. The man held a salver with some
+letters on it and he waited quietly until Mr. Craven took them. When he
+had gone away Mr. Craven sat a few moments holding them in his hand and
+looking at the lake. His strange calm was still upon him and something
+more—a lightness as if the cruel thing which had been done had not
+happened as he thought—as if something had changed. He was remembering
+the dream—the real—real dream.
+
+“In the garden!” he said, wondering at himself. “In the garden! But the
+door is locked and the key is buried deep.”
+
+When he glanced at the letters a few minutes later he saw that the one
+lying at the top of the rest was an English letter and came from
+Yorkshire. It was directed in a plain woman’s hand but it was not a
+hand he knew. He opened it, scarcely thinking of the writer, but the
+first words attracted his attention at once.
+
+
+“_Dear Sir:_
+
+I am Susan Sowerby that made bold to speak to you once on the moor. It
+was about Miss Mary I spoke. I will make bold to speak again. Please,
+sir, I would come home if I was you. I think you would be glad to come
+and—if you will excuse me, sir—I think your lady would ask you to come
+if she was here.
+
+    Your obedient servant,
+
+                Susan Sowerby.”
+
+Mr. Craven read the letter twice before he put it back in its envelope.
+He kept thinking about the dream.
+
+“I will go back to Misselthwaite,” he said. “Yes, I’ll go at once.”
+
+And he went through the garden to the villa and ordered Pitcher to
+prepare for his return to England.
+
+In a few days he was in Yorkshire again, and on his long railroad
+journey he found himself thinking of his boy as he had never thought in
+all the ten years past. During those years he had only wished to forget
+him. Now, though he did not intend to think about him, memories of him
+constantly drifted into his mind. He remembered the black days when he
+had raved like a madman because the child was alive and the mother was
+dead. He had refused to see it, and when he had gone to look at it at
+last it had been, such a weak wretched thing that everyone had been
+sure it would die in a few days. But to the surprise of those who took
+care of it the days passed and it lived and then everyone believed it
+would be a deformed and crippled creature.
+
+He had not meant to be a bad father, but he had not felt like a father
+at all. He had supplied doctors and nurses and luxuries, but he had
+shrunk from the mere thought of the boy and had buried himself in his
+own misery. The first time after a year’s absence he returned to
+Misselthwaite and the small miserable looking thing languidly and
+indifferently lifted to his face the great gray eyes with black lashes
+round them, so like and yet so horribly unlike the happy eyes he had
+adored, he could not bear the sight of them and turned away pale as
+death. After that he scarcely ever saw him except when he was asleep,
+and all he knew of him was that he was a confirmed invalid, with a
+vicious, hysterical, half-insane temper. He could only be kept from
+furies dangerous to himself by being given his own way in every detail.
+
+All this was not an uplifting thing to recall, but as the train whirled
+him through mountain passes and golden plains the man who was “coming
+alive” began to think in a new way and he thought long and steadily and
+deeply.
+
+“Perhaps I have been all wrong for ten years,” he said to himself. “Ten
+years is a long time. It may be too late to do anything—quite too late.
+What have I been thinking of!”
+
+Of course this was the wrong Magic—to begin by saying “too late.” Even
+Colin could have told him that. But he knew nothing of Magic—either
+black or white. This he had yet to learn. He wondered if Susan Sowerby
+had taken courage and written to him only because the motherly creature
+had realized that the boy was much worse—was fatally ill. If he had not
+been under the spell of the curious calmness which had taken possession
+of him he would have been more wretched than ever. But the calm had
+brought a sort of courage and hope with it. Instead of giving way to
+thoughts of the worst he actually found he was trying to believe in
+better things.
+
+“Could it be possible that she sees that I may be able to do him good
+and control him?” he thought. “I will go and see her on my way to
+Misselthwaite.”
