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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Secret Garden
+
+Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+Release Date: March 13, 1994 [eBook #113]
+[Most recently updated: March 15, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET GARDEN ***
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+
+
+
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett</title>
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
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+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Secret Garden</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: March 13, 1994 [eBook #113]<br />
+[Most recently updated: March 15, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET GARDEN ***</div>
+
+<table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto" cellpadding="4" border="3">
+<tr>
+<td>
+THERE IS AN ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF THIS TITLE WHICH MAY VIEWED AT EBOOK <big><b><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17396">
+[ #17396 ]</a></b></big>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<h1>
+THE SECRET GARDEN
+</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">
+by Frances Hodgson Burnett
+</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>Author of
+<br /><br />
+&ldquo;The Shuttle,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Making of a Marchioness,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;The Methods of Lady Walderhurst,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Lass o&rsquo;
+Lowries,&rdquo; &ldquo;Through One Administration,&rdquo; &ldquo;Little Lord
+Fauntleroy,&rdquo; &ldquo;A Lady of Quality,&rdquo; etc.</i>
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>
+Contents
+</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">I. THERE IS NO ONE LEFT</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">II. MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">III. ACROSS THE MOOR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">IV. MARTHA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">V. THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">VI. &ldquo;THERE WAS SOMEONE CRYING&mdash;THERE WAS!&rdquo;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">VII. THE KEY TO THE GARDEN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">VIII. THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">IX. THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANYONE EVER LIVED IN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">X. DICKON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">XI. THE NEST OF THE MISSEL THRUSH</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">XII. &ldquo;MIGHT I HAVE A BIT OF EARTH?&rdquo;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap13">XIII. &ldquo;I AM COLIN&rdquo;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap14">XIV. A YOUNG RAJAH</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap15">XV. NEST BUILDING</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap16">XVI. &ldquo;I WON&rsquo;T!&rdquo; SAID MARY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap17">XVII. A TANTRUM</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap18">XVIII. &ldquo;THA&rsquo; MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME&rdquo;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap19">XIX. &ldquo;IT HAS COME!&rdquo;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap20">XX. &ldquo;I SHALL LIVE FOREVER&mdash;AND EVER&mdash;AND EVER!&rdquo;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap21">XXI. BEN WEATHERSTAFF</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap22">XXII. WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap23">XXIII. MAGIC</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap24">XXIV. &ldquo;LET THEM LAUGH&rdquo;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap25">XXV. THE CURTAIN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap26">XXVI. &ldquo;IT&rsquo;S MOTHER!&rdquo;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap27">XXVII. IN THE GARDEN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I.<br />
+THERE IS NO ONE LEFT</h2>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why did you come?&rdquo; she said to the strange woman. &ldquo;I will
+not let you stay. Send my Ayah to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pig! Pig! Daughter of Pigs!&rdquo; she said, because to call a native a
+pig is the worst insult of all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;Mary used to call her that oftener than anything else&mdash;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 &ldquo;full of lace.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it so very bad? Oh, is it?&rdquo; Mary heard her say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Awfully,&rdquo; the young man answered in a trembling voice.
+&ldquo;Awfully, Mrs. Lennox. You ought to have gone to the hills two weeks
+ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Mem Sahib wrung her hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I know I ought!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I only stayed to go to that
+silly dinner party. What a fool I was!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that very moment such a loud sound of wailing broke out from the
+servants&rsquo; quarters that she clutched the young man&rsquo;s arm, and Mary
+stood shivering from head to foot. The wailing grew wilder and wilder.
+&ldquo;What is it? What is it?&rdquo; Mrs. Lennox gasped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Someone has died,&rdquo; answered the boy officer. &ldquo;You did not
+say it had broken out among your servants.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did not know!&rdquo; the Mem Sahib cried. &ldquo;Come with me! Come
+with me!&rdquo; and she turned and ran into the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How queer and quiet it is,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It sounds as if there
+were no one in the bungalow but me and the snake.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Almost the next minute she heard footsteps in the compound, and then on the
+veranda. They were men&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What desolation!&rdquo; she heard one voice say. &ldquo;That pretty,
+pretty woman! I suppose the child, too. I heard there was a child, though no
+one ever saw her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Barney!&rdquo; he cried out. &ldquo;There is a child here! A child
+alone! In a place like this! Mercy on us, who is she!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am Mary Lennox,&rdquo; the little girl said, drawing herself up
+stiffly. She thought the man was very rude to call her father&rsquo;s bungalow
+&ldquo;A place like this!&rdquo; &ldquo;I fell asleep when everyone had the
+cholera and I have only just wakened up. Why does nobody come?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is the child no one ever saw!&rdquo; exclaimed the man, turning to
+his companions. &ldquo;She has actually been forgotten!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why was I forgotten?&rdquo; Mary said, stamping her foot. &ldquo;Why
+does nobody come?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor little kid!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There is nobody left to
+come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II.<br />
+MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY</h2>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She knew that she was not going to stay at the English clergyman&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you put a heap of stones there and pretend it is a
+rockery?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There in the middle,&rdquo; and he leaned over
+her to point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go away!&rdquo; cried Mary. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want boys. Go
+away!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Mistress Mary, quite contrary,<br />
+    How does your garden grow?<br />
+With silver bells, and cockle shells,<br />
+    And marigolds all in a row.&rdquo;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sang it until the other children heard and laughed, too; and the crosser
+Mary got, the more they sang &ldquo;Mistress Mary, quite contrary&rdquo;; and
+after that as long as she stayed with them they called her &ldquo;Mistress Mary
+Quite Contrary&rdquo; when they spoke of her to each other, and often when they
+spoke to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are going to be sent home,&rdquo; Basil said to her, &ldquo;at the
+end of the week. And we&rsquo;re glad of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am glad of it, too,&rdquo; answered Mary. &ldquo;Where is home?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t know where home is!&rdquo; said Basil, with
+seven-year-old scorn. &ldquo;It&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know anything about him,&rdquo; snapped Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know you don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; Basil answered. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;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&rsquo;s so cross he won&rsquo;t let them, and they wouldn&rsquo;t come
+if he would let them. He&rsquo;s a hunchback, and he&rsquo;s horrid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe you,&rdquo; said Mary; and she turned her back and
+stuck her fingers in her ears, because she would not listen any more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is such a plain child,&rdquo; Mrs. Crawford said pityingly,
+afterward. &ldquo;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 &lsquo;Mistress Mary Quite Contrary,&rsquo; and
+though it&rsquo;s naughty of them, one can&rsquo;t help understanding
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe she scarcely ever looked at her,&rdquo; sighed Mrs. Crawford.
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary made the long voyage to England under the care of an officer&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My word! she&rsquo;s a plain little piece of goods!&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;And we&rsquo;d heard that her mother was a beauty. She hasn&rsquo;t
+handed much of it down, has she, ma&rsquo;am?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps she will improve as she grows older,&rdquo; the officer&rsquo;s
+wife said good-naturedly. &ldquo;If she were not so sallow and had a nicer
+expression, her features are rather good. Children alter so much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;ll have to alter a good deal,&rdquo; answered Mrs. Medlock.
+&ldquo;And, there&rsquo;s nothing likely to improve children at
+Misselthwaite&mdash;if you ask me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since she had been living in other people&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Mrs. Medlock was not in the least disturbed by her and her thoughts. She
+was the kind of woman who would &ldquo;stand no nonsense from young
+ones.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Captain Lennox and his wife died of the cholera,&rdquo; Mr. Craven had
+said in his short, cold way. &ldquo;Captain Lennox was my wife&rsquo;s brother
+and I am their daughter&rsquo;s guardian. The child is to be brought here. You
+must go to London and bring her yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she packed her small trunk and made the journey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A more marred-looking young one I never saw in my life,&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose I may as well tell you something about where you are going
+to,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Do you know anything about your uncle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never heard your father and mother talk about him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Humph,&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose you might as well be told something&mdash;to prepare you. You
+are going to a queer place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary said nothing at all, and Mrs. Medlock looked rather discomfited by her
+apparent indifference, but, after taking a breath, she went on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not but that it&rsquo;s a grand big place in a gloomy way, and Mr.
+Craven&rsquo;s proud of it in his way&mdash;and that&rsquo;s gloomy enough,
+too. The house is six hundred years old and it&rsquo;s on the edge of the moor,
+and there&rsquo;s near a hundred rooms in it, though most of them&rsquo;s shut
+up and locked. And there&rsquo;s pictures and fine old furniture and things
+that&rsquo;s been there for ages, and there&rsquo;s a big park round it and
+gardens and trees with branches trailing to the ground&mdash;some of
+them.&rdquo; She paused and took another breath. &ldquo;But there&rsquo;s
+nothing else,&rdquo; she ended suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Mrs. Medlock. &ldquo;What do you think of it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I know nothing about such
+places.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That made Mrs. Medlock laugh a short sort of laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but you are like an old woman. Don&rsquo;t
+you care?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter&rdquo; said Mary, &ldquo;whether I care or
+not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are right enough there,&rdquo; said Mrs. Medlock. &ldquo;It
+doesn&rsquo;t. What you&rsquo;re to be kept at Misselthwaite Manor for I
+don&rsquo;t know, unless because it&rsquo;s the easiest way. <i>He&rsquo;s</i>
+not going to trouble himself about you, that&rsquo;s sure and certain. He never
+troubles himself about no one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stopped herself as if she had just remembered something in time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s got a crooked back,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary&rsquo;s eyes turned toward her in spite of her intention not to seem to
+care. She had never thought of the hunchback&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She was a sweet, pretty thing and he&rsquo;d have walked the world over
+to get her a blade o&rsquo; grass she wanted. Nobody thought she&rsquo;d marry
+him, but she did, and people said she married him for his money. But she
+didn&rsquo;t&mdash;she didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; positively. &ldquo;When she
+died&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary gave a little involuntary jump.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! did she die!&rdquo; she exclaimed, quite without meaning to. She had
+just remembered a French fairy story she had once read called &ldquo;Riquet à
+la Houppe.&rdquo; It had been about a poor hunchback and a beautiful princess
+and it had made her suddenly sorry for Mr. Archibald Craven.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, she died,&rdquo; Mrs. Medlock answered. &ldquo;And it made him
+queerer than ever. He cares about nobody. He won&rsquo;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&rsquo;t let anyone but Pitcher see him. Pitcher&rsquo;s
+an old fellow, but he took care of him when he was a child and he knows his
+ways.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;a house on the edge of a moor&mdash;whatsoever a moor
+was&mdash;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
+&ldquo;full of lace.&rdquo; But she was not there any more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t expect to see him, because ten to one you
+won&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said Mrs. Medlock. &ldquo;And you mustn&rsquo;t expect that
+there will be people to talk to you. You&rsquo;ll have to play about and look
+after yourself. You&rsquo;ll be told what rooms you can go into and what rooms
+you&rsquo;re to keep out of. There&rsquo;s gardens enough. But when
+you&rsquo;re in the house don&rsquo;t go wandering and poking about. Mr. Craven
+won&rsquo;t have it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall not want to go poking about,&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III.<br />
+ACROSS THE MOOR</h2>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have had a sleep!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s time to open
+your eyes! We&rsquo;re at Thwaite Station and we&rsquo;ve got a long drive
+before us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see tha&rsquo;s got back,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;An&rsquo; tha&rsquo;s
+browt th&rsquo; young &rsquo;un with thee.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, that&rsquo;s her,&rdquo; answered Mrs. Medlock, speaking with a
+Yorkshire accent herself and jerking her head over her shoulder toward Mary.
+&ldquo;How&rsquo;s thy Missus?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well enow. Th&rsquo; carriage is waitin&rsquo; outside for thee.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;a house
+standing on the edge of a moor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is a moor?&rdquo; she said suddenly to Mrs. Medlock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look out of the window in about ten minutes and you&rsquo;ll see,&rdquo;
+the woman answered. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got to drive five miles across Missel
+Moor before we get to the Manor. You won&rsquo;t see much because it&rsquo;s a
+dark night, but you can see something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;or at least it seemed a long time to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! We&rsquo;re on the moor now sure enough,&rdquo; said Mrs. Medlock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s&mdash;it&rsquo;s not the sea, is it?&rdquo; said Mary,
+looking round at her companion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, not it,&rdquo; answered Mrs. Medlock. &ldquo;Nor it isn&rsquo;t
+fields nor mountains, it&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I feel as if it might be the sea, if there were water on it,&rdquo; said
+Mary. &ldquo;It sounds like the sea just now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the wind blowing through the bushes,&rdquo; Mrs. Medlock
+said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a wild, dreary enough place to my mind, though
+there&rsquo;s plenty that likes it&mdash;particularly when the heather&rsquo;s
+in bloom.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like it,&rdquo; she said to herself. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+like it,&rdquo; and she pinched her thin lips more tightly together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh, I am glad to see that bit o&rsquo; light twinkling,&rdquo; she
+exclaimed. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the light in the lodge window. We shall get a good
+cup of tea after a bit, at all events.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was &ldquo;after a bit,&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A neat, thin old man stood near the manservant who opened the door for them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are to take her to her room,&rdquo; he said in a husky voice.
+&ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t want to see her. He&rsquo;s going to London in the
+morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well, Mr. Pitcher,&rdquo; Mrs. Medlock answered. &ldquo;So long as
+I know what&rsquo;s expected of me, I can manage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s expected of you, Mrs. Medlock,&rdquo; Mr. Pitcher said,
+&ldquo;is that you make sure that he&rsquo;s not disturbed and that he
+doesn&rsquo;t see what he doesn&rsquo;t want to see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Medlock said unceremoniously:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, here you are! This room and the next are where you&rsquo;ll
+live&mdash;and you must keep to them. Don&rsquo;t you forget that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was in this way Mistress Mary arrived at Misselthwaite Manor and she had
+perhaps never felt quite so contrary in all her life.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br />
+MARTHA</h2>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is that?&rdquo; she said, pointing out of the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha, the young housemaid, who had just risen to her feet, looked and pointed
+also.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That there?&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s th&rsquo; moor,&rdquo; with a good-natured grin.
+&ldquo;Does tha&rsquo; like it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Mary. &ldquo;I hate it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s because tha&rsquo;rt not used to it,&rdquo; Martha said,
+going back to her hearth. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo; thinks it&rsquo;s too big an&rsquo;
+bare now. But tha&rsquo; will like it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you?&rdquo; inquired Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, that I do,&rdquo; answered Martha, cheerfully polishing away at the
+grate. &ldquo;I just love it. It&rsquo;s none bare. It&rsquo;s covered
+wi&rsquo; growin&rsquo; things as smells sweet. It&rsquo;s fair lovely in
+spring an&rsquo; summer when th&rsquo; gorse an&rsquo; broom an&rsquo;
+heather&rsquo;s in flower. It smells o&rsquo; honey an&rsquo; there&rsquo;s
+such a lot o&rsquo; fresh air&mdash;an&rsquo; th&rsquo; sky looks so high
+an&rsquo; th&rsquo; bees an&rsquo; skylarks makes such a nice noise
+hummin&rsquo; an&rsquo; singin&rsquo;. Eh! I wouldn&rsquo;t live away from
+th&rsquo; moor for anythin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 &ldquo;protector of the poor&rdquo;
+and names of that sort. Indian servants were commanded to do things, not asked.
+It was not the custom to say &ldquo;please&rdquo; and &ldquo;thank you&rdquo;
+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&mdash;if the
+person who slapped her was only a little girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are a strange servant,&rdquo; she said from her pillows, rather
+haughtily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha sat up on her heels, with her blacking-brush in her hand, and laughed,
+without seeming the least out of temper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! I know that,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If there was a grand Missus at
+Misselthwaite I should never have been even one of th&rsquo; under housemaids.
+I might have been let to be scullerymaid but I&rsquo;d never have been let
+upstairs. I&rsquo;m too common an&rsquo; I talk too much Yorkshire. But this is
+a funny house for all it&rsquo;s so grand. Seems like there&rsquo;s neither
+Master nor Mistress except Mr. Pitcher an&rsquo; Mrs. Medlock. Mr. Craven, he
+won&rsquo;t be troubled about anythin&rsquo; when he&rsquo;s here, an&rsquo;
+he&rsquo;s nearly always away. Mrs. Medlock gave me th&rsquo; place out
+o&rsquo; kindness. She told me she could never have done it if Misselthwaite
+had been like other big houses.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you going to be my servant?&rdquo; Mary asked, still in her
+imperious little Indian way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha began to rub her grate again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m Mrs. Medlock&rsquo;s servant,&rdquo; she said stoutly.
+&ldquo;An&rsquo; she&rsquo;s Mr. Craven&rsquo;s&mdash;but I&rsquo;m to do the
+housemaid&rsquo;s work up here an&rsquo; wait on you a bit. But you won&rsquo;t
+need much waitin&rsquo; on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who is going to dress me?&rdquo; demanded Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha sat up on her heels again and stared. She spoke in broad Yorkshire in
+her amazement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Canna&rsquo; tha&rsquo; dress thysen!&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean? I don&rsquo;t understand your language,&rdquo; said
+Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! I forgot,&rdquo; Martha said. &ldquo;Mrs. Medlock told me I&rsquo;d
+have to be careful or you wouldn&rsquo;t know what I was sayin&rsquo;. I mean
+can&rsquo;t you put on your own clothes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Mary, quite indignantly. &ldquo;I never did in my
+life. My Ayah dressed me, of course.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Martha, evidently not in the least aware that she was
+impudent, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s time tha&rsquo; should learn. Tha&rsquo; cannot
+begin younger. It&rsquo;ll do thee good to wait on thysen a bit. My mother
+always said she couldn&rsquo;t see why grand people&rsquo;s children
+didn&rsquo;t turn out fair fools&mdash;what with nurses an&rsquo; bein&rsquo;
+washed an&rsquo; dressed an&rsquo; took out to walk as if they was
+puppies!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is different in India,&rdquo; said Mistress Mary disdainfully. She
+could scarcely stand this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Martha was not at all crushed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! I can see it&rsquo;s different,&rdquo; she answered almost
+sympathetically. &ldquo;I dare say it&rsquo;s because there&rsquo;s such a lot
+o&rsquo; blacks there instead o&rsquo; respectable white people. When I heard
+you was comin&rsquo; from India I thought you was a black too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary sat up in bed furious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;What! You thought I was a native.
+You&mdash;you daughter of a pig!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha stared and looked hot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who are you callin&rsquo; names?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You
+needn&rsquo;t be so vexed. That&rsquo;s not th&rsquo; way for a young lady to
+talk. I&rsquo;ve nothin&rsquo; against th&rsquo; blacks. When you read about
+&rsquo;em in tracts they&rsquo;re always very religious. You always read as a
+black&rsquo;s a man an&rsquo; a brother. I&rsquo;ve never seen a black
+an&rsquo; I was fair pleased to think I was goin&rsquo; to see one close. When
+I come in to light your fire this mornin&rsquo; I crep&rsquo; up to your bed
+an&rsquo; pulled th&rsquo; cover back careful to look at you. An&rsquo; there
+you was,&rdquo; disappointedly, &ldquo;no more black than me&mdash;for all
+you&rsquo;re so yeller.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary did not even try to control her rage and humiliation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You thought I was a native! You dared! You don&rsquo;t know anything
+about natives! They are not people&mdash;they&rsquo;re servants who must salaam
+to you. You know nothing about India. You know nothing about anything!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was in such a rage and felt so helpless before the girl&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! you mustn&rsquo;t cry like that there!&rdquo; she begged. &ldquo;You
+mustn&rsquo;t for sure. I didn&rsquo;t know you&rsquo;d be vexed. I don&rsquo;t
+know anythin&rsquo; about anythin&rsquo;&mdash;just like you said. I beg your
+pardon, Miss. Do stop cryin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s time for thee to get up now,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Mrs.
+Medlock said I was to carry tha&rsquo; breakfast an&rsquo; tea an&rsquo; dinner
+into th&rsquo; room next to this. It&rsquo;s been made into a nursery for thee.
+I&rsquo;ll help thee on with thy clothes if tha&rsquo;ll get out o&rsquo; bed.
+If th&rsquo; buttons are at th&rsquo; back tha&rsquo; cannot button them up
+tha&rsquo;self.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Those are not mine,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Mine are black.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked the thick white wool coat and dress over, and added with cool
+approval:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Those are nicer than mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;These are th&rsquo; ones tha&rsquo; must put on,&rdquo; Martha answered.
+&ldquo;Mr. Craven ordered Mrs. Medlock to get &rsquo;em in London. He said
+&lsquo;I won&rsquo;t have a child dressed in black wanderin&rsquo; about like a
+lost soul,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;It&rsquo;d make the place sadder than it is.
+Put color on her.&rsquo; Mother she said she knew what he meant. Mother always
+knows what a body means. She doesn&rsquo;t hold with black
+hersel&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hate black things,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dressing process was one which taught them both something. Martha had
+&ldquo;buttoned up&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why doesn&rsquo;t tha&rsquo; put on tha&rsquo; own shoes?&rdquo; she
+said when Mary quietly held out her foot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My Ayah did it,&rdquo; answered Mary, staring. &ldquo;It was the
+custom.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said that very often&mdash;&ldquo;It was the custom.&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;It
+is not the custom&rdquo; and one knew that was the end of the matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If Mary Lennox had been a child who was ready to be amused she would perhaps
+have laughed at Martha&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! you should see &rsquo;em all,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s
+twelve of us an&rsquo; my father only gets sixteen shilling a week. I can tell
+you my mother&rsquo;s put to it to get porridge for &rsquo;em all. They tumble
+about on th&rsquo; moor an&rsquo; play there all day an&rsquo; mother says
+th&rsquo; air of th&rsquo; moor fattens &rsquo;em. She says she believes they
+eat th&rsquo; grass same as th&rsquo; wild ponies do. Our Dickon, he&rsquo;s
+twelve years old and he&rsquo;s got a young pony he calls his own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where did he get it?&rdquo; asked Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He found it on th&rsquo; moor with its mother when it was a little one
+an&rsquo; he began to make friends with it an&rsquo; give it bits o&rsquo;
+bread an&rsquo; pluck young grass for it. And it got to like him so it follows
+him about an&rsquo; it lets him get on its back. Dickon&rsquo;s a kind lad
+an&rsquo; animals likes him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s room, but a grown-up person&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want it,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; doesn&rsquo;t want thy porridge!&rdquo; Martha exclaimed
+incredulously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; doesn&rsquo;t know how good it is. Put a bit o&rsquo; treacle
+on it or a bit o&rsquo; sugar.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want it,&rdquo; repeated Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said Martha. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t abide to see good victuals
+go to waste. If our children was at this table they&rsquo;d clean it bare in
+five minutes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; said Mary coldly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why!&rdquo; echoed Martha. &ldquo;Because they scarce ever had their
+stomachs full in their lives. They&rsquo;re as hungry as young hawks an&rsquo;
+foxes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what it is to be hungry,&rdquo; said Mary, with the
+indifference of ignorance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha looked indignant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it would do thee good to try it. I can see that plain
+enough,&rdquo; she said outspokenly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no patience with folk as
+sits an&rsquo; just stares at good bread an&rsquo; meat. My word! don&rsquo;t I
+wish Dickon and Phil an&rsquo; Jane an&rsquo; th&rsquo; rest of &rsquo;em had
+what&rsquo;s here under their pinafores.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you take it to them?&rdquo; suggested Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not mine,&rdquo; answered Martha stoutly. &ldquo;An&rsquo;
+this isn&rsquo;t my day out. I get my day out once a month same as th&rsquo;
+rest. Then I go home an&rsquo; clean up for mother an&rsquo; give her a
+day&rsquo;s rest.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary drank some tea and ate a little toast and some marmalade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You wrap up warm an&rsquo; run out an&rsquo; play you,&rdquo; said
+Martha. &ldquo;It&rsquo;ll do you good and give you some stomach for your
+meat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary went to the window. There were gardens and paths and big trees, but
+everything looked dull and wintry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Out? Why should I go out on a day like this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, if tha&rsquo; doesn&rsquo;t go out tha&rsquo;lt have to stay in,
+an&rsquo; what has tha&rsquo; got to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who will go with me?&rdquo; she inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha stared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll go by yourself,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll
+have to learn to play like other children does when they haven&rsquo;t got
+sisters and brothers. Our Dickon goes off on th&rsquo; moor by himself
+an&rsquo; plays for hours. That&rsquo;s how he made friends with th&rsquo;
+pony. He&rsquo;s got sheep on th&rsquo; moor that knows him, an&rsquo; birds as
+comes an&rsquo; eats out of his hand. However little there is to eat, he always
+saves a bit o&rsquo; his bread to coax his pets.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha found her coat and hat for her and a pair of stout little boots and she
+showed her her way downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If tha&rsquo; goes round that way tha&rsquo;ll come to th&rsquo;
+gardens,&rdquo; she said, pointing to a gate in a wall of shrubbery.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s lots o&rsquo; flowers in summer-time, but there&rsquo;s
+nothin&rsquo; bloomin&rsquo; now.&rdquo; She seemed to hesitate a second before
+she added, &ldquo;One of th&rsquo; gardens is locked up. No one has been in it
+for ten years.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked Mary in spite of herself. Here was another locked door
+added to the hundred in the strange house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Craven had it shut when his wife died so sudden. He won&rsquo;t let
+no one go inside. It was her garden. He locked th&rsquo; door an&rsquo; dug a
+hole and buried th&rsquo; key. There&rsquo;s Mrs. Medlock&rsquo;s bell
+ringing&mdash;I must run.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;but then she was displeased with his garden and wore her
+&ldquo;quite contrary&rdquo; expression, and certainly did not seem at all
+pleased to see him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is this place?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One o&rsquo; th&rsquo; kitchen-gardens,&rdquo; he answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is that?&rdquo; said Mary, pointing through the other green door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Another of &rsquo;em,&rdquo; shortly. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s another on
+t&rsquo;other side o&rsquo; th&rsquo; wall an&rsquo; there&rsquo;s th&rsquo;
+orchard t&rsquo;other side o&rsquo; that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can I go in them?&rdquo; asked Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If tha&rsquo; likes. But there&rsquo;s nowt to see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;almost as if he had
+caught sight of her and was calling to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stopped and listened to him and somehow his cheerful, friendly little
+whistle gave her a pleased feeling&mdash;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 &ldquo;Mistress Mary Quite
+Contrary&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;People never like me and I never like people,&rdquo; she thought.
+&ldquo;And I never can talk as the Crawford children could. They were always
+talking and laughing and making noises.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe that tree was in the secret garden&mdash;I feel sure it
+was,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;There was a wall round the place and there was no
+door.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been into the other gardens,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There was nothin&rsquo; to prevent thee,&rdquo; he answered crustily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I went into the orchard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There was no dog at th&rsquo; door to bite thee,&rdquo; he answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There was no door there into the other garden,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What garden?&rdquo; he said in a rough voice, stopping his digging for a
+moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The one on the other side of the wall,&rdquo; answered Mistress Mary.
+&ldquo;There are trees there&mdash;I saw the tops of them. A bird with a red
+breast was sitting on one of them and he sang.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned about to the orchard side of his garden and began to whistle&mdash;a
+low soft whistle. She could not understand how such a surly man could make such
+a coaxing sound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Almost the next moment a wonderful thing happened. She heard a soft little
+rushing flight through the air&mdash;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&rsquo;s foot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here he is,&rdquo; chuckled the old man, and then he spoke to the bird
+as if he were speaking to a child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where has tha&rsquo; been, tha&rsquo; cheeky little beggar?&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve not seen thee before today. Has tha begun tha&rsquo;
+courtin&rsquo; this early in th&rsquo; season? Tha&rsquo;rt too forrad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will he always come when you call him?&rdquo; she asked almost in a
+whisper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, that he will. I&rsquo;ve knowed him ever since he was a fledgling.
+He come out of th&rsquo; nest in th&rsquo; other garden an&rsquo; when first he
+flew over th&rsquo; wall he was too weak to fly back for a few days an&rsquo;
+we got friendly. When he went over th&rsquo; wall again th&rsquo; rest of
+th&rsquo; brood was gone an&rsquo; he was lonely an&rsquo; he come back to
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What kind of a bird is he?&rdquo; Mary asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t tha&rsquo; know? He&rsquo;s a robin redbreast an&rsquo;
+they&rsquo;re th&rsquo; friendliest, curiousest birds alive. They&rsquo;re
+almost as friendly as dogs&mdash;if you know how to get on with &rsquo;em.
+Watch him peckin&rsquo; about there an&rsquo; lookin&rsquo; round at us now
+an&rsquo; again. He knows we&rsquo;re talkin&rsquo; about him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a conceited one,&rdquo; he chuckled. &ldquo;He likes to hear
+folk talk about him. An&rsquo; curious&mdash;bless me, there never was his like
+for curiosity an&rsquo; meddlin&rsquo;. He&rsquo;s always comin&rsquo; to see
+what I&rsquo;m plantin&rsquo;. He knows all th&rsquo; things Mester Craven
+never troubles hissel&rsquo; to find out. He&rsquo;s th&rsquo; head gardener,
+he is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where did the rest of the brood fly to?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no knowin&rsquo;. The old ones turn &rsquo;em out o&rsquo;
+their nest an&rsquo; make &rsquo;em fly an&rsquo; they&rsquo;re scattered
+before you know it. This one was a knowin&rsquo; one an&rsquo; he knew he was
+lonely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mistress Mary went a step nearer to the robin and looked at him very hard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m lonely,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old gardener pushed his cap back on his bald head and stared at her a
+minute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Art tha&rsquo; th&rsquo; little wench from India?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then no wonder tha&rsquo;rt lonely. Tha&rsquo;lt be lonlier before
+tha&rsquo;s done,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He began to dig again, driving his spade deep into the rich black garden soil
+while the robin hopped about very busily employed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is your name?&rdquo; Mary inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood up to answer her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ben Weatherstaff,&rdquo; he answered, and then he added with a surly
+chuckle, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m lonely mysel&rsquo; except when he&rsquo;s with
+me,&rdquo; and he jerked his thumb toward the robin. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s
+th&rsquo; only friend I&rsquo;ve got.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have no friends at all,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I never had. My Ayah
+didn&rsquo;t like me and I never played with anyone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is a Yorkshire habit to say what you think with blunt frankness, and old Ben
+Weatherstaff was a Yorkshire moor man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; an&rsquo; me are a good bit alike,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We
+was wove out of th&rsquo; same cloth. We&rsquo;re neither of us good
+lookin&rsquo; an&rsquo; we&rsquo;re both of us as sour as we look. We&rsquo;ve
+got the same nasty tempers, both of us, I&rsquo;ll warrant.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 &ldquo;nasty tempered.&rdquo; She felt uncomfortable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did he do that for?&rdquo; asked Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s made up his mind to make friends with thee,&rdquo; replied
+Ben. &ldquo;Dang me if he hasn&rsquo;t took a fancy to thee.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To me?&rdquo; said Mary, and she moved toward the little tree softly and
+looked up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you make friends with me?&rdquo; she said to the robin just as if
+she was speaking to a person. &ldquo;Would you?&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; he cried out, &ldquo;tha&rsquo; said that as nice an&rsquo;
+human as if tha&rsquo; was a real child instead of a sharp old woman.
+Tha&rsquo; said it almost like Dickon talks to his wild things on th&rsquo;
+moor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know Dickon?&rdquo; Mary asked, turning round rather in a hurry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everybody knows him. Dickon&rsquo;s wanderin&rsquo; about everywhere.
+Th&rsquo; very blackberries an&rsquo; heather-bells knows him. I warrant
+th&rsquo; foxes shows him where their cubs lies an&rsquo; th&rsquo; skylarks
+doesn&rsquo;t hide their nests from him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has flown over the wall!&rdquo; Mary cried out, watching him.
+&ldquo;He has flown into the orchard&mdash;he has flown across the other
+wall&mdash;into the garden where there is no door!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He lives there,&rdquo; said old Ben. &ldquo;He came out o&rsquo;
+th&rsquo; egg there. If he&rsquo;s courtin&rsquo;, he&rsquo;s makin&rsquo; up
+to some young madam of a robin that lives among th&rsquo; old rose-trees
+there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rose-trees,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;Are there rose-trees?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ben Weatherstaff took up his spade again and began to dig.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There was ten year&rsquo; ago,&rdquo; he mumbled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should like to see them,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;Where is the green
+door? There must be a door somewhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ben drove his spade deep and looked as uncompanionable as he had looked when
+she first saw him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There was ten year&rsquo; ago, but there isn&rsquo;t now,&rdquo; he
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No door!&rdquo; cried Mary. &ldquo;There must be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;None as anyone can find, an&rsquo; none as is anyone&rsquo;s business.
+Don&rsquo;t you be a meddlesome wench an&rsquo; poke your nose where it&rsquo;s
+no cause to go. Here, I must go on with my work. Get you gone an&rsquo; play
+you. I&rsquo;ve no more time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he actually stopped digging, threw his spade over his shoulder and walked
+off, without even glancing at her or saying good-by.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V.<br />
+THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR</h2>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; got on well enough with that this mornin&rsquo;, didn&rsquo;t
+tha&rsquo;?&rdquo; said Martha.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It tastes nice today,&rdquo; said Mary, feeling a little surprised
+herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s th&rsquo; air of th&rsquo; moor that&rsquo;s givin&rsquo;
+thee stomach for tha&rsquo; victuals,&rdquo; answered Martha. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+lucky for thee that tha&rsquo;s got victuals as well as appetite. There&rsquo;s
+been twelve in our cottage as had th&rsquo; stomach an&rsquo; nothin&rsquo; to
+put in it. You go on playin&rsquo; you out o&rsquo; doors every day an&rsquo;
+you&rsquo;ll get some flesh on your bones an&rsquo; you won&rsquo;t be so
+yeller.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t play,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I have nothing to play
+with.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothin&rsquo; to play with!&rdquo; exclaimed Martha. &ldquo;Our children
+plays with sticks and stones. They just runs about an&rsquo; shouts an&rsquo;
+looks at things.&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s robin redbreast, tilting forward to look at her with his
+small head on one side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she cried out, &ldquo;is it you&mdash;is it you?&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning! Isn&rsquo;t the wind nice? Isn&rsquo;t the sun nice?
+Isn&rsquo;t everything nice? Let us both chirp and hop and twitter. Come on!
+Come on!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;she actually
+looked almost pretty for a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I like you! I like you!&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;much
+lower down&mdash;and there was the same tree inside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s in the garden no one can go into,&rdquo; she said to herself.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the garden without a door. He lives in there. How I wish I
+could see what it is like!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is the garden,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I am sure it is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She walked round and looked closely at that side of the orchard wall, but she
+only found what she had found before&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s very queer,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why did Mr. Craven hate the garden?&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo; 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
+&ldquo;blacks,&rdquo; was novelty enough to attract her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sat down on the hearth herself without waiting to be asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Art tha&rsquo; thinkin&rsquo; about that garden yet?&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;I knew tha&rsquo; would. That was just the way with me when I first
+heard about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why did he hate it?&rdquo; Mary persisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha tucked her feet under her and made herself quite comfortable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Listen to th&rsquo; wind wutherin&rsquo; round the house,&rdquo; she
+said. &ldquo;You could bare stand up on the moor if you was out on it
+tonight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary did not know what &ldquo;wutherin&rsquo;&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But why did he hate it so?&rdquo; she asked, after she had listened. She
+intended to know if Martha did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Martha gave up her store of knowledge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mind,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;Mrs. Medlock said it&rsquo;s not to be
+talked about. There&rsquo;s lots o&rsquo; things in this place that&rsquo;s not
+to be talked over. That&rsquo;s Mr. Craven&rsquo;s orders. His troubles are
+none servants&rsquo; business, he says. But for th&rsquo; garden he
+wouldn&rsquo;t be like he is. It was Mrs. Craven&rsquo;s garden that she had
+made when first they were married an&rsquo; she just loved it, an&rsquo; they
+used to &rsquo;tend the flowers themselves. An&rsquo; none o&rsquo; th&rsquo;
+gardeners was ever let to go in. Him an&rsquo; her used to go in an&rsquo; shut
+th&rsquo; door an&rsquo; stay there hours an&rsquo; hours, readin&rsquo; and
+talkin&rsquo;. An&rsquo; she was just a bit of a girl an&rsquo; there was an
+old tree with a branch bent like a seat on it. An&rsquo; she made roses grow
+over it an&rsquo; she used to sit there. But one day when she was sittin&rsquo;
+there th&rsquo; branch broke an&rsquo; she fell on th&rsquo; ground an&rsquo;
+was hurt so bad that next day she died. Th&rsquo; doctors thought he&rsquo;d go
+out o&rsquo; his mind an&rsquo; die, too. That&rsquo;s why he hates it. No
+one&rsquo;s never gone in since, an&rsquo; he won&rsquo;t let anyone talk
+about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary did not ask any more questions. She looked at the red fire and listened to
+the wind &ldquo;wutherin&rsquo;.&rdquo; It seemed to be
+&ldquo;wutherin&rsquo;&rdquo; louder than ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you hear anyone crying?&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha suddenly looked confused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s th&rsquo; wind. Sometimes it
+sounds like as if someone was lost on th&rsquo; moor an&rsquo; wailin&rsquo;.
+It&rsquo;s got all sorts o&rsquo; sounds.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But listen,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s in the house&mdash;down
+one of those long corridors.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There!&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I told you so! It is someone
+crying&mdash;and it isn&rsquo;t a grown-up person.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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
+&ldquo;wutherin&rsquo;&rdquo; for a few moments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was th&rsquo; wind,&rdquo; said Martha stubbornly. &ldquo;An&rsquo;
+if it wasn&rsquo;t, it was little Betty Butterworth, th&rsquo; scullery-maid.
+She&rsquo;s had th&rsquo; toothache all day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br />
+&ldquo;THERE WAS SOMEONE CRYING&mdash;THERE WAS!&rdquo;</h2>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you do in your cottage when it rains like this?&rdquo; she asked
+Martha.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Try to keep from under each other&rsquo;s feet mostly,&rdquo; Martha
+answered. &ldquo;Eh! there does seem a lot of us then. Mother&rsquo;s a
+good-tempered woman but she gets fair moithered. The biggest ones goes out in
+th&rsquo; cow-shed and plays there. Dickon he doesn&rsquo;t mind th&rsquo; wet.
+He goes out just th&rsquo; same as if th&rsquo; sun was shinin&rsquo;. He says
+he sees things on rainy days as doesn&rsquo;t show when it&rsquo;s fair
+weather. He once found a little fox cub half drowned in its hole and he brought
+it home in th&rsquo; bosom of his shirt to keep it warm. Its mother had been
+killed nearby an&rsquo; th&rsquo; hole was swum out an&rsquo; th&rsquo; rest
+o&rsquo; th&rsquo; litter was dead. He&rsquo;s got it at home now. He found a
+half-drowned young crow another time an&rsquo; he brought it home, too,
+an&rsquo; tamed it. It&rsquo;s named Soot because it&rsquo;s so black,
+an&rsquo; it hops an&rsquo; flies about with him everywhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The time had come when Mary had forgotten to resent Martha&rsquo;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 &ldquo;mother&rdquo;
+said or did they always sounded comfortable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I had a raven or a fox cub I could play with it,&rdquo; said Mary.
+&ldquo;But I have nothing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha looked perplexed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can tha&rsquo; knit?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can tha&rsquo; sew?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can tha&rsquo; read?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then why doesn&rsquo;t tha read somethin&rsquo;, or learn a bit o&rsquo;
+spellin&rsquo;? Tha&rsquo;st old enough to be learnin&rsquo; thy book a good
+bit now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t any books,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;Those I had were
+left in India.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a pity,&rdquo; said Martha. &ldquo;If Mrs. Medlock&rsquo;d
+let thee go into th&rsquo; library, there&rsquo;s thousands o&rsquo; books
+there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&rsquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t tha&rsquo; got good sense?&rdquo; she said once, when Mary
+had stood waiting for her to put on her gloves for her. &ldquo;Our Susan Ann is
+twice as sharp as thee an&rsquo; she&rsquo;s only four year&rsquo; old.
+Sometimes tha&rsquo; looks fair soft in th&rsquo; head.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary had worn her contrary scowl for an hour after that, but it made her think
+several entirely new things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where do you live now?&rdquo; said Mary aloud to her. &ldquo;I wish you
+were here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps she slept here once,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;She stares at me
+so that she makes me feel queer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In one room, which looked like a lady&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If they wouldn&rsquo;t be so frightened I would take them back with
+me,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe I have taken a wrong turning again,&rdquo; she said, standing
+still at what seemed the end of a short passage with tapestry on the wall.
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know which way to go. How still everything is!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nearer than it was,&rdquo; said Mary, her heart beating
+rather faster. &ldquo;And it <i>is</i> crying.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo; she said, and she took Mary by the arm
+and pulled her away. &ldquo;What did I tell you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I turned round the wrong corner,&rdquo; explained Mary. &ldquo;I
+didn&rsquo;t know which way to go and I heard someone crying.&rdquo; She quite
+hated Mrs. Medlock at the moment, but she hated her more the next.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t hear anything of the sort,&rdquo; said the housekeeper.
+&ldquo;You come along back to your own nursery or I&rsquo;ll box your
+ears.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you stay where you&rsquo;re told to stay or
+you&rsquo;ll find yourself locked up. The master had better get you a
+governess, same as he said he would. You&rsquo;re one that needs someone to
+look sharp after you. I&rsquo;ve got enough to do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There <i>was</i> someone crying&mdash;there <i>was</i>&mdash;there
+<i>was!</i>&rdquo; she said to herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br />
+THE KEY TO THE GARDEN</h2>
+
+<p>
+Two days after this, when Mary opened her eyes she sat upright in bed
+immediately, and called to Martha.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look at the moor! Look at the moor!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye,&rdquo; said Martha with a cheerful grin. &ldquo;Th&rsquo;
+storm&rsquo;s over for a bit. It does like this at this time o&rsquo; th&rsquo;
+year. It goes off in a night like it was pretendin&rsquo; it had never been
+here an&rsquo; never meant to come again. That&rsquo;s because th&rsquo;
+springtime&rsquo;s on its way. It&rsquo;s a long way off yet, but it&rsquo;s
+comin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought perhaps it always rained or looked dark in England,&rdquo;
+Mary said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! no!&rdquo; said Martha, sitting up on her heels among her black lead
+brushes. &ldquo;Nowt o&rsquo; th&rsquo; soart!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does that mean?&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha laughed as she had done the first morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There now,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve talked broad Yorkshire
+again like Mrs. Medlock said I mustn&rsquo;t. &lsquo;Nowt o&rsquo; th&rsquo;
+soart&rsquo; means &lsquo;nothin&rsquo;-of-the-sort,&rsquo;&rdquo; slowly and
+carefully, &ldquo;but it takes so long to say it. Yorkshire&rsquo;s th&rsquo;
+sunniest place on earth when it is sunny. I told thee tha&rsquo;d like
+th&rsquo; moor after a bit. Just you wait till you see th&rsquo; gold-colored
+gorse blossoms an&rsquo; th&rsquo; blossoms o&rsquo; th&rsquo; broom, an&rsquo;
+th&rsquo; heather flowerin&rsquo;, all purple bells, an&rsquo; hundreds
+o&rsquo; butterflies flutterin&rsquo; an&rsquo; bees hummin&rsquo; an&rsquo;
+skylarks soarin&rsquo; up an&rsquo; singin&rsquo;. You&rsquo;ll want to get out
+on it at sunrise an&rsquo; live out on it all day like Dickon does.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Could I ever get there?&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; answered Martha. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo;s never
+used tha&rsquo; legs since tha&rsquo; was born, it seems to me. Tha&rsquo;
+couldn&rsquo;t walk five mile. It&rsquo;s five mile to our cottage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should like to see your cottage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s when she wanted
+something very much.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll ask my mother about it,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s
+one o&rsquo; them that nearly always sees a way to do things. It&rsquo;s my day
+out today an&rsquo; I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; home. Eh! I am glad. Mrs. Medlock
+thinks a lot o&rsquo; mother. Perhaps she could talk to her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I like your mother,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should think tha&rsquo; did,&rdquo; agreed Martha, polishing away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never seen her,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, tha&rsquo; hasn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; replied Martha.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, she&rsquo;s that sensible an&rsquo; hard workin&rsquo; an&rsquo;
+good-natured an&rsquo; clean that no one could help likin&rsquo; her whether
+they&rsquo;d seen her or not. When I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; home to her on my day
+out I just jump for joy when I&rsquo;m crossin&rsquo; the moor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I like Dickon,&rdquo; added Mary. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;ve never seen
+him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Martha stoutly, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve told thee that
+th&rsquo; very birds likes him an&rsquo; th&rsquo; rabbits an&rsquo; wild sheep
+an&rsquo; ponies, an&rsquo; th&rsquo; foxes themselves. I wonder,&rdquo;
+staring at her reflectively, &ldquo;what Dickon would think of thee?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He wouldn&rsquo;t like me,&rdquo; said Mary in her stiff, cold little
+way. &ldquo;No one does.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha looked reflective again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How does tha&rsquo; like thysel&rsquo;?&rdquo; she inquired, really
+quite as if she were curious to know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary hesitated a moment and thought it over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not at all&mdash;really,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;But I never thought
+of that before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha grinned a little as if at some homely recollection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mother said that to me once,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;She was at her
+wash-tub an&rsquo; I was in a bad temper an&rsquo; talkin&rsquo; ill of folk,
+an&rsquo; she turns round on me an&rsquo; says: &lsquo;Tha&rsquo; young vixen,
+tha&rsquo;! There tha&rsquo; stands sayin&rsquo; tha&rsquo; doesn&rsquo;t like
+this one an&rsquo; tha&rsquo; doesn&rsquo;t like that one. How does tha&rsquo;
+like thysel&rsquo;?&rsquo; It made me laugh an&rsquo; it brought me to my
+senses in a minute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s baking and enjoy
+herself thoroughly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Springtime&rsquo;s comin,&rsquo;&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Cannot
+tha&rsquo; smell it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary sniffed and thought she could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I smell something nice and fresh and damp,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s th&rsquo; good rich earth,&rdquo; he answered, digging
+away. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s in a good humor makin&rsquo; ready to grow things.