+
+But when on his way across the moor he stopped the carriage at the
+cottage, seven or eight children who were playing about gathered in a
+group and bobbing seven or eight friendly and polite curtsies told him
+that their mother had gone to the other side of the moor early in the
+morning to help a woman who had a new baby. “Our Dickon,” they
+volunteered, was over at the Manor working in one of the gardens where
+he went several days each week.
+
+Mr. Craven looked over the collection of sturdy little bodies and round
+red-cheeked faces, each one grinning in its own particular way, and he
+awoke to the fact that they were a healthy likable lot. He smiled at
+their friendly grins and took a golden sovereign from his pocket and
+gave it to “our ’Lizabeth Ellen” who was the oldest.
+
+“If you divide that into eight parts there will be half a crown for
+each of, you,” he said.
+
+Then amid grins and chuckles and bobbing of curtsies he drove away,
+leaving ecstasy and nudging elbows and little jumps of joy behind.
+
+The drive across the wonderfulness of the moor was a soothing thing.
+Why did it seem to give him a sense of homecoming which he had been
+sure he could never feel again—that sense of the beauty of land and sky
+and purple bloom of distance and a warming of the heart at drawing,
+nearer to the great old house which had held those of his blood for six
+hundred years? How he had driven away from it the last time, shuddering
+to think of its closed rooms and the boy lying in the four-posted bed
+with the brocaded hangings. Was it possible that perhaps he might find
+him changed a little for the better and that he might overcome his
+shrinking from him? How real that dream had been—how wonderful and
+clear the voice which called back to him, “In the garden—In the
+garden!”
+
+“I will try to find the key,” he said. “I will try to open the door. I
+must—though I don’t know why.”
+
+When he arrived at the Manor the servants who received him with the
+usual ceremony noticed that he looked better and that he did not go to
+the remote rooms where he usually lived attended by Pitcher. He went
+into the library and sent for Mrs. Medlock. She came to him somewhat
+excited and curious and flustered.
+
+“How is Master Colin, Medlock?” he inquired.
+
+“Well, sir,” Mrs. Medlock answered, “he’s—he’s different, in a manner
+of speaking.”
+
+“Worse?” he suggested.
+
+Mrs. Medlock really was flushed.
+
+“Well, you see, sir,” she tried to explain, “neither Dr. Craven, nor
+the nurse, nor me can exactly make him out.”
+
+“Why is that?”
+
+“To tell the truth, sir, Master Colin might be better and he might be
+changing for the worse. His appetite, sir, is past understanding—and
+his ways—”
+
+“Has he become more—more peculiar?” her master, asked, knitting his
+brows anxiously.
+
+“That’s it, sir. He’s growing very peculiar—when you compare him with
+what he used to be. He used to eat nothing and then suddenly he began
+to eat something enormous—and then he stopped again all at once and the
+meals were sent back just as they used to be. You never knew, sir,
+perhaps, that out of doors he never would let himself be taken. The
+things we’ve gone through to get him to go out in his chair would leave
+a body trembling like a leaf. He’d throw himself into such a state that
+Dr. Craven said he couldn’t be responsible for forcing him. Well, sir,
+just without warning—not long after one of his worst tantrums he
+suddenly insisted on being taken out every day by Miss Mary and Susan
+Sowerby’s boy Dickon that could push his chair. He took a fancy to both
+Miss Mary and Dickon, and Dickon brought his tame animals, and, if
+you’ll credit it, sir, out of doors he will stay from morning until
+night.”
+
+“How does he look?” was the next question.
+
+“If he took his food natural, sir, you’d think he was putting on
+flesh—but we’re afraid it may be a sort of bloat. He laughs sometimes
+in a queer way when he’s alone with Miss Mary. He never used to laugh
+at all. Dr. Craven is coming to see you at once, if you’ll allow him.
+He never was as puzzled in his life.”
+
+“Where is Master Colin now?” Mr. Craven asked.
+
+“In the garden, sir. He’s always in the garden—though not a human
+creature is allowed to go near for fear they’ll look at him.”