+It&rsquo;s glad when plantin&rsquo; time comes. It&rsquo;s dull in th&rsquo;
+winter when it&rsquo;s got nowt to do. In th&rsquo; flower gardens out there
+things will be stirrin&rsquo; down below in th&rsquo; dark. Th&rsquo;
+sun&rsquo;s warmin&rsquo; &rsquo;em. You&rsquo;ll see bits o&rsquo; green
+spikes stickin&rsquo; out o&rsquo; th&rsquo; black earth after a bit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What will they be?&rdquo; asked Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Crocuses an&rsquo; snowdrops an&rsquo; daffydowndillys. Has tha&rsquo;
+never seen them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. Everything is hot, and wet, and green after the rains in
+India,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;And I think things grow up in a night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;These won&rsquo;t grow up in a night,&rdquo; said Weatherstaff.
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo;ll have to wait for &rsquo;em. They&rsquo;ll poke up a bit
+higher here, an&rsquo; push out a spike more there, an&rsquo; uncurl a leaf
+this day an&rsquo; another that. You watch &rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am going to,&rdquo; answered Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think he remembers me?&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Remembers thee!&rdquo; said Weatherstaff indignantly. &ldquo;He knows
+every cabbage stump in th&rsquo; gardens, let alone th&rsquo; people.
+He&rsquo;s never seen a little wench here before, an&rsquo; he&rsquo;s bent on
+findin&rsquo; out all about thee. Tha&rsquo;s no need to try to hide anything
+from <i>him</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are things stirring down below in the dark in that garden where he
+lives?&rdquo; Mary inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What garden?&rdquo; grunted Weatherstaff, becoming surly again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The one where the old rose-trees are.&rdquo; She could not help asking,
+because she wanted so much to know. &ldquo;Are all the flowers dead, or do some
+of them come again in the summer? Are there ever any roses?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ask him,&rdquo; said Ben Weatherstaff, hunching his shoulders toward the
+robin. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s the only one as knows. No one else has seen inside it
+for ten year&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ten years was a long time, Mary thought. She had been born ten years ago.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s mother. She was
+beginning to like Martha, too. That seemed a good many people to
+like&mdash;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&rsquo;s robin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You do remember me!&rdquo; she cried out. &ldquo;You do! You are
+prettier than anything else in the world!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;only nicer than any other person in the world. She was so happy
+that she scarcely dared to breathe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mistress Mary stood up and looked at it with an almost frightened face as it
+hung from her finger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps it has been buried for ten years,&rdquo; she said in a whisper.
+&ldquo;Perhaps it is the key to the garden!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br />
+THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY</h2>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 &ldquo;contrary,&rdquo; though she did not know why.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I got up at four o&rsquo;clock,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Eh! it was
+pretty on th&rsquo; moor with th&rsquo; birds gettin&rsquo; up an&rsquo;
+th&rsquo; rabbits scamperin&rsquo; about an&rsquo; th&rsquo; sun risin&rsquo;.
+I didn&rsquo;t walk all th&rsquo; way. A man gave me a ride in his cart
+an&rsquo; I did enjoy myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I had &rsquo;em all pipin&rsquo; hot when they came in from
+playin&rsquo; on th&rsquo; moor. An&rsquo; th&rsquo; cottage all smelt o&rsquo;
+nice, clean hot bakin&rsquo; an&rsquo; there was a good fire, an&rsquo; they
+just shouted for joy. Our Dickon he said our cottage was good enough for a
+king to live in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 &ldquo;blacks&rdquo; until she didn&rsquo;t know
+how to put on her own stockings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! they did like to hear about you,&rdquo; said Martha. &ldquo;They
+wanted to know all about th&rsquo; blacks an&rsquo; about th&rsquo; ship you
+came in. I couldn&rsquo;t tell &rsquo;em enough.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary reflected a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you a great deal more before your next day out,&rdquo;
+she said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My word!&rdquo; cried delighted Martha. &ldquo;It would set &rsquo;em
+clean off their heads. Would tha&rsquo; really do that, Miss? It would be same
+as a wild beast show like we heard they had in York once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;India is quite different from Yorkshire,&rdquo; Mary said slowly, as she
+thought the matter over. &ldquo;I never thought of that. Did Dickon and your
+mother like to hear you talk about me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, our Dickon&rsquo;s eyes nearly started out o&rsquo; his head, they
+got that round,&rdquo; answered Martha. &ldquo;But mother, she was put out
+about your seemin&rsquo; to be all by yourself like. She said,
+&lsquo;Hasn&rsquo;t Mr. Craven got no governess for her, nor no nurse?&rsquo;
+and I said, &lsquo;No, he hasn&rsquo;t, though Mrs. Medlock says he will when
+he thinks of it, but she says he mayn&rsquo;t think of it for two or three
+years.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want a governess,&rdquo; said Mary sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But mother says you ought to be learnin&rsquo; your book by this time
+an&rsquo; you ought to have a woman to look after you, an&rsquo; she says:
+&lsquo;Now, Martha, you just think how you&rsquo;d feel yourself, in a big
+place like that, wanderin&rsquo; about all alone, an&rsquo; no mother. You do
+your best to cheer her up,&rsquo; she says, an&rsquo; I said I would.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary gave her a long, steady look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You do cheer me up,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I like to hear you
+talk.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently Martha went out of the room and came back with something held in her
+hands under her apron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does tha&rsquo; think,&rdquo; she said, with a cheerful grin.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve brought thee a present.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A present!&rdquo; exclaimed Mistress Mary. How could a cottage full of
+fourteen hungry people give anyone a present!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A man was drivin&rsquo; across the moor peddlin&rsquo;,&rdquo; Martha
+explained. &ldquo;An&rsquo; he stopped his cart at our door. He had pots
+an&rsquo; pans an&rsquo; odds an&rsquo; ends, but mother had no money to buy
+anythin&rsquo;. Just as he was goin&rsquo; away our &rsquo;Lizabeth Ellen
+called out, &lsquo;Mother, he&rsquo;s got skippin&rsquo;-ropes with red
+an&rsquo; blue handles.&rsquo; An&rsquo; mother she calls out quite sudden,
+&lsquo;Here, stop, mister! How much are they?&rsquo; An&rsquo; he says
+&lsquo;Tuppence&rsquo;, an&rsquo; mother she began fumblin&rsquo; in her pocket
+an&rsquo; she says to me, &lsquo;Martha, tha&rsquo;s brought me thy wages like
+a good lass, an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve got four places to put every penny, but
+I&rsquo;m just goin&rsquo; to take tuppence out of it to buy that child a
+skippin&rsquo;-rope,&rsquo; an&rsquo; she bought one an&rsquo; here it
+is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it for?&rdquo; she asked curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For!&rdquo; cried out Martha. &ldquo;Does tha&rsquo; mean that
+they&rsquo;ve not got skippin&rsquo;-ropes in India, for all they&rsquo;ve got
+elephants and tigers and camels! No wonder most of &rsquo;em&rsquo;s black.
+This is what it&rsquo;s for; just watch me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s face delighted her, and she went on skipping
+and counted as she skipped until she had reached a hundred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I could skip longer than that,&rdquo; she said when she stopped.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve skipped as much as five hundred when I was twelve, but I
+wasn&rsquo;t as fat then as I am now, an&rsquo; I was in practice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary got up from her chair beginning to feel excited herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It looks nice,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Your mother is a kind woman. Do
+you think I could ever skip like that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You just try it,&rdquo; urged Martha, handing her the skipping-rope.
+&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t skip a hundred at first, but if you practice
+you&rsquo;ll mount up. That&rsquo;s what mother said. She says,
+&lsquo;Nothin&rsquo; will do her more good than skippin&rsquo; rope. It&rsquo;s
+th&rsquo; sensiblest toy a child can have. Let her play out in th&rsquo; fresh
+air skippin&rsquo; an&rsquo; it&rsquo;ll stretch her legs an&rsquo; arms
+an&rsquo; give her some strength in &rsquo;em.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was plain that there was not a great deal of strength in Mistress
+Mary&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Put on tha&rsquo; things and run an&rsquo; skip out o&rsquo;
+doors,&rdquo; said Martha. &ldquo;Mother said I must tell you to keep out
+o&rsquo; doors as much as you could, even when it rains a bit, so as tha&rsquo;
+wrap up warm.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Martha,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;they were your wages. It was your
+two-pence really. Thank you.&rdquo; She said it stiffly because she was not
+used to thanking people or noticing that they did things for her. &ldquo;Thank
+you,&rdquo; she said, and held out her hand because she did not know what else
+to do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha gave her hand a clumsy little shake, as if she was not accustomed to
+this sort of thing either. Then she laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! th&rsquo; art a queer, old-womanish thing,&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;If tha&rsquo;d been our &rsquo;Lizabeth Ellen tha&rsquo;d have given me
+a kiss.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary looked stiffer than ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you want me to kiss you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha laughed again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay, not me,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;If tha&rsquo; was different,
+p&rsquo;raps tha&rsquo;d want to thysel&rsquo;. But tha&rsquo; isn&rsquo;t. Run
+off outside an&rsquo; play with thy rope.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Upon my word. P&rsquo;raps tha&rsquo;
+art a young &rsquo;un, after all, an&rsquo; p&rsquo;raps tha&rsquo;s got
+child&rsquo;s blood in thy veins instead of sour buttermilk. Tha&rsquo;s
+skipped red into thy cheeks as sure as my name&rsquo;s Ben Weatherstaff. I
+wouldn&rsquo;t have believed tha&rsquo; could do it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never skipped before,&rdquo; Mary said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m just
+beginning. I can only go up to twenty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; keep on,&rdquo; said Ben. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo; shapes well
+enough at it for a young &rsquo;un that&rsquo;s lived with heathen. Just see
+how he&rsquo;s watchin&rsquo; thee,&rdquo; jerking his head toward the robin.
+&ldquo;He followed after thee yesterday. He&rsquo;ll be at it again today.
+He&rsquo;ll be bound to find out what th&rsquo; skippin&rsquo;-rope is.
+He&rsquo;s never seen one. Eh!&rdquo; shaking his head at the bird,
+&ldquo;tha&rsquo; curiosity will be th&rsquo; death of thee sometime if
+tha&rsquo; doesn&rsquo;t look sharp.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You showed me where the key was yesterday,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You
+ought to show me the door today; but I don&rsquo;t believe you know!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;and
+they are nearly always doing it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary Lennox had heard a great deal about Magic in her Ayah&rsquo;s stories, and
+she always said that what happened almost at that moment was Magic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;a round knob which had been covered by the
+leaves hanging over it. It was the knob of a door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;slowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was standing <i>inside</i> the secret garden.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br />
+THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANYONE EVER LIVED IN</h2>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How still it is!&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;How still!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No wonder it is still,&rdquo; she whispered again. &ldquo;I am the first
+person who has spoken in here for ten years.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wonder if they are all quite dead,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Is it all a
+quite dead garden? I wish it wasn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she was <i>inside</i> 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;some sharp little pale green points. She remembered what
+Ben Weatherstaff had said and she knelt down to look at them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, they are tiny growing things and they <i>might</i> be crocuses or
+snowdrops or daffodils,&rdquo; she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bent very close to them and sniffed the fresh scent of the damp earth. She
+liked it very much.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps there are some other ones coming up in other places,&rdquo; she
+said. &ldquo;I will go all over the garden and look.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t a quite dead garden,&rdquo; she cried out softly to
+herself. &ldquo;Even if the roses are dead, there are other things
+alive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now they look as if they could breathe,&rdquo; she said, after she had
+finished with the first ones. &ldquo;I am going to do ever so many more.
+I&rsquo;ll do all I can see. If I haven&rsquo;t time today I can come
+tomorrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s size
+and yet had had the sense to come into his garden and begin at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall come back this afternoon,&rdquo; she said, looking all round at
+her new kingdom, and speaking to the trees and the rose-bushes as if they heard
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Two pieces o&rsquo; meat an&rsquo; two helps o&rsquo; rice
+puddin&rsquo;!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Eh! mother will be pleased when I tell
+her what th&rsquo; skippin&rsquo;-rope&rsquo;s done for thee.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Martha,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;what are those white roots that look
+like onions?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re bulbs,&rdquo; answered Martha. &ldquo;Lots o&rsquo; spring
+flowers grow from &rsquo;em. Th&rsquo; very little ones are snowdrops an&rsquo;
+crocuses an&rsquo; th&rsquo; big ones are narcissuses an&rsquo; jonquils and
+daffydowndillys. Th&rsquo; biggest of all is lilies an&rsquo; purple flags. Eh!
+they are nice. Dickon&rsquo;s got a whole lot of &rsquo;em planted in our bit
+o&rsquo; garden.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does Dickon know all about them?&rdquo; asked Mary, a new idea taking
+possession of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our Dickon can make a flower grow out of a brick walk. Mother says he
+just whispers things out o&rsquo; th&rsquo; ground.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do bulbs live a long time? Would they live years and years if no one
+helped them?&rdquo; inquired Mary anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re things as helps themselves,&rdquo; said Martha.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s why poor folk can afford to have &rsquo;em. If you
+don&rsquo;t trouble &rsquo;em, most of &rsquo;em&rsquo;ll work away underground
+for a lifetime an&rsquo; spread out an&rsquo; have little &rsquo;uns.
+There&rsquo;s a place in th&rsquo; park woods here where there&rsquo;s
+snowdrops by thousands. They&rsquo;re the prettiest sight in Yorkshire when
+th&rsquo; spring comes. No one knows when they was first planted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish the spring was here now,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I want to see
+all the things that grow in England.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had finished her dinner and gone to her favorite seat on the hearth-rug.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish&mdash;I wish I had a little spade,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whatever does tha&rsquo; want a spade for?&rdquo; asked Martha,
+laughing. &ldquo;Art tha&rsquo; goin&rsquo; to take to diggin&rsquo;? I must
+tell mother that, too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary looked at the fire and pondered a little. She must be careful if she meant
+to keep her secret kingdom. She wasn&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is such a big lonely place,&rdquo; she said slowly, as if she were
+turning matters over in her mind. &ldquo;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&mdash;natives and
+soldiers marching by&mdash;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha&rsquo;s face quite lighted up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There now!&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;if that wasn&rsquo;t one of
+th&rsquo; things mother said. She says, &lsquo;There&rsquo;s such a lot
+o&rsquo; room in that big place, why don&rsquo;t they give her a bit for
+herself, even if she doesn&rsquo;t plant nothin&rsquo; but parsley an&rsquo;
+radishes? She&rsquo;d dig an&rsquo; rake away an&rsquo; be right down happy
+over it.&rsquo; Them was the very words she said.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Were they?&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;How many things she knows,
+doesn&rsquo;t she?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said Martha. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s like she says: &lsquo;A woman
+as brings up twelve children learns something besides her A B C.
+Children&rsquo;s as good as &rsquo;rithmetic to set you findin&rsquo; out
+things.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How much would a spade cost&mdash;a little one?&rdquo; Mary asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; was Martha&rsquo;s reflective answer, &ldquo;at Thwaite
+village there&rsquo;s a shop or so an&rsquo; I saw little garden sets with a
+spade an&rsquo; a rake an&rsquo; a fork all tied together for two shillings.
+An&rsquo; they was stout enough to work with, too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got more than that in my purse,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;Mrs.
+Morrison gave me five shillings and Mrs. Medlock gave me some money from Mr.
+Craven.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did he remember thee that much?&rdquo; exclaimed Martha.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Medlock said I was to have a shilling a week to spend. She gives me
+one every Saturday. I didn&rsquo;t know what to spend it on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My word! that&rsquo;s riches,&rdquo; said Martha. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo; can
+buy anything in th&rsquo; world tha&rsquo; wants. Th&rsquo; rent of our cottage
+is only one an&rsquo; threepence an&rsquo; it&rsquo;s like pullin&rsquo;
+eye-teeth to get it. Now I&rsquo;ve just thought of somethin&rsquo;,&rdquo;
+putting her hands on her hips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo; said Mary eagerly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the shop at Thwaite they sell packages o&rsquo; flower-seeds for a
+penny each, and our Dickon he knows which is th&rsquo; prettiest ones an&rsquo;
+how to make &rsquo;em grow. He walks over to Thwaite many a day just for
+th&rsquo; fun of it. Does tha&rsquo; know how to print letters?&rdquo;
+suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know how to write,&rdquo; Mary answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha shook her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our Dickon can only read printin&rsquo;. If tha&rsquo; could print we
+could write a letter to him an&rsquo; ask him to go an&rsquo; buy th&rsquo;
+garden tools an&rsquo; th&rsquo; seeds at th&rsquo; same time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! you&rsquo;re a good girl!&rdquo; Mary cried. &ldquo;You are, really!
+I didn&rsquo;t know you were so nice. I know I can print letters if I try.
+Let&rsquo;s ask Mrs. Medlock for a pen and ink and some paper.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got some of my own,&rdquo; said Martha. &ldquo;I bought
+&rsquo;em so I could print a bit of a letter to mother of a Sunday. I&rsquo;ll
+go and get it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She ran out of the room, and Mary stood by the fire and twisted her thin little
+hands together with sheer pleasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I have a spade,&rdquo; she whispered, &ldquo;I can make the earth
+nice and soft and dig up weeds. If I have seeds and can make flowers grow the
+garden won&rsquo;t be dead at all&mdash;it will come alive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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:
+</p>
+
+<blockquote> <div>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+&ldquo;<i>My Dear Dickon:</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+    &ldquo;Your loving sister,<br />
+                &ldquo;Martha Phœbe Sowerby.&rdquo;<br />
+</p>
+
+</div> </blockquote>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll put the money in th&rsquo; envelope an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll get
+th&rsquo; butcher boy to take it in his cart. He&rsquo;s a great friend
+o&rsquo; Dickon&rsquo;s,&rdquo; said Martha.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How shall I get the things when Dickon buys them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll bring &rsquo;em to you himself. He&rsquo;ll like to walk
+over this way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; exclaimed Mary, &ldquo;then I shall see him! I never thought
+I should see Dickon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does tha&rsquo; want to see him?&rdquo; asked Martha suddenly, for Mary
+had looked so pleased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I do. I never saw a boy foxes and crows loved. I want to see him
+very much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha gave a little start, as if she remembered something.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now to think,&rdquo; she broke out, &ldquo;to think o&rsquo; me
+forgettin&rsquo; that there; an&rsquo; I thought I was goin&rsquo; to tell you
+first thing this mornin&rsquo;. I asked mother&mdash;and she said she&rsquo;d
+ask Mrs. Medlock her own self.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean&mdash;&rdquo; Mary began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What I said Tuesday. Ask her if you might be driven over to our cottage
+some day and have a bit o&rsquo; mother&rsquo;s hot oat cake, an&rsquo; butter,
+an&rsquo; a glass o&rsquo; milk.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does she think Mrs. Medlock would let me go?&rdquo; she asked, quite
+anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, she thinks she would. She knows what a tidy woman mother is and how
+clean she keeps the cottage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I went I should see your mother as well as Dickon,&rdquo; said Mary,
+thinking it over and liking the idea very much. &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t seem
+to be like the mothers in India.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Martha,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;has the scullery-maid had the toothache
+again today?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha certainly started slightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What makes thee ask that?&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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&rsquo;t a wind
+today, so you see it couldn&rsquo;t have been the wind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said Martha restlessly. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo; mustn&rsquo;t go
+walkin&rsquo; about in corridors an&rsquo; listenin&rsquo;. Mr. Craven would be
+that there angry there&rsquo;s no knowin&rsquo; what he&rsquo;d do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t listening,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I was just waiting
+for you&mdash;and I heard it. That&rsquo;s three times.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My word! There&rsquo;s Mrs. Medlock&rsquo;s bell,&rdquo; said Martha,
+and she almost ran out of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the strangest house anyone ever lived in,&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X.<br />
+DICKON</h2>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 &ldquo;snowdrops by the thousands,&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo;rt like th&rsquo; robin,&rdquo; he said to her one morning
+when he lifted his head and saw her standing by him. &ldquo;I never knows when
+I shall see thee or which side tha&rsquo;ll come from.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s friends with me now,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s like him,&rdquo; snapped Ben Weatherstaff.
+&ldquo;Makin&rsquo; up to th&rsquo; women folk just for vanity an&rsquo;
+flightiness. There&rsquo;s nothin&rsquo; he wouldn&rsquo;t do for th&rsquo;
+sake o&rsquo; showin&rsquo; off an&rsquo; flirtin&rsquo; his tail-feathers.
+He&rsquo;s as full o&rsquo; pride as an egg&rsquo;s full o&rsquo; meat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He very seldom talked much and sometimes did not even answer Mary&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How long has tha&rsquo; been here?&rdquo; he jerked out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s about a month,&rdquo; she answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo;s beginnin&rsquo; to do Misselthwaite credit,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo;s a bit fatter than tha&rsquo; was an&rsquo; tha&rsquo;s not
+quite so yeller. Tha&rsquo; looked like a young plucked crow when tha&rsquo;
+first came into this garden. Thinks I to myself I never set eyes on an uglier,
+sourer faced young &rsquo;un.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary was not vain and as she had never thought much of her looks she was not
+greatly disturbed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know I&rsquo;m fatter,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;My stockings are
+getting tighter. They used to make wrinkles. There&rsquo;s the robin, Ben
+Weatherstaff.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, there tha&rsquo; art!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo; can put up
+with me for a bit sometimes when tha&rsquo;s got no one better. Tha&rsquo;s
+been reddenin&rsquo; up thy waistcoat an&rsquo; polishin&rsquo; thy feathers
+this two weeks. I know what tha&rsquo;s up to. Tha&rsquo;s courtin&rsquo; some
+bold young madam somewhere tellin&rsquo; thy lies to her about bein&rsquo;
+th&rsquo; finest cock robin on Missel Moor an&rsquo; ready to fight all
+th&rsquo; rest of &rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! look at him!&rdquo; exclaimed Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; thinks tha&rsquo;ll get over me by doin&rsquo; that,&rdquo;
+said Ben, wrinkling his face up in such a way that Mary felt sure he was trying
+not to look pleased. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo; thinks no one can stand out against
+thee&mdash;that&rsquo;s what tha&rsquo; thinks.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The robin spread his wings&mdash;Mary could scarcely believe her eyes. He flew
+right up to the handle of Ben Weatherstaff&rsquo;s spade and alighted on the
+top of it. Then the old man&rsquo;s face wrinkled itself slowly into a new
+expression. He stood still as if he were afraid to breathe&mdash;as if he would
+not have stirred for the world, lest his robin should start away. He spoke
+quite in a whisper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m danged!&rdquo; he said as softly as if he were saying
+something quite different. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo; does know how to get at a
+chap&mdash;tha&rsquo; does! Tha&rsquo;s fair unearthly, tha&rsquo;s so
+knowin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he stood without stirring&mdash;almost without drawing his
+breath&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But because he kept breaking into a slow grin now and then, Mary was not afraid
+to talk to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you a garden of your own?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. I&rsquo;m bachelder an&rsquo; lodge with Martin at th&rsquo;
+gate.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you had one,&rdquo; said Mary, &ldquo;what would you plant?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cabbages an&rsquo; &rsquo;taters an&rsquo; onions.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But if you wanted to make a flower garden,&rdquo; persisted Mary,
+&ldquo;what would you plant?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bulbs an&rsquo; sweet-smellin&rsquo; things&mdash;but mostly
+roses.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary&rsquo;s face lighted up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you like roses?&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ben Weatherstaff rooted up a weed and threw it aside before he answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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&rsquo; she loved &rsquo;em like
+they was children&mdash;or robins. I&rsquo;ve seen her bend over an&rsquo; kiss
+&rsquo;em.&rdquo; He dragged out another weed and scowled at it. &ldquo;That
+were as much as ten year&rsquo; ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is she now?&rdquo; asked Mary, much interested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Heaven,&rdquo; he answered, and drove his spade deep into the soil,
+&ldquo;&rsquo;cording to what parson says.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What happened to the roses?&rdquo; Mary asked again, more interested
+than ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They was left to themselves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary was becoming quite excited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did they quite die? Do roses quite die when they are left to
+themselves?&rdquo; she ventured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;d got to like &rsquo;em&mdash;an&rsquo; I liked
+her&mdash;an&rsquo; she liked &rsquo;em,&rdquo; Ben Weatherstaff admitted
+reluctantly. &ldquo;Once or twice a year I&rsquo;d go an&rsquo; work at
+&rsquo;em a bit&mdash;prune &rsquo;em an&rsquo; dig about th&rsquo; roots. They
+run wild, but they was in rich soil, so some of &rsquo;em lived.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When they have no leaves and look gray and brown and dry, how can you
+tell whether they are dead or alive?&rdquo; inquired Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wait till th&rsquo; spring gets at &rsquo;em&mdash;wait till th&rsquo;
+sun shines on th&rsquo; rain and th&rsquo; rain falls on th&rsquo; sunshine
+an&rsquo; then tha&rsquo;ll find out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How&mdash;how?&rdquo; cried Mary, forgetting to be careful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look along th&rsquo; twigs an&rsquo; branches an&rsquo; if tha&rsquo;
+see a bit of a brown lump swelling here an&rsquo; there, watch it after
+th&rsquo; warm rain an&rsquo; see what happens.&rdquo; He stopped suddenly and
+looked curiously at her eager face. &ldquo;Why does tha&rsquo; care so much
+about roses an&rsquo; such, all of a sudden?&rdquo; he demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mistress Mary felt her face grow red. She was almost afraid to answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&mdash;I want to play that&mdash;that I have a garden of my own,&rdquo;
+she stammered. &ldquo;I&mdash;there is nothing for me to do. I have
+nothing&mdash;and no one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Ben Weatherstaff slowly, as he watched her,
+&ldquo;that&rsquo;s true. Tha&rsquo; hasn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you go and see those other roses now?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not been this year. My rheumatics has made me too stiff in th&rsquo;
+joints.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now look here!&rdquo; he said sharply. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tha&rsquo; ask
+so many questions. Tha&rsquo;rt th&rsquo; worst wench for askin&rsquo;
+questions I&rsquo;ve ever come across. Get thee gone an&rsquo; play thee.
+I&rsquo;ve done talkin&rsquo; for today.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tha&rsquo; move,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;d flight
+&rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m Dickon,&rdquo; the boy said. &ldquo;I know tha&rsquo;rt Miss
+Mary.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I got up slow,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;because if tha&rsquo; makes a
+quick move it startles &rsquo;em. A body &rsquo;as to move gentle an&rsquo;
+speak low when wild things is about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you get Martha&rsquo;s letter?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded his curly, rust-colored head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s why I come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stooped to pick up something which had been lying on the ground beside him
+when he piped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got th&rsquo; garden tools. There&rsquo;s a little spade
+an&rsquo; rake an&rsquo; a fork an&rsquo; hoe. Eh! they are good &rsquo;uns.
+There&rsquo;s a trowel, too. An&rsquo; th&rsquo; woman in th&rsquo; shop threw
+in a packet o&rsquo; white poppy an&rsquo; one o&rsquo; blue larkspur when I
+bought th&rsquo; other seeds.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you show the seeds to me?&rdquo; Mary said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us sit down on this log and look at them,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a lot o&rsquo; mignonette an&rsquo; poppies,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;Mignonette&rsquo;s th&rsquo; sweetest smellin&rsquo; thing as
+grows, an&rsquo; it&rsquo;ll grow wherever you cast it, same as poppies will.
+Them as&rsquo;ll come up an&rsquo; bloom if you just whistle to &rsquo;em,
+them&rsquo;s th&rsquo; nicest of all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stopped and turned his head quickly, his poppy-cheeked face lighting up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s that robin as is callin&rsquo; us?&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chirp came from a thick holly bush, bright with scarlet berries, and Mary
+thought she knew whose it was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it really calling us?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye,&rdquo; said Dickon, as if it was the most natural thing in the
+world, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s callin&rsquo; someone he&rsquo;s friends with.
+That&rsquo;s same as sayin&rsquo; &lsquo;Here I am. Look at me. I wants a bit
+of a chat.&rsquo; There he is in the bush. Whose is he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s Ben Weatherstaff&rsquo;s, but I think he knows me a
+little,&rdquo; answered Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, he knows thee,&rdquo; said Dickon in his low voice again.
+&ldquo;An&rsquo; he likes thee. He&rsquo;s took thee on. He&rsquo;ll tell me
+all about thee in a minute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s own twitter. The
+robin listened a few seconds, intently, and then answered quite as if he were
+replying to a question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, he&rsquo;s a friend o&rsquo; yours,&rdquo; chuckled Dickon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think he is?&rdquo; cried Mary eagerly. She did so want to know.
+&ldquo;Do you think he really likes me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He wouldn&rsquo;t come near thee if he didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; answered
+Dickon. &ldquo;Birds is rare choosers an&rsquo; a robin can flout a body worse
+than a man. See, he&rsquo;s making up to thee now. &lsquo;Cannot tha&rsquo; see
+a chap?&rsquo; he&rsquo;s sayin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And it really seemed as if it must be true. He so sidled and twittered and
+tilted as he hopped on his bush.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you understand everything birds say?&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon&rsquo;s grin spread until he seemed all wide, red, curving mouth, and he
+rubbed his rough head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I do, and they think I do,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+lived on th&rsquo; moor with &rsquo;em so long. I&rsquo;ve watched &rsquo;em
+break shell an&rsquo; come out an&rsquo; fledge an&rsquo; learn to fly
+an&rsquo; begin to sing, till I think I&rsquo;m one of &rsquo;em. Sometimes I
+think p&rsquo;raps I&rsquo;m a bird, or a fox, or a rabbit, or a squirrel, or
+even a beetle, an&rsquo; I don&rsquo;t know it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See here,&rdquo; he said suddenly, turning round to look at her.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll plant them for thee myself. Where is tha&rsquo;
+garden?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo;s got a bit o&rsquo; garden, hasn&rsquo;t tha&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+Dickon said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t they give thee a bit?&rdquo; he asked.
+&ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t tha&rsquo; got any yet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She held her hands tighter and turned her eyes toward him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know anything about boys,&rdquo; she said slowly.
+&ldquo;Could you keep a secret, if I told you one? It&rsquo;s a great secret. I
+don&rsquo;t know what I should do if anyone found it out. I believe I should
+die!&rdquo; She said the last sentence quite fiercely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon looked more puzzled than ever and even rubbed his hand over his rough
+head again, but he answered quite good-humoredly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m keepin&rsquo; secrets all th&rsquo; time,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;If I couldn&rsquo;t keep secrets from th&rsquo; other lads, secrets
+about foxes&rsquo; cubs, an&rsquo; birds&rsquo; nests, an&rsquo; wild
+things&rsquo; holes, there&rsquo;d be naught safe on th&rsquo; moor. Aye, I can
+keep secrets.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mistress Mary did not mean to put out her hand and clutch his sleeve but she
+did it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve stolen a garden,&rdquo; she said very fast. &ldquo;It
+isn&rsquo;t mine. It isn&rsquo;t anybody&rsquo;s. Nobody wants it, nobody cares
+for it, nobody ever goes into it. Perhaps everything is dead in it already. I
+don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She began to feel hot and as contrary as she had ever felt in her life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care, I don&rsquo;t care! Nobody has any right to take it
+from me when I care about it and they don&rsquo;t. They&rsquo;re letting it
+die, all shut in by itself,&rdquo; she ended passionately, and she threw her
+arms over her face and burst out crying&mdash;poor little Mistress Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon&rsquo;s curious blue eyes grew rounder and rounder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh-h-h!&rdquo; he said, drawing his exclamation out slowly, and the way
+he did it meant both wonder and sympathy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve nothing to do,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;Nothing belongs to
+me. I found it myself and I got into it myself. I was only just like the robin,
+and they wouldn&rsquo;t take it from the robin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is it?&rdquo; asked Dickon in a dropped voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come with me and I&rsquo;ll show you,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s this,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a secret garden, and
+I&rsquo;m the only one in the world who wants it to be alive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon looked round and round about it, and round and round again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; he almost whispered, &ldquo;it is a queer, pretty place!
+It&rsquo;s like as if a body was in a dream.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br />
+THE NEST OF THE MISSEL THRUSH</h2>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never thought I&rsquo;d see this place,&rdquo; he said at last, in a
+whisper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you know about it?&rdquo; asked Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had spoken aloud and he made a sign to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must talk low,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;or someone&rsquo;ll hear us
+an&rsquo; wonder what&rsquo;s to do in here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! I forgot!&rdquo; said Mary, feeling frightened and putting her hand
+quickly against her mouth. &ldquo;Did you know about the garden?&rdquo; she
+asked again when she had recovered herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Martha told me there was one as no one ever went inside,&rdquo; he
+answered. &ldquo;Us used to wonder what it was like.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stopped and looked round at the lovely gray tangle about him, and his round
+eyes looked queerly happy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! the nests as&rsquo;ll be here come springtime,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;d be th&rsquo; safest nestin&rsquo; place in England. No one
+never comin&rsquo; near an&rsquo; tangles o&rsquo; trees an&rsquo; roses to
+build in. I wonder all th&rsquo; birds on th&rsquo; moor don&rsquo;t build
+here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mistress Mary put her hand on his arm again without knowing it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will there be roses?&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;Can you tell? I
+thought perhaps they were all dead.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! No! Not them&mdash;not all of &rsquo;em!&rdquo; he answered.
+&ldquo;Look here!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stepped over to the nearest tree&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s lots o&rsquo; dead wood as ought to be cut out,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;An&rsquo; there&rsquo;s a lot o&rsquo; old wood, but it made some
+new last year. This here&rsquo;s a new bit,&rdquo; and he touched a shoot which
+looked brownish green instead of hard, dry gray.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary touched it herself in an eager, reverent way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That one?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Is that one quite alive quite?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon curved his wide smiling mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s as wick as you or me,&rdquo; he said; and Mary remembered
+that Martha had told her that &ldquo;wick&rdquo; meant &ldquo;alive&rdquo; or
+&ldquo;lively.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad it&rsquo;s wick!&rdquo; she cried out in her whisper.
+&ldquo;I want them all to be wick. Let us go round the garden and count how
+many wick ones there are.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve run wild,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but th&rsquo; strongest
+ones has fair thrived on it. The delicatest ones has died out, but th&rsquo;
+others has growed an&rsquo; growed, an&rsquo; spread an&rsquo; spread, till
+they&rsquo;s a wonder. See here!&rdquo; and he pulled down a thick gray,
+dry-looking branch. &ldquo;A body might think this was dead wood, but I
+don&rsquo;t believe it is&mdash;down to th&rsquo; root. I&rsquo;ll cut it low
+down an&rsquo; see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knelt and with his knife cut the lifeless-looking branch through, not far
+above the earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There!&rdquo; he said exultantly. &ldquo;I told thee so. There&rsquo;s
+green in that wood yet. Look at it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary was down on her knees before he spoke, gazing with all her might.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When it looks a bit greenish an&rsquo; juicy like that, it&rsquo;s
+wick,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;When th&rsquo; inside is dry an&rsquo; breaks
+easy, like this here piece I&rsquo;ve cut off, it&rsquo;s done for.
+There&rsquo;s a big root here as all this live wood sprung out of, an&rsquo; if
+th&rsquo; old wood&rsquo;s cut off an&rsquo; it&rsquo;s dug round, and took
+care of there&rsquo;ll be&mdash;&rdquo; he stopped and lifted his face to look
+up at the climbing and hanging sprays above him&mdash;&ldquo;there&rsquo;ll be
+a fountain o&rsquo; roses here this summer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why!&rdquo; he cried, pointing to the grass a few feet away. &ldquo;Who
+did that there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was one of Mary&rsquo;s own little clearings round the pale green points.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did it,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, I thought tha&rsquo; didn&rsquo;t know nothin&rsquo; about
+gardenin&rsquo;,&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;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&rsquo;t even know what they
+are.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon went and knelt down by them, smiling his wide smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; was right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;A gardener couldn&rsquo;t
+have told thee better. They&rsquo;ll grow now like Jack&rsquo;s bean-stalk.
+They&rsquo;re crocuses an&rsquo; snowdrops, an&rsquo; these here is
+narcissuses,&rdquo; turning to another patch, &ldquo;an here&rsquo;s
+daffydowndillys. Eh! they will be a sight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He ran from one clearing to another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; has done a lot o&rsquo; work for such a little wench,&rdquo;
+he said, looking her over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m growing fatter,&rdquo; said Mary, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;m growing
+stronger. I used always to be tired. When I dig I&rsquo;m not tired at all. I
+like to smell the earth when it&rsquo;s turned up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s rare good for thee,&rdquo; he said, nodding his head wisely.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s naught as nice as th&rsquo; smell o&rsquo; good clean
+earth, except th&rsquo; smell o&rsquo; fresh growin&rsquo; things when
+th&rsquo; rain falls on &rsquo;em. I get out on th&rsquo; moor many a day when
+it&rsquo;s rainin&rsquo; an&rsquo; I lie under a bush an&rsquo; listen to
+th&rsquo; soft swish o&rsquo; drops on th&rsquo; heather an&rsquo; I just sniff
+an&rsquo; sniff. My nose end fair quivers like a rabbit&rsquo;s, mother
+says.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you never catch cold?&rdquo; inquired Mary, gazing at him
+wonderingly. She had never seen such a funny boy, or such a nice one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not me,&rdquo; he said, grinning. &ldquo;I never ketched cold since I
+was born. I wasn&rsquo;t brought up nesh enough. I&rsquo;ve chased about
+th&rsquo; moor in all weathers same as th&rsquo; rabbits does. Mother says
+I&rsquo;ve sniffed up too much fresh air for twelve year&rsquo; to ever get to
+sniffin&rsquo; with cold. I&rsquo;m as tough as a white-thorn knobstick.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was working all the time he was talking and Mary was following him and
+helping him with her fork or the trowel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a lot of work to do here!&rdquo; he said once, looking
+about quite exultantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you come again and help me to do it?&rdquo; Mary begged.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure I can help, too. I can dig and pull up weeds, and do
+whatever you tell me. Oh! do come, Dickon!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come every day if tha&rsquo; wants me, rain or shine,&rdquo;
+he answered stoutly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the best fun I ever had in my
+life&mdash;shut in here an&rsquo; wakenin&rsquo; up a garden.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you will come,&rdquo; said Mary, &ldquo;if you will help me to make
+it alive I&rsquo;ll&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know what I&rsquo;ll do,&rdquo; she
+ended helplessly. What could you do for a boy like that?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell thee what tha&rsquo;ll do,&rdquo; said Dickon, with his
+happy grin. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo;ll get fat an&rsquo; tha&rsquo;ll get as hungry as
+a young fox an&rsquo; tha&rsquo;ll learn how to talk to th&rsquo; robin same as
+I do. Eh! we&rsquo;ll have a lot o&rsquo; fun.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He began to walk about, looking up in the trees and at the walls and bushes
+with a thoughtful expression.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t want to make it look like a gardener&rsquo;s garden,
+all clipped an&rsquo; spick an&rsquo; span, would you?&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nicer like this with things runnin&rsquo; wild, an&rsquo;
+swingin&rsquo; an&rsquo; catchin&rsquo; hold of each other.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t let us make it tidy,&rdquo; said Mary anxiously. &ldquo;It
+wouldn&rsquo;t seem like a secret garden if it was tidy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon stood rubbing his rusty-red head with a rather puzzled look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a secret garden sure enough,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but seems
+like someone besides th&rsquo; robin must have been in it since it was shut up
+ten year&rsquo; ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But the door was locked and the key was buried,&rdquo; said Mary.
+&ldquo;No one could get in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a queer place.
+Seems to me as if there&rsquo;d been a bit o&rsquo; prunin&rsquo; done here
+an&rsquo; there, later than ten year&rsquo; ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But how could it have been done?&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was examining a branch of a standard rose and he shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye! how could it!&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;With th&rsquo; door locked
+an&rsquo; th&rsquo; key buried.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are there any flowers that look like bells?&rdquo; she inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lilies o&rsquo; th&rsquo; valley does,&rdquo; he answered, digging away
+with the trowel, &ldquo;an&rsquo; there&rsquo;s Canterbury bells, an&rsquo;
+campanulas.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s plant some,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s lilies o&rsquo; th, valley here already; I saw &rsquo;em.
+They&rsquo;ll have growed too close an&rsquo; we&rsquo;ll have to separate
+&rsquo;em, but there&rsquo;s plenty. Th&rsquo; other ones takes two years to
+bloom from seed, but I can bring you some bits o&rsquo; plants from our cottage
+garden. Why does tha&rsquo; want &rsquo;em?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 &ldquo;Mistress Mary Quite
+Contrary.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They used to dance round and sing at me. They sang&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&lsquo;Mistress Mary, quite contrary,<br />
+    How does your garden grow?<br />
+With silver bells, and cockle shells,<br />
+    And marigolds all in a row.&rsquo;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+I just remembered it and it made me wonder if there were really flowers like
+silver bells.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She frowned a little and gave her trowel a rather spiteful dig into the earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t as contrary as they were.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Dickon laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; he said, and as he crumbled the rich black soil she saw he
+was sniffing up the scent of it. &ldquo;There doesn&rsquo;t seem to be no need
+for no one to be contrary when there&rsquo;s flowers an&rsquo; such like,
+an&rsquo; such lots o&rsquo; friendly wild things runnin&rsquo; about
+makin&rsquo; homes for themselves, or buildin&rsquo; nests an&rsquo;
+singin&rsquo; an&rsquo; whistlin&rsquo;, does there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary, kneeling by him holding the seeds, looked at him and stopped frowning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dickon,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only five folk as tha&rsquo; likes?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Who is
+th&rsquo; other four?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your mother and Martha,&rdquo; Mary checked them off on her fingers,
+&ldquo;and the robin and Ben Weatherstaff.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon laughed so that he was obliged to stifle the sound by putting his arm
+over his mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know tha&rsquo; thinks I&rsquo;m a queer lad,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;but I think tha&rsquo; art th&rsquo; queerest little lass I ever
+saw.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does tha&rsquo; like me?&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; he answered heartily, &ldquo;that I does. I likes thee
+wonderful, an&rsquo; so does th&rsquo; robin, I do believe!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s two, then,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s two for
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall have to go,&rdquo; she said mournfully. &ldquo;And you will have
+to go too, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon grinned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dinner&rsquo;s easy to carry about with me,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Mother always lets me put a bit o&rsquo; somethin&rsquo; in my
+pocket.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s oftenest naught but bread,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but
+I&rsquo;ve got a fine slice o&rsquo; fat bacon with it today.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary thought it looked a queer dinner, but he seemed ready to enjoy it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Run on an&rsquo; get thy victuals,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be
+done with mine first. I&rsquo;ll get some more work done before I start back
+home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat down with his back against a tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll call th&rsquo; robin up,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and give him
+th&rsquo; rind o&rsquo; th&rsquo; bacon to peck at. They likes a bit o&rsquo;
+fat wonderful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whatever happens, you&mdash;you never would tell?&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His poppy-colored cheeks were distended with his first big bite of bread and
+bacon, but he managed to smile encouragingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If tha&rsquo; was a missel thrush an&rsquo; showed me where thy nest
+was, does tha&rsquo; think I&rsquo;d tell anyone? Not me,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; art as safe as a missel thrush.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she was quite sure she was.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII.<br />
+&ldquo;MIGHT I HAVE A BIT OF EARTH?&rdquo;</h2>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo;s a bit late,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Where has tha&rsquo;
+been?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen Dickon!&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen
+Dickon!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I knew he&rsquo;d come,&rdquo; said Martha exultantly. &ldquo;How does
+tha&rsquo; like him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think&mdash;I think he&rsquo;s beautiful!&rdquo; said Mary in a
+determined voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha looked rather taken aback but she looked pleased, too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s th&rsquo; best lad as ever was
+born, but us never thought he was handsome. His nose turns up too much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I like it to turn up,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An&rsquo; his eyes is so round,&rdquo; said Martha, a trifle doubtful.
+&ldquo;Though they&rsquo;re a nice color.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I like them round,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;And they are exactly the
+color of the sky over the moor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha beamed with satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mother says he made &rsquo;em that color with always lookin&rsquo; up at
+th&rsquo; birds an&rsquo; th&rsquo; clouds. But he has got a big mouth,
+hasn&rsquo;t he, now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I love his big mouth,&rdquo; said Mary obstinately. &ldquo;I wish mine
+were just like it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha chuckled delightedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;d look rare an&rsquo; funny in thy bit of a face,&rdquo; she
+said. &ldquo;But I knowed it would be that way when tha&rsquo; saw him. How did
+tha&rsquo; like th&rsquo; seeds an&rsquo; th&rsquo; garden tools?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How did you know he brought them?&rdquo; asked Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! I never thought of him not bringin&rsquo; &rsquo;em. He&rsquo;d be
+sure to bring &rsquo;em if they was in Yorkshire. He&rsquo;s such a trusty
+lad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who did tha&rsquo; ask about it?&rdquo; she inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t asked anybody yet,&rdquo; said Mary, hesitating.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I wouldn&rsquo;t ask th&rsquo; head gardener. He&rsquo;s too
+grand, Mr. Roach is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never seen him,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve only seen
+undergardeners and Ben Weatherstaff.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I was you, I&rsquo;d ask Ben Weatherstaff,&rdquo; advised Martha.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not half as bad as he looks, for all he&rsquo;s so crabbed.