+
+Mr. Craven scarcely heard her last words.
+
+“In the garden,” he said, and after he had sent Mrs. Medlock away he
+stood and repeated it again and again. “In the garden!”
+
+He had to make an effort to bring himself back to the place he was
+standing in and when he felt he was on earth again he turned and went
+out of the room. He took his way, as Mary had done, through the door in
+the shrubbery and among the laurels and the fountain beds. The fountain
+was playing now and was encircled by beds of brilliant autumn flowers.
+He crossed the lawn and turned into the Long Walk by the ivied walls.
+He did not walk quickly, but slowly, and his eyes were on the path. He
+felt as if he were being drawn back to the place he had so long
+forsaken, and he did not know why. As he drew near to it his step
+became still more slow. He knew where the door was even though the ivy
+hung thick over it—but he did not know exactly where it lay—that buried
+key.
+
+So he stopped and stood still, looking about him, and almost the moment
+after he had paused he started and listened—asking himself if he were
+walking in a dream.
+
+The ivy hung thick over the door, the key was buried under the shrubs,
+no human being had passed that portal for ten lonely years—and yet
+inside the garden there were sounds. They were the sounds of running
+scuffling feet seeming to chase round and round under the trees, they
+were strange sounds of lowered suppressed voices—exclamations and
+smothered joyous cries. It seemed actually like the laughter of young
+things, the uncontrollable laughter of children who were trying not to
+be heard but who in a moment or so—as their excitement mounted—would
+burst forth. What in heaven’s name was he dreaming of—what in heaven’s
+name did he hear? Was he losing his reason and thinking he heard things
+which were not for human ears? Was it that the far clear voice had
+meant?
+
+And then the moment came, the uncontrollable moment when the sounds
+forgot to hush themselves. The feet ran faster and faster—they were
+nearing the garden door—there was quick strong young breathing and a
+wild outbreak of laughing shouts which could not be contained—and the
+door in the wall was flung wide open, the sheet of ivy swinging back,
+and a boy burst through it at full speed and, without seeing the
+outsider, dashed almost into his arms.
+
+Mr. Craven had extended them just in time to save him from falling as a
+result of his unseeing dash against him, and when he held him away to
+look at him in amazement at his being there he truly gasped for breath.
+
+He was a tall boy and a handsome one. He was glowing with life and his
+running had sent splendid color leaping to his face. He threw the thick
+hair back from his forehead and lifted a pair of strange gray eyes—eyes
+full of boyish laughter and rimmed with black lashes like a fringe. It
+was the eyes which made Mr. Craven gasp for breath.
+
+“Who—What? Who!” he stammered.
+
+This was not what Colin had expected—this was not what he had planned.
+He had never thought of such a meeting. And yet to come dashing
+out—winning a race—perhaps it was even better. He drew himself up to
+his very tallest. Mary, who had been running with him and had dashed
+through the door too, believed that he managed to make himself look
+taller than he had ever looked before—inches taller.
+
+“Father,” he said, “I’m Colin. You can’t believe it. I scarcely can
+myself. I’m Colin.”
+
+Like Mrs. Medlock, he did not understand what his father meant when he
+said hurriedly:
+
+“In the garden! In the garden!”
+
+“Yes,” hurried on Colin. “It was the garden that did it—and Mary and
+Dickon and the creatures—and the Magic. No one knows. We kept it to
+tell you when you came. I’m well, I can beat Mary in a race. I’m going
+to be an athlete.”
+
+He said it all so like a healthy boy—his face flushed, his words
+tumbling over each other in his eagerness—that Mr. Craven’s soul shook
+with unbelieving joy.
+
+Colin put out his hand and laid it on his father’s arm.
+
+“Aren’t you glad, Father?” he ended. “Aren’t you glad? I’m going to
+live forever and ever and ever!”
+
+Mr. Craven put his hands on both the boy’s shoulders and held him
+still. He knew he dared not even try to speak for a moment.