+Mr. Craven lets him do what he likes because he was here when Mrs. Craven was
+alive, an&rsquo; he used to make her laugh. She liked him. Perhaps he&rsquo;d
+find you a corner somewhere out o&rsquo; the way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it was out of the way and no one wanted it, no one <i>could</i> mind
+my having it, could they?&rdquo; Mary said anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There wouldn&rsquo;t be no reason,&rdquo; answered Martha. &ldquo;You
+wouldn&rsquo;t do no harm.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got somethin&rsquo; to tell you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I
+thought I&rsquo;d let you eat your dinner first. Mr. Craven came back this
+mornin&rsquo; and I think he wants to see you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary turned quite pale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Why! Why! He didn&rsquo;t want to see me
+when I came. I heard Pitcher say he didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; explained Martha, &ldquo;Mrs. Medlock says it&rsquo;s
+because o&rsquo; mother. She was walkin&rsquo; to Thwaite village an&rsquo; she
+met him. She&rsquo;d never spoke to him before, but Mrs. Craven had been to our
+cottage two or three times. He&rsquo;d forgot, but mother hadn&rsquo;t
+an&rsquo; she made bold to stop him. I don&rsquo;t know what she said to him
+about you but she said somethin&rsquo; as put him in th&rsquo; mind to see you
+before he goes away again, tomorrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; cried Mary, &ldquo;is he going away tomorrow? I am so
+glad!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; for a long time. He mayn&rsquo;t come back till
+autumn or winter. He&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; to travel in foreign places.
+He&rsquo;s always doin&rsquo; it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! I&rsquo;m so glad&mdash;so glad!&rdquo; said Mary thankfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When do you think he will want to see&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your hair&rsquo;s rough,&rdquo; she said quickly. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the pink left Mary&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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, &ldquo;Come in,&rdquo; they
+entered the room together. A man was sitting in an armchair before the fire,
+and Mrs. Medlock spoke to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is Miss Mary, sir,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can go and leave her here. I will ring for you when I want you to
+take her away,&rdquo; said Mr. Craven.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come here!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary went to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you well?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do they take good care of you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rubbed his forehead fretfully as he looked her over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are very thin,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am getting fatter,&rdquo; Mary answered in what she knew was her
+stiffest way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I forgot you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;How could I remember you? I
+intended to send you a governess or a nurse, or someone of that sort, but I
+forgot.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Please,&rdquo; began Mary. &ldquo;Please&mdash;&rdquo; and then the lump
+in her throat choked her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you want to say?&rdquo; he inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am&mdash;I am too big for a nurse,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;And
+please&mdash;please don&rsquo;t make me have a governess yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rubbed his forehead again and stared at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was what the Sowerby woman said,&rdquo; he muttered absent-mindedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Mary gathered a scrap of courage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is she&mdash;is she Martha&rsquo;s mother?&rdquo; she stammered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I think so,&rdquo; he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She knows about children,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;She has twelve. She
+knows.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He seemed to rouse himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you want to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want to play out of doors,&rdquo; Mary answered, hoping that her voice
+did not tremble. &ldquo;I never liked it in India. It makes me hungry here, and
+I am getting fatter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was watching her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Sowerby said it would do you good. Perhaps it will,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;She thought you had better get stronger before you had a
+governess.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It makes me feel strong when I play and the wind comes over the
+moor,&rdquo; argued Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where do you play?&rdquo; he asked next.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everywhere,&rdquo; gasped Mary. &ldquo;Martha&rsquo;s mother sent me a
+skipping-rope. I skip and run&mdash;and I look about to see if things are
+beginning to stick up out of the earth. I don&rsquo;t do any harm.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t look so frightened,&rdquo; he said in a worried voice.
+&ldquo;You could not do any harm, a child like you! You may do what you
+like.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May I?&rdquo; she said tremulously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her anxious little face seemed to worry him more than ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t look so frightened,&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She knows all about children,&rdquo; Mary said again in spite of
+herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She ought to,&rdquo; said Mr. Craven. &ldquo;I thought her rather bold
+to stop me on the moor, but she said&mdash;Mrs. Craven had been kind to
+her.&rdquo; It seemed hard for him to speak his dead wife&rsquo;s name.
+&ldquo;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&rsquo;s a big place
+and you may go where you like and amuse yourself as you like. Is there anything
+you want?&rdquo; as if a sudden thought had struck him. &ldquo;Do you want
+toys, books, dolls?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Might I,&rdquo; quavered Mary, &ldquo;might I have a bit of
+earth?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Earth!&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To plant seeds in&mdash;to make things grow&mdash;to see them come
+alive,&rdquo; Mary faltered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gazed at her a moment and then passed his hand quickly over his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you&mdash;care about gardens so much,&rdquo; he said slowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know about them in India,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Craven got up and began to walk slowly across the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A bit of earth,&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can have as much earth as you want,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You
+remind me of someone else who loved the earth and things that grow. When you
+see a bit of earth you want,&rdquo; with something like a smile, &ldquo;take
+it, child, and make it come alive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May I take it from anywhere&mdash;if it&rsquo;s not wanted?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Anywhere,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;There! You must go now, I am
+tired.&rdquo; He touched the bell to call Mrs. Medlock. &ldquo;Good-by. I shall
+be away all summer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Medlock came so quickly that Mary thought she must have been waiting in
+the corridor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Medlock,&rdquo; Mr. Craven said to her, &ldquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Medlock looked pleased. She was relieved to hear that she need not
+&ldquo;look after&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Susan Sowerby and me went to
+school together and she&rsquo;s as sensible and good-hearted a woman as
+you&rsquo;d find in a day&rsquo;s walk. I never had any children myself and
+she&rsquo;s had twelve, and there never was healthier or better ones. Miss Mary
+can get no harm from them. I&rsquo;d always take Susan Sowerby&rsquo;s advice
+about children myself. She&rsquo;s what you might call healthy-minded&mdash;if
+you understand me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; Mr. Craven answered. &ldquo;Take Miss Mary away now
+and send Pitcher to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can have my garden!&rdquo; cried Mary. &ldquo;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&mdash;anywhere!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said Martha delightedly, &ldquo;that was nice of him
+wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Martha,&rdquo; said Mary solemnly, &ldquo;he is really a nice man, only
+his face is so miserable and his forehead is all drawn together.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;except for the robin who had just flown across the wall and sat on
+a standard rose-bush watching her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s gone,&rdquo; she said woefully. &ldquo;Oh! was he&mdash;was
+he&mdash;was he only a wood fairy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will cum bak.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.<br />
+&ldquo;I AM COLIN&rdquo;</h2>
+
+<p>
+Mary took the picture back to the house when she went to her supper and she
+showed it to Martha.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said Martha with great pride. &ldquo;I never knew our Dickon
+was as clever as that. That there&rsquo;s a picture of a missel thrush on her
+nest, as large as life an&rsquo; twice as natural.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hoped he would come back the very next day and she fell asleep looking
+forward to the morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 &ldquo;wuthering&rdquo; round the corners and in the chimneys of the huge
+old house. Mary sat up in bed and felt miserable and angry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The rain is as contrary as I ever was,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It came
+because it knew I did not want it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 &ldquo;wuthering.&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;wuthered&rdquo; and
+how the big raindrops poured down and beat against the pane!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It sounds just like a person lost on the moor and wandering on and on
+crying,&rdquo; she said.<br /><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t the wind now,&rdquo; she said in a loud whisper.
+&ldquo;That isn&rsquo;t the wind. It is different. It is that crying I heard
+before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am going to find out what it is,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Everybody is
+in bed and I don&rsquo;t care about Mrs. Medlock&mdash;I don&rsquo;t
+care!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she walked to the door and pushed it open, and there she was standing in the
+room!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary wondered if she was in a real place or if she had fallen asleep again and
+was dreaming without knowing it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s attention and he turned his head on his pillow and stared at her,
+his gray eyes opening so wide that they seemed immense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; he said at last in a half-frightened whisper.
+&ldquo;Are you a ghost?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I am not,&rdquo; Mary answered, her own whisper sounding half
+frightened. &ldquo;Are you one?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he replied after waiting a moment or so. &ldquo;I am
+Colin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who is Colin?&rdquo; she faltered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am Colin Craven. Who are you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am Mary Lennox. Mr. Craven is my uncle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is my father,&rdquo; said the boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your father!&rdquo; gasped Mary. &ldquo;No one ever told me he had a
+boy! Why didn&rsquo;t they?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come here,&rdquo; he said, still keeping his strange eyes fixed on her
+with an anxious expression.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She came close to the bed and he put out his hand and touched her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are real, aren&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I have such real
+dreams very often. You might be one of them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary had slipped on a woolen wrapper before she left her room and she put a
+piece of it between his fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rub that and see how thick and warm it is,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where did you come from?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;From my own room. The wind wuthered so I couldn&rsquo;t go to sleep and
+I heard someone crying and wanted to find out who it was. What were you crying
+for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I couldn&rsquo;t go to sleep either and my head ached. Tell me
+your name again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mary Lennox. Did no one ever tell you I had come to live here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was still fingering the fold of her wrapper, but he began to look a little
+more as if he believed in her reality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;They daren&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I should have been afraid you would see me. I won&rsquo;t let
+people see me and talk me over.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; Mary asked again, feeling more mystified every moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I am like this always, ill and having to lie down. My father
+won&rsquo;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&rsquo;t live. My
+father hates to think I may be like him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, what a queer house this is!&rdquo; Mary said. &ldquo;What a queer
+house! Everything is a kind of secret. Rooms are locked up and gardens are
+locked up&mdash;and you! Have you been locked up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. I stay in this room because I don&rsquo;t want to be moved out of
+it. It tires me too much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does your father come and see you?&rdquo; Mary ventured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sometimes. Generally when I am asleep. He doesn&rsquo;t want to see
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; Mary could not help asking again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sort of angry shadow passed over the boy&rsquo;s face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My mother died when I was born and it makes him wretched to look at me.
+He thinks I don&rsquo;t know, but I&rsquo;ve heard people talking. He almost
+hates me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He hates the garden, because she died,&rdquo; said Mary half speaking to
+herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What garden?&rdquo; the boy asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! just&mdash;just a garden she used to like,&rdquo; Mary stammered.
+&ldquo;Have you been here always?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nearly always. Sometimes I have been taken to places at the seaside, but
+I won&rsquo;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&rsquo;t want to go out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t when first I came here,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;Why do
+you keep looking at me like that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because of the dreams that are so real,&rdquo; he answered rather
+fretfully. &ldquo;Sometimes when I open my eyes I don&rsquo;t believe I&rsquo;m
+awake.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re both awake,&rdquo; said Mary. She glanced round the room
+with its high ceiling and shadowy corners and dim fire-light. &ldquo;It looks
+quite like a dream, and it&rsquo;s the middle of the night, and everybody in
+the house is asleep&mdash;everybody but us. We are wide awake.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want it to be a dream,&rdquo; the boy said restlessly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary thought of something all at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t like people to see you,&rdquo; she began, &ldquo;do
+you want me to go away?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He still held the fold of her wrapper and he gave it a little pull.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you want me to tell you?&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everyone is obliged to do what pleases me,&rdquo; he said indifferently.
+&ldquo;It makes me ill to be angry. No one believes I shall live to grow
+up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How old are you?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am ten,&rdquo; answered Mary, forgetting herself for the moment,
+&ldquo;and so are you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you know that?&rdquo; he demanded in a surprised voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because when you were born the garden door was locked and the key was
+buried. And it has been locked for ten years.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin half sat up, turning toward her, leaning on his elbows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What garden door was locked? Who did it? Where was the key
+buried?&rdquo; he exclaimed as if he were suddenly very much interested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&mdash;it was the garden Mr. Craven hates,&rdquo; said Mary nervously.
+&ldquo;He locked the door. No one&mdash;no one knew where he buried the
+key.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What sort of a garden is it?&rdquo; Colin persisted eagerly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No one has been allowed to go into it for ten years,&rdquo; was
+Mary&rsquo;s careful answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They won&rsquo;t talk about it,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I think they
+have been told not to answer questions.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would make them,&rdquo; said Colin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Could you?&rdquo; Mary faltered, beginning to feel frightened. If he
+could make people answer questions, who knew what might happen!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everyone is obliged to please me. I told you that,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;If I were to live, this place would sometime belong to me. They all know
+that. I would make them tell me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think you won&rsquo;t live?&rdquo; she asked, partly because she
+was curious and partly in hope of making him forget the garden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose I shall,&rdquo; he answered as indifferently as he
+had spoken before. &ldquo;Ever since I remember anything I have heard people
+say I shan&rsquo;t. At first they thought I was too little to understand and
+now they think I don&rsquo;t hear. But I do. My doctor is my father&rsquo;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&rsquo;t want me to live.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you want to live?&rdquo; inquired Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered, in a cross, tired fashion. &ldquo;But I
+don&rsquo;t want to die. When I feel ill I lie here and think about it until I
+cry and cry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have heard you crying three times,&rdquo; Mary said, &ldquo;but I did
+not know who it was. Were you crying about that?&rdquo; She did so want him to
+forget the garden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I dare say,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Let us talk about something else.
+Talk about that garden. Don&rsquo;t you want to see it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Mary, in quite a low voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do,&rdquo; he went on persistently. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had become quite excited and his strange eyes began to shine like stars and
+looked more immense than ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They have to please me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I will make them take me
+there and I will let you go, too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary&rsquo;s hands clutched each other. Everything would be
+spoiled&mdash;everything! Dickon would never come back. She would never again
+feel like a missel thrush with a safe-hidden nest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t&mdash;don&rsquo;t&mdash;don&rsquo;t&mdash;don&rsquo;t do
+that!&rdquo; she cried out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stared as if he thought she had gone crazy!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;You said you wanted to see it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do,&rdquo; she answered almost with a sob in her throat, &ldquo;but if
+you make them open the door and take you in like that it will never be a secret
+again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He leaned still farther forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A secret,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What do you mean? Tell me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary&rsquo;s words almost tumbled over one another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see&mdash;you see,&rdquo; she panted, &ldquo;if no one knows but
+ourselves&mdash;if there was a door, hidden somewhere under the ivy&mdash;if
+there was&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it dead?&rdquo; he interrupted her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It soon will be if no one cares for it,&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;The
+bulbs will live but the roses&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stopped her again as excited as she was herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are bulbs?&rdquo; he put in quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are daffodils and lilies and snowdrops. They are working in the
+earth now&mdash;pushing up pale green points because the spring is
+coming.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is the spring coming?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What is it like? You
+don&rsquo;t see it in rooms if you are ill.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine,
+and things pushing up and working under the earth,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;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&rsquo;t you see? Oh,
+don&rsquo;t you see how much nicer it would be if it was a secret?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dropped back on his pillow and lay there with an odd expression on his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never had a secret,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;except that one about not
+living to grow up. They don&rsquo;t know I know that, so it is a sort of
+secret. But I like this kind better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you won&rsquo;t make them take you to the garden,&rdquo; pleaded
+Mary, &ldquo;perhaps&mdash;I feel almost sure I can find out how to get in
+sometime. And then&mdash;if the doctor wants you to go out in your chair, and
+if you can always do what you want to do, perhaps&mdash;perhaps we might find
+some boy who would push you, and we could go alone and it would always be a
+secret garden.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should&mdash;like&mdash;that,&rdquo; he said very slowly, his eyes
+looking dreamy. &ldquo;I should like that. I should not mind fresh air in a
+secret garden.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you what I <i>think</i> it would be like, if we could go
+into it,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It has been shut up so long things have grown
+into a tangle perhaps.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lay quite still and listened while she went on talking about the roses which
+<i>might</i> have clambered from tree to tree and hung down&mdash;about the
+many birds which <i>might</i> 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did not know birds could be like that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am going to let you look at something,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Do you
+see that rose-colored silk curtain hanging on the wall over the
+mantel-piece?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is a cord hanging from it,&rdquo; said Colin. &ldquo;Go and pull
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s unhappy
+ones, agate gray and looking twice as big as they really were because of the
+black lashes all round them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is my mother,&rdquo; said Colin complainingly. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+see why she died. Sometimes I hate her for doing it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How queer!&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If she had lived I believe I should not have been ill always,&rdquo; he
+grumbled. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary did as she was told and returned to her footstool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is much prettier than you,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but her eyes are
+just like yours&mdash;at least they are the same shape and color. Why is the
+curtain drawn over her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He moved uncomfortably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I made them do it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Sometimes I don&rsquo;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&rsquo;t want everyone to see her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were a few moments of silence and then Mary spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What would Mrs. Medlock do if she found out that I had been here?&rdquo;
+she inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She would do as I told her to do,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;And I
+should tell her that I wanted you to come here and talk to me every day. I am
+glad you came.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So am I,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I will come as often as I can,
+but&rdquo;&mdash;she hesitated&mdash;&ldquo;I shall have to look every day for
+the garden door.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, you must,&rdquo; said Colin, &ldquo;and you can tell me about it
+afterward.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lay thinking a few minutes, as he had done before, and then he spoke again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think you shall be a secret, too,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I know her very well,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;She waits on
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded his head toward the outer corridor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Mary understood Martha&rsquo;s troubled look when she had asked questions
+about the crying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Martha knew about you all the time?&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; she often attends to me. The nurse likes to get away from me and
+then Martha comes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been here a long time,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;Shall I go away
+now? Your eyes look sleepy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish I could go to sleep before you leave me,&rdquo; he said rather
+shyly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shut your eyes,&rdquo; said Mary, drawing her footstool closer,
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should like that perhaps,&rdquo; he said drowsily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is nice,&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.<br />
+A YOUNG RAJAH</h2>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with thee?&rdquo; she asked as soon as they sat
+down. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo; looks as if tha&rsquo;d somethin&rsquo; to say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have. I have found out what the crying was,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha let her knitting drop on her knee and gazed at her with startled eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; hasn&rsquo;t!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Never!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I heard it in the night,&rdquo; Mary went on. &ldquo;And I got up and
+went to see where it came from. It was Colin. I found him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha&rsquo;s face became red with fright.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! Miss Mary!&rdquo; she said half crying. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo;
+shouldn&rsquo;t have done it&mdash;tha&rsquo; shouldn&rsquo;t! Tha&rsquo;ll get
+me in trouble. I never told thee nothin&rsquo; about him&mdash;but tha&rsquo;ll
+get me in trouble. I shall lose my place and what&rsquo;ll mother do!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You won&rsquo;t lose your place,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;He was glad I
+came. We talked and talked and he said he was glad I came.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was he?&rdquo; cried Martha. &ldquo;Art tha&rsquo; sure? Tha&rsquo;
+doesn&rsquo;t know what he&rsquo;s like when anything vexes him. He&rsquo;s a
+big lad to cry like a baby, but when he&rsquo;s in a passion he&rsquo;ll fair
+scream just to frighten us. He knows us daren&rsquo;t call our souls our
+own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He wasn&rsquo;t vexed,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;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&rsquo;t let me go. He let me see his mother&rsquo;s picture. Before I
+left him I sang him to sleep.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha fairly gasped with amazement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can scarcely believe thee!&rdquo; she protested. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s as
+if tha&rsquo;d walked straight into a lion&rsquo;s den. If he&rsquo;d been like
+he is most times he&rsquo;d have throwed himself into one of his tantrums and
+roused th&rsquo; house. He won&rsquo;t let strangers look at him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He let me look at him. I looked at him all the time and he looked at me.
+We stared!&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what to do!&rdquo; cried agitated Martha. &ldquo;If
+Mrs. Medlock finds out, she&rsquo;ll think I broke orders and told thee and I
+shall be packed back to mother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is not going to tell Mrs. Medlock anything about it yet. It&rsquo;s
+to be a sort of secret just at first,&rdquo; said Mary firmly. &ldquo;And he
+says everybody is obliged to do as he pleases.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, that&rsquo;s true enough&mdash;th&rsquo; bad lad!&rdquo; sighed
+Martha, wiping her forehead with her apron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Me!&rdquo; said Martha; &ldquo;I shall lose my place&mdash;I shall for
+sure!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t if you are doing what he wants you to do and everybody
+is ordered to obey him,&rdquo; Mary argued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does tha&rsquo; mean to say,&rdquo; cried Martha with wide open eyes,
+&ldquo;that he was nice to thee!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think he almost liked me,&rdquo; Mary answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then tha&rsquo; must have bewitched him!&rdquo; decided Martha, drawing
+a long breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean Magic?&rdquo; inquired Mary. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard about
+Magic in India, but I can&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Th&rsquo; world&rsquo;s comin&rsquo; to a end!&rdquo; gasped Martha.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is the matter with him?&rdquo; asked Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nobody knows for sure and certain,&rdquo; said Martha. &ldquo;Mr. Craven
+went off his head like when he was born. Th&rsquo; doctors thought he&rsquo;d
+have to be put in a &rsquo;sylum. It was because Mrs. Craven died like I told
+you. He wouldn&rsquo;t set eyes on th&rsquo; baby. He just raved and said
+it&rsquo;d be another hunchback like him and it&rsquo;d better die.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is Colin a hunchback?&rdquo; Mary asked. &ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t look
+like one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He isn&rsquo;t yet,&rdquo; said Martha. &ldquo;But he began all wrong.
+Mother said that there was enough trouble and raging in th&rsquo; house to set
+any child wrong. They was afraid his back was weak an&rsquo; they&rsquo;ve
+always been takin&rsquo; care of it&mdash;keepin&rsquo; him lyin&rsquo; down
+and not lettin&rsquo; 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&rsquo; made them
+take it off. He talked to th&rsquo; other doctor quite rough&mdash;in a polite
+way. He said there&rsquo;d been too much medicine and too much lettin&rsquo;
+him have his own way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think he&rsquo;s a very spoiled boy,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s th&rsquo; worst young nowt as ever was!&rdquo; said Martha.
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t say as he hasn&rsquo;t been ill a good bit. He&rsquo;s had
+coughs an&rsquo; colds that&rsquo;s nearly killed him two or three times. Once
+he had rheumatic fever an&rsquo; once he had typhoid. Eh! Mrs. Medlock did get
+a fright then. He&rsquo;d been out of his head an&rsquo; she was talkin&rsquo;
+to th&rsquo; nurse, thinkin&rsquo; he didn&rsquo;t know nothin&rsquo;,
+an&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;He&rsquo;ll die this time sure enough, an&rsquo;
+best thing for him an&rsquo; for everybody.&rsquo; An&rsquo; she looked at him
+an&rsquo; there he was with his big eyes open, starin&rsquo; at her as sensible
+as she was herself. She didn&rsquo;t know wha&rsquo;d happen but he just stared
+at her an&rsquo; says, &lsquo;You give me some water an&rsquo; stop
+talkin&rsquo;.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think he will die?&rdquo; asked Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mother says there&rsquo;s no reason why any child should live that gets
+no fresh air an&rsquo; doesn&rsquo;t do nothin&rsquo; but lie on his back
+an&rsquo; read picture-books an&rsquo; take medicine. He&rsquo;s weak and hates
+th&rsquo; trouble o&rsquo; bein&rsquo; taken out o&rsquo; doors, an&rsquo; he
+gets cold so easy he says it makes him ill.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary sat and looked at the fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; she said slowly, &ldquo;if it would not do him good to
+go out into a garden and watch things growing. It did me good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One of th&rsquo; worst fits he ever had,&rdquo; said Martha, &ldquo;was
+one time they took him out where the roses is by the fountain. He&rsquo;d been
+readin&rsquo; in a paper about people gettin&rsquo; somethin&rsquo; he called
+&lsquo;rose cold&rsquo; an&rsquo; he began to sneeze an&rsquo; said he&rsquo;d
+got it an&rsquo; then a new gardener as didn&rsquo;t know th&rsquo; rules
+passed by an&rsquo; looked at him curious. He threw himself into a passion
+an&rsquo; he said he&rsquo;d looked at him because he was going to be a
+hunchback. He cried himself into a fever an&rsquo; was ill all night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If he ever gets angry at me, I&rsquo;ll never go and see him
+again,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll have thee if he wants thee,&rdquo; said Martha.
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; may as well know that at th&rsquo; start.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very soon afterward a bell rang and she rolled up her knitting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I dare say th&rsquo; nurse wants me to stay with him a bit,&rdquo; she
+said. &ldquo;I hope he&rsquo;s in a good temper.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was out of the room about ten minutes and then she came back with a puzzled
+expression.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, tha&rsquo; has bewitched him,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s
+up on his sofa with his picture-books. He&rsquo;s told the nurse to stay away
+until six o&rsquo;clock. I&rsquo;m to wait in the next room. Th&rsquo; minute
+she was gone he called me to him an&rsquo; says, &lsquo;I want Mary Lennox to
+come and talk to me, and remember you&rsquo;re not to tell anyone.&rsquo;
+You&rsquo;d better go as quick as you can.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come in,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been thinking about you all
+morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been thinking about you, too,&rdquo; answered Mary.
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know how frightened Martha is. She says Mrs. Medlock
+will think she told me about you and then she will be sent away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He frowned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go and tell her to come here,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;She is in the next
+room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary went and brought her back. Poor Martha was shaking in her shoes. Colin was
+still frowning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you to do what I please or have you not?&rdquo; he demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have to do what you please, sir,&rdquo; Martha faltered, turning quite
+red.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Has Medlock to do what I please?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everybody has, sir,&rdquo; said Martha.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, if I order you to bring Miss Mary to me, how can Medlock
+send you away if she finds it out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t let her, sir,&rdquo; pleaded Martha.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll send <i>her</i> away if she dares to say a word about such a
+thing,&rdquo; said Master Craven grandly. &ldquo;She wouldn&rsquo;t like that,
+I can tell you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir,&rdquo; bobbing a curtsy, &ldquo;I want to do my duty,
+sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What I want is your duty&rdquo; said Colin more grandly still.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll take care of you. Now go away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the door closed behind Martha, Colin found Mistress Mary gazing at him as
+if he had set her wondering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why do you look at me like that?&rdquo; he asked her. &ldquo;What are
+you thinking about?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am thinking about two things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are they? Sit down and tell me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is the first one,&rdquo; said Mary, seating herself on the big
+stool. &ldquo;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&mdash;in a minute.
+I think they would have been killed if they hadn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall make you tell me about Rajahs presently,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;but first tell me what the second thing was.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was thinking,&rdquo; said Mary, &ldquo;how different you are from
+Dickon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who is Dickon?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What a queer name!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is Martha&rsquo;s brother. He is twelve years old,&rdquo; she
+explained. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were some big books on a table at his side and he dragged one suddenly
+toward him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is a picture of a snake-charmer in this,&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+&ldquo;Come and look at it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The book was a beautiful one with superb colored illustrations and he turned to
+one of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can he do that?&rdquo; he asked eagerly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He played on his pipe and they listened,&rdquo; Mary explained.
+&ldquo;But he doesn&rsquo;t call it Magic. He says it&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin lay back on his cushion and his eyes grew larger and larger and the spots
+on his cheeks burned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me some more about him,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He knows all about eggs and nests,&rdquo; Mary went on. &ldquo;And he
+knows where foxes and badgers and otters live. He keeps them secret so that
+other boys won&rsquo;t find their holes and frighten them. He knows about
+everything that grows or lives on the moor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does he like the moor?&rdquo; said Colin. &ldquo;How can he when
+it&rsquo;s such a great, bare, dreary place?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the most beautiful place,&rdquo; protested Mary.
+&ldquo;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&rsquo;s their world.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you know all that?&rdquo; said Colin, turning on his elbow to
+look at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have never been there once, really,&rdquo; said Mary suddenly
+remembering. &ldquo;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&mdash;and all
+full of bees and butterflies.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You never see anything if you are ill,&rdquo; said Colin restlessly. He
+looked like a person listening to a new sound in the distance and wondering
+what it was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t if you stay in a room,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t go on the moor,&rdquo; he said in a resentful tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary was silent for a minute and then she said something bold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You might&mdash;sometime.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He moved as if he were startled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go on the moor! How could I? I am going to die.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you know?&rdquo; said Mary unsympathetically. She didn&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;ve heard it ever since I remember,&rdquo; he answered
+crossly. &ldquo;They are always whispering about it and thinking I don&rsquo;t
+notice. They wish I would, too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mistress Mary felt quite contrary. She pinched her lips together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If they wished I would,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t. Who
+wishes you would?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The servants&mdash;and of course Dr. Craven because he would get
+Misselthwaite and be rich instead of poor. He daren&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe he does,&rdquo; said Mary quite obstinately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That made Colin turn and look at her again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I like the grand doctor from London, because he made them take the iron
+thing off,&rdquo; said Mary at last &ldquo;Did he say you were going to
+die?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did he say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t whisper,&rdquo; Colin answered. &ldquo;Perhaps he knew I
+hated whispering. I heard him say one thing quite aloud. He said, &lsquo;The
+lad might live if he would make up his mind to it. Put him in the humor.&rsquo;
+It sounded as if he was in a temper.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you who would put you in the humor, perhaps,&rdquo; said
+Mary reflecting. She felt as if she would like this thing to be settled one way
+or the other. &ldquo;I believe Dickon would. He&rsquo;s always talking about
+live things. He never talks about dead things or things that are ill.
+He&rsquo;s always looking up in the sky to watch birds flying&mdash;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&mdash;and his cheeks are as red&mdash;as red as cherries.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See here,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t let us talk about dying; I
+don&rsquo;t like it. Let us talk about living. Let us talk and talk about
+Dickon. And then we will look at your pictures.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;and the children who got fat on the moor grass
+like the wild ponies. And about Dickon&rsquo;s mother&mdash;and the
+skipping-rope&mdash;and the moor with the sun on it&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;instead of a hard, little,
+unloving girl and a sickly boy who believed that he was going to die.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know there is one thing we have never once thought of,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;We are cousins.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Craven started in actual alarm and Mrs. Medlock almost fell back because he
+had accidentally bumped against her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good Lord!&rdquo; exclaimed poor Mrs. Medlock with her eyes almost
+starting out of her head. &ldquo;Good Lord!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is this?&rdquo; said Dr. Craven, coming forward. &ldquo;What does
+it mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Mary was reminded of the boy Rajah again. Colin answered as if neither the
+doctor&rsquo;s alarm nor Mrs. Medlock&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is my cousin, Mary Lennox,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I asked her to
+come and talk to me. I like her. She must come and talk to me whenever I send
+for her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Craven turned reproachfully to Mrs. Medlock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, sir&rdquo; she panted. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how it&rsquo;s
+happened. There&rsquo;s not a servant on the place tha&rsquo;d dare to
+talk&mdash;they all have their orders.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nobody told her anything,&rdquo; said Colin. &ldquo;She heard me crying
+and found me herself. I am glad she came. Don&rsquo;t be silly, Medlock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am afraid there has been too much excitement. Excitement is not good
+for you, my boy,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should be excited if she kept away,&rdquo; answered Colin, his eyes
+beginning to look dangerously sparkling. &ldquo;I am better. She makes me
+better. The nurse must bring up her tea with mine. We will have tea
+together.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Medlock and Dr. Craven looked at each other in a troubled way, but there
+was evidently nothing to be done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He does look rather better, sir,&rdquo; ventured Mrs. Medlock.
+&ldquo;But&rdquo;&mdash;thinking the matter over&mdash;&ldquo;he looked better
+this morning before she came into the room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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,&rdquo; said Colin.
+&ldquo;I was better when I wakened up. I wanted my breakfast. I want my tea
+now. Tell nurse, Medlock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin looked fretful and kept his strange black-lashed eyes fixed on Dr.
+Craven&rsquo;s face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I <i>want</i> to forget it,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;She makes me
+forget it. That is why I want her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;and he sighed rather heavily
+as he went down the corridor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are always wanting me to eat things when I don&rsquo;t want
+to,&rdquo; said Colin, as the nurse brought in the tea and put it on the table
+by the sofa. &ldquo;Now, if you&rsquo;ll eat I will. Those muffins look so nice
+and hot. Tell me about Rajahs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV.<br />
+NEST BUILDING</h2>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are a sly young one to listen and get out of your bed to go
+following things up like you did that night,&rdquo; Mrs. Medlock said once.
+&ldquo;But there&rsquo;s no saying it&rsquo;s not been a sort of blessing to
+the lot of us. He&rsquo;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&rsquo;t mind staying now you&rsquo;ve gone on
+duty with her,&rdquo; laughing a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;if he really could&mdash;wouldn&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Th&rsquo; air from th&rsquo; moor has done thee good already,&rdquo; she
+had said. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo;rt not nigh so yeller and tha&rsquo;rt not nigh so
+scrawny. Even tha&rsquo; hair doesn&rsquo;t slamp down on tha&rsquo; head so
+flat. It&rsquo;s got some life in it so as it sticks out a bit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s like me,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s growing stronger
+and fatter. I&rsquo;m sure there&rsquo;s more of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It looks it, for sure,&rdquo; said Martha, ruffling it up a little round
+her face. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo;rt not half so ugly when it&rsquo;s that way
+an&rsquo; there&rsquo;s a bit o&rsquo; red in tha&rsquo; cheeks.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why does it make you angry when you are looked at?&rdquo; she inquired
+one day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I always hated it,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;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&rsquo;t
+live to grow up. Then sometimes the ladies would pat my cheeks and say
+&lsquo;Poor child!&rsquo; Once when a lady did that I screamed out loud and bit
+her hand. She was so frightened she ran away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She thought you had gone mad like a dog,&rdquo; said Mary, not at all
+admiringly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care what she thought,&rdquo; said Colin, frowning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wonder why you didn&rsquo;t scream and bite me when I came into your
+room?&rdquo; said Mary. Then she began to smile slowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought you were a ghost or a dream,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You
+can&rsquo;t bite a ghost or a dream, and if you scream they don&rsquo;t
+care.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you hate it if&mdash;if a boy looked at you?&rdquo; Mary asked
+uncertainly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lay back on his cushion and paused thoughtfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s one boy,&rdquo; he said quite slowly, as if he were
+thinking over every word, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s one boy I believe I
+shouldn&rsquo;t mind. It&rsquo;s that boy who knows where the foxes
+live&mdash;Dickon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure you wouldn&rsquo;t mind him,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The birds don&rsquo;t and other animals,&rdquo; he said, still thinking
+it over, &ldquo;perhaps that&rsquo;s why I shouldn&rsquo;t. He&rsquo;s a sort
+of animal charmer and I am a boy animal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What Mary felt afterward was that she need not fear about Dickon.<br /><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s warm&mdash;warm!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s mother had said about the end of his nose quivering like a
+rabbit&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It must be very early,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;The little clouds are all
+pink and I&rsquo;ve never seen the sky look like this. No one is up. I
+don&rsquo;t even hear the stable boys.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sudden thought made her scramble to her feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t wait! I am going to see the garden!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is all different already,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary flew across the grass to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Dickon! Dickon!&rdquo; she cried out. &ldquo;How could you get here
+so early! How could you! The sun has only just got up!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He got up himself, laughing and glowing, and tousled; his eyes like a bit of
+the sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was up long before him. How could I have
+stayed abed! Th&rsquo; world&rsquo;s all fair begun again this mornin&rsquo;,
+it has. An&rsquo; it&rsquo;s workin&rsquo; an&rsquo; hummin&rsquo; an&rsquo;
+scratchin&rsquo; an&rsquo; pipin&rsquo; an&rsquo; nest-buildin&rsquo; an&rsquo;
+breathin&rsquo; out scents, till you&rsquo;ve got to be out on it &rsquo;stead
+o&rsquo; lyin&rsquo; on your back. When th&rsquo; sun did jump up, th&rsquo;
+moor went mad for joy, an&rsquo; I was in the midst of th&rsquo; heather,
+an&rsquo; I run like mad myself, shoutin&rsquo; an&rsquo; singin&rsquo;.
+An&rsquo; I come straight here. I couldn&rsquo;t have stayed away. Why,
+th&rsquo; garden was lyin&rsquo; here waitin&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary put her hands on her chest, panting, as if she had been running herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Dickon! Dickon!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so happy I can
+scarcely breathe!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is th&rsquo; little fox cub,&rdquo; he said, rubbing the little
+reddish animal&rsquo;s head. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s named Captain. An&rsquo; this
+here&rsquo;s Soot. Soot he flew across th&rsquo; moor with me an&rsquo; Captain
+he run same as if th&rsquo; hounds had been after him. They both felt same as I
+did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See here!&rdquo; said Dickon. &ldquo;See how these has pushed up,
+an&rsquo; these an&rsquo; these! An&rsquo; Eh! Look at these here!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You never kiss a person in that way,&rdquo; she said when she lifted her
+head. &ldquo;Flowers are so different.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked puzzled but smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve kissed mother many a time that way
+when I come in from th&rsquo; moor after a day&rsquo;s roamin&rsquo; an&rsquo;
+she stood there at th&rsquo; door in th&rsquo; sun, lookin&rsquo; so glad
+an&rsquo; comfortable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s hair was as tumbled as Dickon&rsquo;s and her cheeks were almost
+as poppy red as his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We munnot stir,&rdquo; he whispered in broad Yorkshire. &ldquo;We munnot
+scarce breathe. I knowed he was mate-huntin&rsquo; when I seed him last.
+It&rsquo;s Ben Weatherstaff&rsquo;s robin. He&rsquo;s buildin&rsquo; his nest.
+He&rsquo;ll stay here if us don&rsquo;t flight him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They settled down softly upon the grass and sat there without moving.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Us mustn&rsquo;t seem as if us was watchin&rsquo; him too close,&rdquo;
+said Dickon. &ldquo;He&rsquo;d be out with us for good if he got th&rsquo;
+notion us was interferin&rsquo; now. He&rsquo;ll be a good bit different till
+all this is over. He&rsquo;s settin&rsquo; up housekeepin&rsquo;. He&rsquo;ll
+be shyer an&rsquo; readier to take things ill. He&rsquo;s got no time for
+visitin&rsquo; an&rsquo; gossipin&rsquo;. Us must keep still a bit an&rsquo;
+try to look as if us was grass an&rsquo; trees an&rsquo; bushes. Then when
+he&rsquo;s got used to seein&rsquo; us I&rsquo;ll chirp a bit an&rsquo;
+he&rsquo;ll know us&rsquo;ll not be in his way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s part o&rsquo; th&rsquo; springtime, this nest-buildin&rsquo;
+is,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I warrant it&rsquo;s been goin&rsquo; on in
+th&rsquo; same way every year since th&rsquo; world was begun. They&rsquo;ve
+got their way o&rsquo; thinkin&rsquo; and doin&rsquo; things an&rsquo; a body
+had better not meddle. You can lose a friend in springtime easier than any
+other season if you&rsquo;re too curious.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If we talk about him I can&rsquo;t help looking at him,&rdquo; Mary said
+as softly as possible. &ldquo;We must talk of something else. There is
+something I want to tell you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll like it better if us talks o&rsquo; somethin&rsquo;
+else,&rdquo; said Dickon. &ldquo;What is it tha&rsquo;s got to tell me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well&mdash;do you know about Colin?&rdquo; she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned his head to look at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does tha&rsquo; know about him?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen him. I have been to talk to him every day this week. He
+wants me to come. He says I&rsquo;m making him forget about being ill and
+dying,&rdquo; answered Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon looked actually relieved as soon as the surprise died away from his
+round face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am glad o&rsquo; that,&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m right
+down glad. It makes me easier. I knowed I must say nothin&rsquo; about him
+an&rsquo; I don&rsquo;t like havin&rsquo; to hide things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you like hiding the garden?&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll never tell about it,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;But I says to
+mother, &lsquo;Mother,&rsquo; I says, &lsquo;I got a secret to keep. It&rsquo;s
+not a bad &rsquo;un, tha&rsquo; knows that. It&rsquo;s no worse than
+hidin&rsquo; where a bird&rsquo;s nest is. Tha&rsquo; doesn&rsquo;t mind it,
+does tha&rsquo;?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary always wanted to hear about mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did she say?&rdquo; she asked, not at all afraid to hear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon grinned sweet-temperedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was just like her, what she said,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;She give
+my head a bit of a rub an&rsquo; laughed an&rsquo; she says, &lsquo;Eh, lad,
+tha&rsquo; can have all th&rsquo; secrets tha&rsquo; likes. I&rsquo;ve knowed
+thee twelve year&rsquo;.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How did you know about Colin?&rdquo; asked Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everybody as knowed about Mester Craven knowed there was a little lad as
+was like to be a cripple, an&rsquo; they knowed Mester Craven didn&rsquo;t like
+him to be talked about. Folks is sorry for Mester Craven because Mrs. Craven
+was such a pretty young lady an&rsquo; they was so fond of each other. Mrs.
+Medlock stops in our cottage whenever she goes to Thwaite an&rsquo; she
+doesn&rsquo;t mind talkin&rsquo; to mother before us children, because she
+knows us has been brought up to be trusty. How did tha&rsquo; find out about
+him? Martha was in fine trouble th&rsquo; last time she came home. She said
+tha&rsquo;d heard him frettin&rsquo; an&rsquo; tha&rsquo; was askin&rsquo;
+questions an&rsquo; she didn&rsquo;t know what to say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Them&rsquo;s just like his mother&rsquo;s eyes, only hers was always
+laughin&rsquo;, they say,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They say as Mr. Craven
+can&rsquo;t bear to see him when he&rsquo;s awake an&rsquo; it&rsquo;s because
+his eyes is so like his mother&rsquo;s an&rsquo; yet looks so different in his
+miserable bit of a face.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think he wants to die?&rdquo; whispered Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, but he wishes he&rsquo;d never been born. Mother she says
+that&rsquo;s th&rsquo; worst thing on earth for a child. Them as is not wanted
+scarce ever thrives. Mester Craven he&rsquo;d buy anythin&rsquo; as money could
+buy for th&rsquo; poor lad but he&rsquo;d like to forget as he&rsquo;s on
+earth. For one thing, he&rsquo;s afraid he&rsquo;ll look at him some day and
+find he&rsquo;s growed hunchback.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Colin&rsquo;s so afraid of it himself that he won&rsquo;t sit up,&rdquo;
+said Mary. &ldquo;He says he&rsquo;s always thinking that if he should feel a
+lump coming he should go crazy and scream himself to death.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! he oughtn&rsquo;t to lie there thinkin&rsquo; things like
+that,&rdquo; said Dickon. &ldquo;No lad could get well as thought them sort
+o&rsquo; things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When first we got in here,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it seemed like
+everything was gray. Look round now and tell me if tha&rsquo; doesn&rsquo;t see
+a difference.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary looked and caught her breath a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;the gray wall is changing. It is as if a
+green mist were creeping over it. It&rsquo;s almost like a green gauze
+veil.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye,&rdquo; said Dickon. &ldquo;An&rsquo; it&rsquo;ll be greener and
+greener till th&rsquo; gray&rsquo;s all gone. Can tha&rsquo; guess what I was
+thinkin&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it was something nice,&rdquo; said Mary eagerly. &ldquo;I believe
+it was something about Colin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was thinkin&rsquo; that if he was out here he wouldn&rsquo;t be
+watchin&rsquo; for lumps to grow on his back; he&rsquo;d be watchin&rsquo; for
+buds to break on th&rsquo; rose-bushes, an&rsquo; he&rsquo;d likely be
+healthier,&rdquo; explained Dickon. &ldquo;I was wonderin&rsquo; if us could
+ever get him in th&rsquo; humor to come out here an&rsquo; lie under th&rsquo;
+trees in his carriage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been wondering that myself. I&rsquo;ve thought of it almost
+every time I&rsquo;ve talked to him,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+wondered if he could keep a secret and I&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;t find out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon was thinking very hard as he scratched Captain&rsquo;s back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;d be good for him, I&rsquo;ll warrant,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Us&rsquo;d not be thinkin&rsquo; he&rsquo;d better never been born.
+Us&rsquo;d be just two children watchin&rsquo; a garden grow, an&rsquo;
+he&rsquo;d be another. Two lads an&rsquo; a little lass just lookin&rsquo; on
+at th&rsquo; springtime. I warrant it&rsquo;d be better than doctor&rsquo;s
+stuff.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s been lying in his room so long and he&rsquo;s always been so
+afraid of his back that it has made him queer,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;He
+knows a good many things out of books but he doesn&rsquo;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&rsquo;t tell him much but he said he wanted to see
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Us&rsquo;ll have him out here sometime for sure,&rdquo; said Dickon.