+
+“Take me into the garden, my boy,” he said at last. “And tell me all
+about it.”
+
+And so they led him in.
+
+The place was a wilderness of autumn gold and purple and violet blue
+and flaming scarlet and on every side were sheaves of late lilies
+standing together—lilies which were white or white and ruby. He
+remembered well when the first of them had been planted that just at
+this season of the year their late glories should reveal themselves.
+Late roses climbed and hung and clustered and the sunshine deepening
+the hue of the yellowing trees made one feel that one, stood in an
+embowered temple of gold. The newcomer stood silent just as the
+children had done when they came into its grayness. He looked round and
+round.
+
+“I thought it would be dead,” he said.
+
+“Mary thought so at first,” said Colin. “But it came alive.”
+
+Then they sat down under their tree—all but Colin, who wanted to stand
+while he told the story.
+
+It was the strangest thing he had ever heard, Archibald Craven thought,
+as it was poured forth in headlong boy fashion. Mystery and Magic and
+wild creatures, the weird midnight meeting—the coming of the spring—the
+passion of insulted pride which had dragged the young Rajah to his feet
+to defy old Ben Weatherstaff to his face. The odd companionship, the
+play acting, the great secret so carefully kept. The listener laughed
+until tears came into his eyes and sometimes tears came into his eyes
+when he was not laughing. The Athlete, the Lecturer, the Scientific
+Discoverer was a laughable, lovable, healthy young human thing.
+
+“Now,” he said at the end of the story, “it need not be a secret any
+more. I dare say it will frighten them nearly into fits when they see
+me—but I am never going to get into the chair again. I shall walk back
+with you, Father—to the house.”
+
+Ben Weatherstaff’s duties rarely took him away from the gardens, but on
+this occasion he made an excuse to carry some vegetables to the kitchen
+and being invited into the servants’ hall by Mrs. Medlock to drink a
+glass of beer he was on the spot—as he had hoped to be—when the most
+dramatic event Misselthwaite Manor had seen during the present
+generation actually took place.
+
+One of the windows looking upon the courtyard gave also a glimpse of
+the lawn. Mrs. Medlock, knowing Ben had come from the gardens, hoped
+that he might have caught sight of his master and even by chance of his
+meeting with Master Colin.
+
+“Did you see either of them, Weatherstaff?” she asked.
+
+Ben took his beer-mug from his mouth and wiped his lips with the back
+of his hand.
+
+“Aye, that I did,” he answered with a shrewdly significant air.
+
+“Both of them?” suggested Mrs. Medlock.
+
+“Both of ’em,” returned Ben Weatherstaff. “Thank ye kindly, ma’am, I
+could sup up another mug of it.”
+
+“Together?” said Mrs. Medlock, hastily overfilling his beer-mug in her
+excitement.
+
+“Together, ma’am,” and Ben gulped down half of his new mug at one gulp.
+
+“Where was Master Colin? How did he look? What did they say to each
+other?”
+
+“I didna’ hear that,” said Ben, “along o’ only bein’ on th’ stepladder
+lookin over th’ wall. But I’ll tell thee this. There’s been things
+goin’ on outside as you house people knows nowt about. An’ what tha’ll
+find out tha’ll find out soon.”
+
+And it was not two minutes before he swallowed the last of his beer and
+waved his mug solemnly toward the window which took in through the
+shrubbery a piece of the lawn.
+
+“Look there,” he said, “if tha’s curious. Look what’s comin’ across th’
+grass.”
+
+When Mrs. Medlock looked she threw up her hands and gave a little
+shriek and every man and woman servant within hearing bolted across the
+servants’ hall and stood looking through the window with their eyes
+almost starting out of their heads.
+
+Across the lawn came the Master of Misselthwaite and he looked as many
+of them had never seen him. And by his side with his head up in the air
+and his eyes full of laughter walked as strongly and steadily as any
+boy in Yorkshire—Master Colin!
+
+THE END
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 113 ***