+&ldquo;I could push his carriage well enough. Has tha&rsquo; noticed how
+th&rsquo; robin an&rsquo; his mate has been workin&rsquo; while we&rsquo;ve
+been sittin&rsquo; here? Look at him perched on that branch wonderin&rsquo;
+where it&rsquo;d be best to put that twig he&rsquo;s got in his beak.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s tone was one of friendly advice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wheres&rsquo;ever tha&rsquo; puts it,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;ll
+be all right. Tha&rsquo; knew how to build tha&rsquo; nest before tha&rsquo;
+came out o&rsquo; th&rsquo; egg. Get on with thee, lad. Tha&rsquo;st got no
+time to lose.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I do like to hear you talk to him!&rdquo; Mary said, laughing
+delightedly. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon laughed too and went on talking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; knows us won&rsquo;t trouble thee,&rdquo; he said to the
+robin. &ldquo;Us is near bein&rsquo; wild things ourselves. Us is
+nest-buildin&rsquo; too, bless thee. Look out tha&rsquo; doesn&rsquo;t tell on
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI.<br />
+&ldquo;I WON&rsquo;T!&rdquo; SAID MARY</h2>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell Colin that I can&rsquo;t come and see him yet,&rdquo; she said to
+Martha. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very busy in the garden.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martha looked rather frightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! Miss Mary,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it may put him all out of humor
+when I tell him that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Mary was not as afraid of him as other people were and she was not a
+self-sacrificing person.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t stay,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;Dickon&rsquo;s waiting
+for me;&rdquo; and she ran away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 &ldquo;gardener&rsquo;s
+garden&rdquo; it would be a wilderness of growing things before the springtime
+was over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;ll be apple blossoms an&rsquo; cherry blossoms
+overhead,&rdquo; Dickon said, working away with all his might. &ldquo;An&rsquo;
+there&rsquo;ll be peach an&rsquo; plum trees in bloom against th&rsquo; walls,
+an&rsquo; th&rsquo; grass&rsquo;ll be a carpet o&rsquo; flowers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo;s a good bit stronger than tha&rsquo; was,&rdquo; Dickon said,
+looking at her as she was digging. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo;s beginning to look
+different, for sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary was glowing with exercise and good spirits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m getting fatter and fatter every day,&rdquo; she said quite
+exultantly. &ldquo;Mrs. Medlock will have to get me some bigger dresses. Martha
+says my hair is growing thicker. It isn&rsquo;t so flat and stringy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun was beginning to set and sending deep gold-colored rays slanting under
+the trees when they parted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;ll be fine tomorrow,&rdquo; said Dickon. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be
+at work by sunrise.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So will I,&rdquo; said Mary.<br /><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She ran back to the house as quickly as her feet would carry her. She wanted to
+tell Colin about Dickon&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;What did Colin say when you
+told him I couldn&rsquo;t come?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said Martha, &ldquo;I wish tha&rsquo;d gone. He was nigh
+goin&rsquo; into one o&rsquo; his tantrums. There&rsquo;s been a nice to do all
+afternoon to keep him quiet. He would watch the clock all th&rsquo;
+time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you get up?&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did get up this morning when I thought you were coming,&rdquo; he
+answered, without looking at her. &ldquo;I made them put me back in bed this
+afternoon. My back ached and my head ached and I was tired. Why didn&rsquo;t
+you come?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was working in the garden with Dickon,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin frowned and condescended to look at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t let that boy come here if you go and stay with him instead
+of coming to talk to me,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you send Dickon away, I&rsquo;ll never come into this room
+again!&rdquo; she retorted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have to if I want you,&rdquo; said Colin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t!&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll make you,&rdquo; said Colin. &ldquo;They shall drag you
+in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shall they, Mr. Rajah!&rdquo; said Mary fiercely. &ldquo;They may drag
+me in but they can&rsquo;t make me talk when they get me here. I&rsquo;ll sit
+and clench my teeth and never tell you one thing. I won&rsquo;t even look at
+you. I&rsquo;ll stare at the floor!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are a selfish thing!&rdquo; cried Colin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you?&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;Selfish people always say that.
+Anyone is selfish who doesn&rsquo;t do what they want. You&rsquo;re more
+selfish than I am. You&rsquo;re the most selfish boy I ever saw.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not!&rdquo; snapped Colin. &ldquo;I&rsquo;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&rsquo;s selfish, if you like!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary&rsquo;s eyes flashed fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s nicer than any other boy that ever lived!&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s&mdash;he&rsquo;s like an angel!&rdquo; It might sound rather
+silly to say that but she did not care.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A nice angel!&rdquo; Colin sneered ferociously. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a
+common cottage boy off the moor!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s better than a common Rajah!&rdquo; retorted Mary.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a thousand times better!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;not for anyone else.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not as selfish as you, because I&rsquo;m always ill, and
+I&rsquo;m sure there is a lump coming on my back,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And I
+am going to die besides.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not!&rdquo; contradicted Mary unsympathetically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I am! You know I am! Everybody
+says so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it!&rdquo; said Mary sourly. &ldquo;You just say
+that to make people sorry. I believe you&rsquo;re proud of it. I don&rsquo;t
+believe it! If you were a nice boy it might be true&mdash;but you&rsquo;re too
+nasty!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In spite of his invalid back Colin sat up in bed in quite a healthy rage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Get out of the room!&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s face looked as pinched as a nutcracker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And I won&rsquo;t come
+back!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She walked to the door and when she reached it she turned round and spoke
+again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was going to tell you all sorts of nice things,&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;Dickon brought his fox and his rook and I was going to tell you all
+about them. Now I won&rsquo;t tell you a single thing!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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..
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you laughing at?&rdquo; she asked her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At you two young ones,&rdquo; said the nurse. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the best
+thing that could happen to the sickly pampered thing to have someone to stand
+up to him that&rsquo;s as spoiled as himself;&rdquo; and she laughed into her
+handkerchief again. &ldquo;If he&rsquo;d had a young vixen of a sister to fight
+with it would have been the saving of him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is he going to die?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know and I don&rsquo;t care,&rdquo; said the nurse.
+&ldquo;Hysterics and temper are half what ails him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are hysterics?&rdquo; asked Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find out if you work him into a tantrum after
+this&mdash;but at any rate you&rsquo;ve given him something to have hysterics
+about, and I&rsquo;m glad of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Craven sent it to you,&rdquo; said Martha. &ldquo;It looks as if it
+had picture-books in it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary remembered what he had asked her the day she had gone to his room.
+&ldquo;Do you want anything&mdash;dolls&mdash;toys&mdash;books?&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can write better than I can print,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and the
+first thing I shall write with that pen will be a letter to tell him I am much
+obliged.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;tantrums&rdquo; as they called them grew out of his
+hysterical hidden fear. Mary had been sorry for him when he had told her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He always began to think about it when he was cross or tired,&rdquo; she
+said to herself. &ldquo;And he has been cross today. Perhaps&mdash;perhaps he
+has been thinking about it all afternoon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood still, looking down at the carpet and thinking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I said I would never go back again&mdash;&rdquo; she hesitated, knitting
+her brows&mdash;&ldquo;but perhaps, just perhaps, I will go and see&mdash;if he
+wants me&mdash;in the morning. Perhaps he&rsquo;ll try to throw his pillow at
+me again, but&mdash;I think&mdash;I&rsquo;ll go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap17"></a>CHAPTER XVII.<br />
+A TANTRUM</h2>
+
+<p>
+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:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go out before breakfast and work with Dickon and then
+afterward&mdash;I believe&mdash;I&rsquo;ll go to see him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s Colin,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s having one of those
+tantrums the nurse called hysterics. How awful it sounds.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what to do. I don&rsquo;t know what to do,&rdquo; she
+kept saying. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t bear it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s tempers but her own.
+She took her hands from her ears and sprang up and stamped her foot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He ought to be stopped! Somebody ought to make him stop! Somebody ought
+to beat him!&rdquo; she cried out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s worked himself into hysterics,&rdquo; she said in a great
+hurry. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll do himself harm. No one can do anything with him. You
+come and try, like a good child. He likes you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He turned me out of the room this morning,&rdquo; said Mary, stamping
+her foot with excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s right,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not until afterward that Mary realized that the thing had been funny as
+well as dreadful&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You stop!&rdquo; she almost shouted. &ldquo;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 <i>will</i> scream yourself to death in a minute,
+and I wish you would!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you scream another scream,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll scream
+too&mdash;and I can scream louder than you can and I&rsquo;ll frighten you,
+I&rsquo;ll frighten you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t stop!&rdquo; he gasped and sobbed. &ldquo;I
+can&rsquo;t&mdash;I can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can!&rdquo; shouted Mary. &ldquo;Half that ails you is hysterics and
+temper&mdash;just hysterics&mdash;hysterics&mdash;hysterics!&rdquo; and she
+stamped each time she said it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I felt the lump&mdash;I felt it,&rdquo; choked out Colin. &ldquo;I knew
+I should. I shall have a hunch on my back and then I shall die,&rdquo; and he
+began to writhe again and turned on his face and sobbed and wailed but he
+didn&rsquo;t scream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t feel a lump!&rdquo; contradicted Mary fiercely.
+&ldquo;If you did it was only a hysterical lump. Hysterics makes lumps.
+There&rsquo;s nothing the matter with your horrid back&mdash;nothing but
+hysterics! Turn over and let me look at it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She liked the word &ldquo;hysterics&rdquo; and felt somehow as if it had an
+effect on him. He was probably like herself and had never heard it before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nurse,&rdquo; she commanded, &ldquo;come here and show me his back this
+minute!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps he&mdash;he won&rsquo;t let me,&rdquo; she hesitated in a low
+voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin heard her, however, and he gasped out between two sobs:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sh-show her! She-she&rsquo;ll see then!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s not a single lump there!&rdquo; she said at last.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s not a lump as big as a pin&mdash;except backbone lumps,
+and you can only feel them because you&rsquo;re thin. I&rsquo;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&rsquo;s not a lump
+as big as a pin! If you ever say there is again, I shall laugh!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;if he had ever dared to let himself ask questions&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; ventured the nurse, &ldquo;that he thought
+he had a lump on his spine. His back is weak because he won&rsquo;t try to sit
+up. I could have told him there was no lump there.&rdquo; Colin gulped and
+turned his face a little to look at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;C-could you?&rdquo; he said pathetically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There!&rdquo; said Mary, and she gulped too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think&mdash;I could&mdash;live to grow up?&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nurse was neither clever nor soft-hearted but she could repeat some of the
+London doctor&rsquo;s words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll&mdash;I&rsquo;ll go out with you, Mary,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t hate fresh air if we can find&mdash;&rdquo; He remembered
+just in time to stop himself from saying &ldquo;if we can find the secret
+garden&rdquo; and he ended, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must go back and get your sleep out,&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll drop off after a while&mdash;if he&rsquo;s not too upset.
+Then I&rsquo;ll lie down myself in the next room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you like me to sing you that song I learned from my Ayah?&rdquo;
+Mary whispered to Colin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His hand pulled hers gently and he turned his tired eyes on her appealingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes!&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s such a soft song. I shall
+go to sleep in a minute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will put him to sleep,&rdquo; Mary said to the yawning nurse.
+&ldquo;You can go if you like.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the nurse, with an attempt at reluctance. &ldquo;If he
+doesn&rsquo;t go to sleep in half an hour you must call me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; answered Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nurse was out of the room in a minute and as soon as she was gone Colin
+pulled Mary&rsquo;s hand again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I almost told,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;but I stopped myself in time. I
+won&rsquo;t talk and I&rsquo;ll go to sleep, but you said you had a whole lot
+of nice things to tell me. Have you&mdash;do you think you have found out
+anything at all about the way into the secret garden?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary looked at his poor little tired face and swollen eyes and her heart
+relented.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ye-es,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;I think I have. And if you will go to
+sleep I will tell you tomorrow.&rdquo; His hand quite trembled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Mary!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Mary. &ldquo;Shut your eyes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think it has been left alone so long&mdash;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&mdash;almost
+like a strange gray mist. Some of them have died but many&mdash;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&mdash;perhaps&mdash;perhaps&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The soft drone of her voice was making him stiller and stiller and she saw it
+and went on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps they are coming up through the grass&mdash;perhaps there are
+clusters of purple crocuses and gold ones&mdash;even now. Perhaps the leaves
+are beginning to break out and uncurl&mdash;and perhaps&mdash;the gray is
+changing and a green gauze veil is creeping&mdash;and creeping
+over&mdash;everything. And the birds are coming to look at it&mdash;because it
+is&mdash;so safe and still. And
+perhaps&mdash;perhaps&mdash;perhaps&mdash;&rdquo; very softly and slowly
+indeed, &ldquo;the robin has found a mate&mdash;and is building a nest.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Colin was asleep.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.<br />
+&ldquo;THA&rsquo; MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME&rdquo;</h2>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He says he wishes tha&rsquo; would please go and see him as soon as
+tha&rsquo; can,&rdquo; Martha said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s queer what a fancy
+he&rsquo;s took to thee. Tha&rsquo; did give it him last night for
+sure&mdash;didn&rsquo;t tha? Nobody else would have dared to do it. Eh! poor
+lad! He&rsquo;s been spoiled till salt won&rsquo;t save him. Mother says as
+th&rsquo; two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own
+way&mdash;or always to have it. She doesn&rsquo;t know which is th&rsquo;
+worst. Tha&rsquo; was in a fine temper tha&rsquo;self, too. But he says to me
+when I went into his room, &lsquo;Please ask Miss Mary if she&rsquo;ll please
+come an&rsquo; talk to me?&rsquo; Think o&rsquo; him saying please! Will you
+go, Miss?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll run and see Dickon first,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;No,
+I&rsquo;ll go and see Colin first and tell him&mdash;I know what I&rsquo;ll
+tell him,&rdquo; with a sudden inspiration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had her hat on when she appeared in Colin&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you came,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;My head aches and I ache
+all over because I&rsquo;m so tired. Are you going somewhere?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary went and leaned against his bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t be long,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to
+Dickon, but I&rsquo;ll come back. Colin, it&rsquo;s&mdash;it&rsquo;s something
+about the garden.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His whole face brightened and a little color came into it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! is it?&rdquo; he cried out. &ldquo;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&mdash;and
+there were birds on nests everywhere and they looked so soft and still.
+I&rsquo;ll lie and think about it until you come back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I came over on the pony this mornin&rsquo;,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Eh!
+he is a good little chap&mdash;Jump is! I brought these two in my pockets. This
+here one he&rsquo;s called Nut an&rsquo; this here other one&rsquo;s called
+Shell.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he said &ldquo;Nut&rdquo; one squirrel leaped on to his right shoulder and
+when he said &ldquo;Shell&rdquo; the other one leaped on to his left shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just listen to them birds&mdash;th&rsquo; world seems full of
+&rsquo;em&mdash;all whistlin&rsquo; an&rsquo; pipin&rsquo;,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Look at &rsquo;em dartin&rsquo; about, an&rsquo; hearken at &rsquo;em
+callin&rsquo; to each other. Come springtime seems like as if all th&rsquo;
+world&rsquo;s callin&rsquo;. The leaves is uncurlin&rsquo; so you can see
+&rsquo;em&mdash;an&rsquo;, my word, th&rsquo; nice smells there is
+about!&rdquo; sniffing with his happy turned-up nose. &ldquo;An&rsquo; that
+poor lad lyin&rsquo; shut up an&rsquo; seein&rsquo; so little that he gets to
+thinkin&rsquo; o&rsquo; things as sets him screamin&rsquo;. Eh! my! we mun get
+him out here&mdash;we mun get him watchin&rsquo; an listenin&rsquo; an&rsquo;
+sniffin&rsquo; up th&rsquo; air an&rsquo; get him just soaked through wi&rsquo;
+sunshine. An&rsquo; we munnot lose no time about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, that we mun,&rdquo; she said (which meant &ldquo;Yes, indeed, we
+must&rdquo;). &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell thee what us&rsquo;ll do first,&rdquo; she
+proceeded, and Dickon grinned, because when the little wench tried to twist her
+tongue into speaking Yorkshire it amused him very much. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s took
+a graidely fancy to thee. He wants to see thee and he wants to see Soot
+an&rsquo; Captain. When I go back to the house to talk to him I&rsquo;ll ax him
+if tha&rsquo; canna&rsquo; come an&rsquo; see him tomorrow
+mornin&rsquo;&mdash;an&rsquo; bring tha&rsquo; creatures wi&rsquo;
+thee&mdash;an&rsquo; then&mdash;in a bit, when there&rsquo;s more leaves out,
+an&rsquo; happen a bud or two, we&rsquo;ll get him to come out an&rsquo;
+tha&rsquo; shall push him in his chair an&rsquo; we&rsquo;ll bring him here
+an&rsquo; show him everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; mun talk a bit o&rsquo; Yorkshire like that to Mester
+Colin,&rdquo; Dickon chuckled. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo;ll make him laugh an&rsquo;
+there&rsquo;s nowt as good for ill folk as laughin&rsquo; is. Mother says she
+believes as half a hour&rsquo;s good laugh every mornin&rsquo; &rsquo;ud cure a
+chap as was makin&rsquo; ready for typhus fever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to talk Yorkshire to him this very day,&rdquo; said
+Mary, chuckling herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s bed he began to sniff as Dickon did though not in such an
+experienced way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You smell like flowers and&mdash;and fresh things,&rdquo; he cried out
+quite joyously. &ldquo;What is it you smell of? It&rsquo;s cool and warm and
+sweet all at the same time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s th&rsquo; wind from th&rsquo; moor,&rdquo; said Mary.
+&ldquo;It comes o&rsquo; sittin&rsquo; on th&rsquo; grass under a tree
+wi&rsquo; Dickon an&rsquo; wi&rsquo; Captain an&rsquo; Soot an&rsquo; Nut
+an&rsquo; Shell. It&rsquo;s th&rsquo; springtime an&rsquo; out o&rsquo; doors
+an&rsquo; sunshine as smells so graidely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you doing?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I never heard you talk like
+that before. How funny it sounds.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m givin&rsquo; thee a bit o&rsquo; Yorkshire,&rdquo; answered
+Mary triumphantly. &ldquo;I canna&rsquo; talk as graidely as Dickon an&rsquo;
+Martha can but tha&rsquo; sees I can shape a bit. Doesn&rsquo;t tha&rsquo;
+understand a bit o&rsquo; Yorkshire when tha&rsquo; hears it? An&rsquo;
+tha&rsquo; a Yorkshire lad thysel&rsquo; bred an&rsquo; born! Eh! I wonder
+tha&rsquo;rt not ashamed o&rsquo; thy face.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, upon my word!&rdquo; she said, speaking rather broad Yorkshire
+herself because there was no one to hear her and she was so astonished.
+&ldquo;Whoever heard th&rsquo; like! Whoever on earth would ha&rsquo; thought
+it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does he really understand everything Dickon says?&rdquo; Colin asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It seems as if he does,&rdquo; answered Mary. &ldquo;Dickon says
+anything will understand if you&rsquo;re friends with it for sure, but you have
+to be friends for sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin lay quiet a little while and his strange gray eyes seemed to be staring
+at the wall, but Mary saw he was thinking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish I was friends with things,&rdquo; he said at last, &ldquo;but
+I&rsquo;m not. I never had anything to be friends with, and I can&rsquo;t bear
+people.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you bear me?&rdquo; asked Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I can,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s funny but I even like
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ben Weatherstaff said I was like him,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;He said
+he&rsquo;d warrant we&rsquo;d both got the same nasty tempers. I think you are
+like him too. We are all three alike&mdash;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&rsquo;t feel as sour as I used to before I knew the robin and
+Dickon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you feel as if you hated people?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Mary without any affectation. &ldquo;I should have
+detested you if I had seen you before I saw the robin and Dickon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin put out his thin hand and touched her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mary,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I wish I hadn&rsquo;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&mdash;but perhaps he is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it was rather funny to say it,&rdquo; she admitted frankly,
+&ldquo;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&mdash;but if an
+angel did come to Yorkshire and live on the moor&mdash;if there was a Yorkshire
+angel&mdash;I believe he&rsquo;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&rsquo;d know he was friends for sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t mind Dickon looking at me,&rdquo; said Colin; &ldquo;I
+want to see him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you said that,&rdquo; answered Mary,
+&ldquo;because&mdash;because&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Quite suddenly it came into her mind that this was the minute to tell him.
+Colin knew something new was coming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because what?&rdquo; he cried eagerly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary was so anxious that she got up from her stool and came to him and caught
+hold of both his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can I trust you? I trusted Dickon because birds trusted him. Can I trust
+you&mdash;for sure&mdash;<i>for sure?</i>&rdquo; she implored.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her face was so solemn that he almost whispered his answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;yes!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Dickon will come to see you tomorrow morning, and he&rsquo;ll
+bring his creatures with him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! Oh!&rdquo; Colin cried out in delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But that&rsquo;s not all,&rdquo; Mary went on, almost pale with solemn
+excitement. &ldquo;The rest is better. There is a door into the garden. I found
+it. It is under the ivy on the wall.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If he had been a strong healthy boy Colin would probably have shouted
+&ldquo;Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!&rdquo; but he was weak and rather hysterical;
+his eyes grew bigger and bigger and he gasped for breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! Mary!&rdquo; he cried out with a half sob. &ldquo;Shall I see it?
+Shall I get into it? Shall I <i>live</i> to get into it?&rdquo; and he clutched
+her hands and dragged her toward him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course you&rsquo;ll see it!&rdquo; snapped Mary indignantly.
+&ldquo;Of course you&rsquo;ll live to get into it! Don&rsquo;t be silly!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s aches and tiredness were
+forgotten and he was listening enraptured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is just what you thought it would be,&rdquo; he said at last.
+&ldquo;It sounds just as if you had really seen it. You know I said that when
+you told me first.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary hesitated about two minutes and then boldly spoke the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I had seen it&mdash;and I had been in,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I found
+the key and got in weeks ago. But I daren&rsquo;t tell you&mdash;I
+daren&rsquo;t because I was so afraid I couldn&rsquo;t trust you&mdash;<i>for
+sure!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap19"></a>CHAPTER XIX.<br />
+&ldquo;IT HAS COME!&rdquo;</h2>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How is he?&rdquo; he asked Mrs. Medlock rather irritably when he
+arrived. &ldquo;He will break a blood-vessel in one of those fits some day. The
+boy is half insane with hysteria and self-indulgence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; answered Mrs. Medlock, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll scarcely
+believe your eyes when you see him. That plain sour-faced child that&rsquo;s
+almost as bad as himself has just bewitched him. How she&rsquo;s done it
+there&rsquo;s no telling. The Lord knows she&rsquo;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&mdash;well just come up and see, sir. It&rsquo;s past
+crediting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scene which Dr. Craven beheld when he entered his patient&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Those long spires of blue ones&mdash;we&rsquo;ll have a lot of
+those,&rdquo; Colin was announcing. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re called
+Del-phin-iums.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dickon says they&rsquo;re larkspurs made big and grand,&rdquo; cried
+Mistress Mary. &ldquo;There are clumps there already.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then they saw Dr. Craven and stopped. Mary became quite still and Colin looked
+fretful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sorry to hear you were ill last night, my boy,&rdquo; Dr. Craven
+said a trifle nervously. He was rather a nervous man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m better now&mdash;much better,&rdquo; Colin answered, rather
+like a Rajah. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going out in my chair in a day or two if it is
+fine. I want some fresh air.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Craven sat down by him and felt his pulse and looked at him curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It must be a very fine day,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and you must be very
+careful not to tire yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fresh air won&rsquo;t tire me,&rdquo; said the young Rajah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought you did not like fresh air,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t when I am by myself,&rdquo; replied the Rajah; &ldquo;but
+my cousin is going out with me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the nurse, of course?&rdquo; suggested Dr. Craven.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I will not have the nurse,&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He must be a strong boy and a steady boy,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And I
+must know something about him. Who is he? What is his name?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s Dickon,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s serious face relaxed into a relieved smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Dickon,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If it is Dickon you will be safe
+enough. He&rsquo;s as strong as a moor pony, is Dickon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And he&rsquo;s trusty,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s th&rsquo;
+trustiest lad i&rsquo; Yorkshire.&rdquo; She had been talking Yorkshire to
+Colin and she forgot herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did Dickon teach you that?&rdquo; asked Dr. Craven, laughing outright.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m learning it as if it was French,&rdquo; said Mary rather
+coldly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s like a native dialect in India. Very clever people
+try to learn them. I like it and so does Colin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If it amuses you perhaps it
+won&rsquo;t do you any harm. Did you take your bromide last night, Colin?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; Colin answered. &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t take it at first and
+after Mary made me quiet she talked me to sleep&mdash;in a low
+voice&mdash;about the spring creeping into a garden.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That sounds soothing,&rdquo; said Dr. Craven, more perplexed than ever
+and glancing sideways at Mistress Mary sitting on her stool and looking down
+silently at the carpet. &ldquo;You are evidently better, but you must
+remember&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to remember,&rdquo; interrupted the Rajah, appearing
+again. &ldquo;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.&rdquo; And he waved a
+thin hand which ought really to have been covered with royal signet rings made
+of rubies. &ldquo;It is because my cousin makes me forget that she makes me
+better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Craven had never made such a short stay after a &ldquo;tantrum&rdquo;;
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; she ventured, &ldquo;could you have believed
+it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is certainly a new state of affairs,&rdquo; said the doctor.
+&ldquo;And there&rsquo;s no denying it is better than the old one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe Susan Sowerby&rsquo;s right&mdash;I do that,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+Medlock. &ldquo;I stopped in her cottage on my way to Thwaite yesterday and had
+a bit of talk with her. And she says to me, &lsquo;Well, Sarah Ann, she
+mayn&rsquo;t be a good child, an&rsquo; she mayn&rsquo;t be a pretty one, but
+she&rsquo;s a child, an&rsquo; children needs children.&rsquo; We went to
+school together, Susan Sowerby and me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s the best sick nurse I know,&rdquo; said Dr. Craven.
+&ldquo;When I find her in a cottage I know the chances are that I shall save my
+patient.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Medlock smiled. She was fond of Susan Sowerby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s got a way with her, has Susan,&rdquo; she went on quite
+volubly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been thinking all morning of one thing she said
+yesterday. She says, &lsquo;Once when I was givin&rsquo; th&rsquo; children a
+bit of a preach after they&rsquo;d been fightin&rsquo; I ses to &rsquo;em all,
+&ldquo;When I was at school my jography told as th&rsquo; world was shaped like
+a orange an&rsquo; I found out before I was ten that th&rsquo; whole orange
+doesn&rsquo;t belong to nobody. No one owns more than his bit of a quarter
+an&rsquo; there&rsquo;s times it seems like there&rsquo;s not enow quarters to
+go round. But don&rsquo;t you&mdash;none o&rsquo; you&mdash;think as you own
+th&rsquo; whole orange or you&rsquo;ll find out you&rsquo;re mistaken,
+an&rsquo; you won&rsquo;t find it out without hard knocks.&rdquo; &lsquo;What
+children learns from children,&rsquo; she says, &lsquo;is that there&rsquo;s no
+sense in grabbin&rsquo; at th&rsquo; whole orange&mdash;peel an&rsquo; all. If
+you do you&rsquo;ll likely not get even th&rsquo; pips, an&rsquo; them&rsquo;s
+too bitter to eat.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s a shrewd woman,&rdquo; said Dr. Craven, putting on his coat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, she&rsquo;s got a way of saying things,&rdquo; ended Mrs. Medlock,
+much pleased. &ldquo;Sometimes I&rsquo;ve said to her, &lsquo;Eh! Susan, if you
+was a different woman an&rsquo; didn&rsquo;t talk such broad Yorkshire
+I&rsquo;ve seen the times when I should have said you was clever.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night Colin slept without once awakening and when he opened his eyes in
+the morning he lay still and smiled without knowing it&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been out! You&rsquo;ve been out! There&rsquo;s that nice
+smell of leaves!&rdquo; he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s so beautiful!&rdquo; she said, a little breathless with her
+speed. &ldquo;You never saw anything so beautiful! It has <i>come!</i> 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!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Has it?&rdquo; cried Colin, and though he really knew nothing about it
+he felt his heart beat. He actually sat up in bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Open the window!&rdquo; he added, laughing half with joyful excitement
+and half at his own fancy. &ldquo;Perhaps we may hear golden trumpets!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo; songs
+were pouring through.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s fresh air,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Lie on your back and
+draw in long breaths of it. That&rsquo;s what Dickon does when he&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was only repeating what Dickon had told her, but she caught Colin&rsquo;s
+fancy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Forever and ever&rsquo;! Does it make him feel like that?&rdquo;
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary was at his bedside again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Things are crowding up out of the earth,&rdquo; she ran on in a hurry.
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;a lamb!
+A living lamb who lay on your lap like a baby!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you sure you are not chilly, Master Colin?&rdquo; she inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nurse went away, concealing a smile, to give the order for two breakfasts.
+She found the servants&rsquo; hall a more amusing place than the
+invalid&rsquo;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, &ldquo;had found his master, and good for him.&rdquo;
+The servants&rsquo; 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 &ldquo;for a good hiding.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You are not to begin playing with the animals in
+the servants&rsquo; hall and keep them there. I want them here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nurse gave a slight gasp and tried to conceal it with a cough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; she answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you what you can do,&rdquo; added Colin, waving his
+hand. &ldquo;You can tell Martha to bring them here. The boy is Martha&rsquo;s
+brother. His name is Dickon and he is an animal charmer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope the animals won&rsquo;t bite, Master Colin,&rdquo; said the
+nurse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told you he was a charmer,&rdquo; said Colin austerely.
+&ldquo;Charmers&rsquo; animals never bite.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are snake-charmers in India,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;And they can
+put their snakes&rsquo; heads in their mouths.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Goodness!&rdquo; shuddered the nurse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They ate their breakfast with the morning air pouring in upon them.
+Colin&rsquo;s breakfast was a very good one and Mary watched him with serious
+interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will begin to get fatter just as I did,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I
+never wanted my breakfast when I was in India and now I always want it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wanted mine this morning,&rdquo; said Colin. &ldquo;Perhaps it was the
+fresh air. When do you think Dickon will come?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was not long in coming. In about ten minutes Mary held up her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Did you hear a caw?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin listened and heard it, the oddest sound in the world to hear inside a
+house, a hoarse &ldquo;caw-caw.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s Soot,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;Listen again. Do you hear a
+bleat&mdash;a tiny one?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes!&rdquo; cried Colin, quite flushing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the new-born lamb,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s
+coming.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon&rsquo;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&mdash;marching, until he passed through the
+tapestry door on to the soft carpet of Colin&rsquo;s own passage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you please, sir,&rdquo; announced Martha, opening the door, &ldquo;if
+you please, sir, here&rsquo;s Dickon an&rsquo; his creatures.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s head and paws peeped out of his coat
+pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin slowly sat up and stared and stared&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it doing?&rdquo; cried Colin. &ldquo;What does it want?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It wants its mother,&rdquo; said Dickon, smiling more and more. &ldquo;I
+brought it to thee a bit hungry because I knowed tha&rsquo;d like to see it
+feed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knelt down by the sofa and took a feeding-bottle from his pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come on, little &rsquo;un,&rdquo; he said, turning the small woolly
+white head with a gentle brown hand. &ldquo;This is what tha&rsquo;s after.
+Tha&rsquo;ll get more out o&rsquo; this than tha&rsquo; will out o&rsquo; silk
+velvet coats. There now,&rdquo; and he pushed the rubber tip of the bottle into
+the nuzzling mouth and the lamb began to suck it with ravenous ecstasy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d almost lost him but for his song an&rsquo; I was
+wonderin&rsquo; how a chap could hear it when it seemed as if he&rsquo;d get
+out o&rsquo; th&rsquo; world in a minute&mdash;an&rsquo; just then I heard
+somethin&rsquo; else far off among th&rsquo; gorse bushes. It was a weak
+bleatin&rsquo; an&rsquo; I knowed it was a new lamb as was hungry an&rsquo; I
+knowed it wouldn&rsquo;t be hungry if it hadn&rsquo;t lost its mother somehow,
+so I set off searchin&rsquo;. Eh! I did have a look for it. I went in an&rsquo;
+out among th&rsquo; gorse bushes an&rsquo; round an&rsquo; round an&rsquo; I
+always seemed to take th&rsquo; wrong turnin&rsquo;. But at last I seed a bit
+o&rsquo; white by a rock on top o&rsquo; th&rsquo; moor an&rsquo; I climbed up
+an&rsquo; found th&rsquo; little &rsquo;un half dead wi&rsquo; cold an&rsquo;
+clemmin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I couldna&rsquo; say that there name,&rdquo; he said, pointing to one
+under which was written &ldquo;Aquilegia,&rdquo; &ldquo;but us calls that a
+columbine, an&rsquo; that there one it&rsquo;s a snapdragon and they both grow
+wild in hedges, but these is garden ones an&rsquo; they&rsquo;re bigger
+an&rsquo; grander. There&rsquo;s some big clumps o&rsquo; columbine in
+th&rsquo; garden. They&rsquo;ll look like a bed o&rsquo; blue an&rsquo; white
+butterflies flutterin&rsquo; when they&rsquo;re out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to see them,&rdquo; cried Colin. &ldquo;I am going to
+see them!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, that tha&rsquo; mun,&rdquo; said Mary quite seriously.
+&ldquo;An&rsquo; tha&rsquo; munnot lose no time about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap20"></a>CHAPTER XX.<br />
+&ldquo;I SHALL LIVE FOREVER&mdash;AND EVER&mdash;AND EVER!&rdquo;</h2>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo; and badgers&rsquo; and
+water-rats&rsquo; houses, not to mention birds&rsquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re same as us,&rdquo; said Dickon, &ldquo;only they have to
+build their homes every year. An&rsquo; it keeps &rsquo;em so busy they fair
+scuffle to get &rsquo;em done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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
+&ldquo;bedding-out plants&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rumors of the new and curious things which were occurring in the
+invalid&rsquo;s apartments had of course filtered through the servants&rsquo;
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; he said to himself as he hurriedly changed his coat,
+&ldquo;what&rsquo;s to do now? His Royal Highness that wasn&rsquo;t to be
+looked at calling up a man he&rsquo;s never set eyes on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Things are changing in this house, Mr. Roach,&rdquo; said Mrs. Medlock,
+as she led him up the back staircase to the corridor on to which opened the
+hitherto mysterious chamber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s hope they&rsquo;re changing for the better, Mrs.
+Medlock,&rdquo; he answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They couldn&rsquo;t well change for the worse,&rdquo; she continued;
+&ldquo;and queer as it all is there&rsquo;s them as finds their duties made a
+lot easier to stand up under. Don&rsquo;t you be surprised, Mr. Roach, if you
+find yourself in the middle of a menagerie and Martha Sowerby&rsquo;s Dickon
+more at home than you or me could ever be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There really was a sort of Magic about Dickon, as Mary always privately
+believed. When Mr. Roach heard his name he smiled quite leniently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;d be at home in Buckingham Palace or at the bottom of a coal
+mine,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And yet it&rsquo;s not impudence, either.
+He&rsquo;s just fine, is that lad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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
+&ldquo;Caw&mdash;Caw&rdquo; quite loudly. In spite of Mrs. Medlock&rsquo;s
+warning, Mr. Roach only just escaped being sufficiently undignified to jump
+backward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s bent back attentively nibbling a nut. The little girl from
+India was sitting on a big footstool looking on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here is Mr. Roach, Master Colin,&rdquo; said Mrs. Medlock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young Rajah turned and looked his servitor over&mdash;at least that was
+what the head gardener felt happened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, you are Roach, are you?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I sent for you to
+give you some very important orders.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir,&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am going out in my chair this afternoon,&rdquo; said Colin. &ldquo;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&rsquo;clock and everyone must keep away
+until I send word that they may go back to their work.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir,&rdquo; replied Mr. Roach, much relieved to hear that the
+oaks might remain and that the orchards were safe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mary,&rdquo; said Colin, turning to her, &ldquo;what is that thing you
+say in India when you have finished talking and want people to go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You say, &lsquo;You have my permission to go,&rsquo;&rdquo; answered
+Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Rajah waved his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have my permission to go, Roach,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But,
+remember, this is very important.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Caw&mdash;Caw!&rdquo; remarked the crow hoarsely but not impolitely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir. Thank you, sir,&rdquo; said Mr. Roach, and Mrs. Medlock
+took him out of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Outside in the corridor, being a rather good-natured man, he smiled until he
+almost laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My word!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s got a fine lordly way with
+him, hasn&rsquo;t he? You&rsquo;d think he was a whole Royal Family rolled into
+one&mdash;Prince Consort and all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; protested Mrs. Medlock, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve had to let him
+trample all over everyone of us ever since he had feet and he thinks
+that&rsquo;s what folks was born for.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps he&rsquo;ll grow out of it, if he lives,&rdquo; suggested Mr.
+Roach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, there&rsquo;s one thing pretty sure,&rdquo; said Mrs. Medlock.
+&ldquo;If he does live and that Indian child stays here I&rsquo;ll warrant she
+teaches him that the whole orange does not belong to him, as Susan Sowerby
+says. And he&rsquo;ll be likely to find out the size of his own quarter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Inside the room Colin was leaning back on his cushions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all safe now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And this afternoon I
+shall see it&mdash;this afternoon I shall be in it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What big eyes you&rsquo;ve got, Colin,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;When you
+are thinking they get as big as saucers. What are you thinking about
+now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help thinking about what it will look like,&rdquo; he
+answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The garden?&rdquo; asked Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The springtime,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was thinking that I&rsquo;ve
+really never seen it before. I scarcely ever went out and when I did go I never
+looked at it. I didn&rsquo;t even think about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never saw it in India because there wasn&rsquo;t any,&rdquo; said
+Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That morning when you ran in and said &lsquo;It&rsquo;s come! It&rsquo;s
+come!&rsquo;, 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&rsquo;ve a picture
+like it in one of my books&mdash;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, &lsquo;Perhaps we shall
+hear golden trumpets&rsquo; and told you to throw open the window.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How funny!&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;That&rsquo;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&rsquo;m sure
+they&rsquo;d dance and sing and flute and that would be the wafts of
+music.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They both laughed but it was not because the idea was laughable but because
+they both so liked it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is one of his good days, sir,&rdquo; she said to Dr. Craven, who
+dropped in to inspect him. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s in such good spirits that it makes
+him stronger.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll call in again later in the afternoon, after he has come
+in,&rdquo; said Dr. Craven. &ldquo;I must see how the going out agrees with
+him. I wish,&rdquo; in a very low voice, &ldquo;that he would let you go with
+him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather give up the case this moment, sir, than even stay here
+while it&rsquo;s suggested,&rdquo; answered the nurse. With sudden firmness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hadn&rsquo;t really decided to suggest it,&rdquo; said the doctor,
+with his slight nervousness. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll try the experiment.
+Dickon&rsquo;s a lad I&rsquo;d trust with a new-born child.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have my permission to go,&rdquo; he said, and they both disappeared
+quickly and it must be confessed giggled when they were safely inside the
+house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;listening, instead of his
+ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are so many sounds of singing and humming and calling out,&rdquo;
+he said. &ldquo;What is that scent the puffs of wind bring?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s gorse on th&rsquo; moor that&rsquo;s openin&rsquo;
+out,&rdquo; answered Dickon. &ldquo;Eh! th&rsquo; bees are at it wonderful
+today.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not a human creature was to be caught sight of in the paths they took. In fact
+every gardener or gardener&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is it,&rdquo; breathed Mary. &ldquo;This is where I used to walk up
+and down and wonder and wonder.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it?&rdquo; cried Colin, and his eyes began to search the ivy with
+eager curiousness. &ldquo;But I can see nothing,&rdquo; he whispered.
+&ldquo;There is no door.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I thought,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then there was a lovely breathless silence and the chair wheeled on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is the garden where Ben Weatherstaff works,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it?&rdquo; said Colin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few yards more and Mary whispered again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is where the robin flew over the wall,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it?&rdquo; cried Colin. &ldquo;Oh! I wish he&rsquo;d come
+again!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And that,&rdquo; said Mary with solemn delight, pointing under a big
+lilac bush, &ldquo;is where he perched on the little heap of earth and showed
+me the key.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Colin sat up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where? Where? There?&rdquo; he cried, and his eyes were as big as the
+wolf&rsquo;s in Red Riding-Hood, when Red Riding-Hood felt called upon to
+remark on them. Dickon stood still and the wheeled chair stopped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And this,&rdquo; said Mary, stepping on to the bed close to the ivy,
+&ldquo;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,&rdquo; and she took hold of the
+hanging green curtain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! is it&mdash;is it!&rdquo; gasped Colin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And here is the handle, and here is the door. Dickon push him
+in&mdash;push him in quickly!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Dickon did it with one strong, steady, splendid push.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;ivory face and neck and hands and all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall get well! I shall get well!&rdquo; he cried out. &ldquo;Mary!
+Dickon! I shall get well! And I shall live forever and ever and ever!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap21"></a>CHAPTER XXI.<br />
+BEN WEATHERSTAFF</h2>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s heart stands
+still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun&mdash;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&rsquo;s eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! it is graidely,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m twelve goin&rsquo;
+on thirteen an&rsquo; there&rsquo;s a lot o&rsquo; afternoons in thirteen
+years, but seems to me like I never seed one as graidely as this
+&rsquo;ere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, it is a graidely one,&rdquo; said Mary, and she sighed for mere
+joy. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll warrant it&rsquo;s the graidelest one as ever was in
+this world.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does tha&rsquo; think,&rdquo; said Colin with dreamy carefulness,
+&ldquo;as happen it was made loike this &rsquo;ere all o&rsquo; purpose for
+me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My word!&rdquo; cried Mary admiringly, &ldquo;that there is a bit
+o&rsquo; good Yorkshire. Tha&rsquo;rt shapin&rsquo; first-rate&mdash;that
+tha&rsquo; art.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And delight reigned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They drew the chair under the plum-tree, which was snow-white with blossoms and
+musical with bees. It was like a king&rsquo;s canopy, a fairy king&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary and Dickon worked a little here and there and Colin watched them. They
+brought him things to look at&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wonder if we shall see the robin?&rdquo; said Colin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo;ll see him often enow after a bit,&rdquo; answered Dickon.
+&ldquo;When th&rsquo; eggs hatches out th&rsquo; little chap he&rsquo;ll be
+kep&rsquo; so busy it&rsquo;ll make his head swim. Tha&rsquo;ll see him
+flyin&rsquo; backward an&rsquo; for&rsquo;ard carryin&rsquo; worms nigh as big
+as himsel&rsquo; an&rsquo; that much noise goin&rsquo; on in th&rsquo; nest
+when he gets there as fair flusters him so as he scarce knows which big mouth
+to drop th&rsquo; first piece in. An&rsquo; gapin&rsquo; beaks an&rsquo;
+squawks on every side. Mother says as when she sees th&rsquo; work a robin has
+to keep them gapin&rsquo; beaks filled, she feels like she was a lady with
+nothin&rsquo; to do. She says she&rsquo;s seen th&rsquo; little chaps when it
+seemed like th&rsquo; sweat must be droppin&rsquo; off &rsquo;em, though folk
+can&rsquo;t see it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a very old tree over there, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon looked across the grass at the tree and Mary looked and there was a
+brief moment of stillness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Dickon, after it, and his low voice had a very
+gentle sound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary gazed at the tree and thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The branches are quite gray and there&rsquo;s not a single leaf
+anywhere,&rdquo; Colin went on. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s quite dead, isn&rsquo;t
+it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye,&rdquo; admitted Dickon. &ldquo;But them roses as has climbed all
+over it will near hide every bit o&rsquo; th&rsquo; dead wood when
+they&rsquo;re full o&rsquo; leaves an&rsquo; flowers. It won&rsquo;t look dead
+then. It&rsquo;ll be th&rsquo; prettiest of all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary still gazed at the tree and thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It looks as if a big branch had been broken off,&rdquo; said Colin.
+&ldquo;I wonder how it was done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s been done many a year,&rdquo; answered Dickon.
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; with a sudden relieved start and laying his hand on Colin.
+&ldquo;Look at that robin! There he is! He&rsquo;s been foragin&rsquo; for his
+mate.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s taking her tea to her. Perhaps it&rsquo;s five o&rsquo;clock.
+I think I&rsquo;d like some tea myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so they were safe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was Magic which sent the robin,&rdquo; said Mary secretly to Dickon
+afterward. &ldquo;I know it was Magic.&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We mun look as if it wasn&rsquo;t no different from th&rsquo; other
+trees,&rdquo; he had said. &ldquo;We couldn&rsquo;t never tell him how it
+broke, poor lad. If he says anything about it we mun&mdash;we mun try to look
+cheerful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, that we mun,&rdquo; had answered Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Craven was a very lovely young lady,&rdquo; he had gone on rather
+hesitatingly. &ldquo;An&rsquo; mother she thinks maybe she&rsquo;s about
+Misselthwaite many a time lookin&rsquo; after Mester Colin, same as all mothers
+do when they&rsquo;re took out o&rsquo; th&rsquo; world. They have to come
+back, tha&rsquo; sees. Happen she&rsquo;s been in the garden an&rsquo; happen
+it was her set us to work, an&rsquo; told us to bring him here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go and make one of the men servants bring some in a basket to the
+rhododendron walk,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And then you and Dickon can bring it
+here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want this afternoon to go,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;but I
+shall come back tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, and the day
+after.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll get plenty of fresh air, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to get nothing else,&rdquo; he answered.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen the spring now and I&rsquo;m going to see the summer.
+I&rsquo;m going to see everything grow here. I&rsquo;m going to grow here
+myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That tha&rsquo; will,&rdquo; said Dickon. &ldquo;Us&rsquo;ll have thee
+walkin&rsquo; about here an&rsquo; diggin&rsquo; same as other folk afore
+long.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin flushed tremendously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Walk!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Dig! Shall I?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon&rsquo;s glance at him was delicately cautious. Neither he nor Mary had
+ever asked if anything was the matter with his legs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For sure tha&rsquo; will,&rdquo; he said stoutly.
+&ldquo;Tha&mdash;tha&rsquo;s got legs o&rsquo; thine own, same as other
+folks!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary was rather frightened until she heard Colin&rsquo;s answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing really ails them,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but they are so thin
+and weak. They shake so that I&rsquo;m afraid to try to stand on them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Both Mary and Dickon drew a relieved breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When tha&rsquo; stops bein&rsquo; afraid tha&rsquo;lt stand on
+&rsquo;em,&rdquo; Dickon said with renewed cheer. &ldquo;An&rsquo; tha&rsquo;lt
+stop bein&rsquo; afraid in a bit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall?&rdquo; said Colin, and he lay still as if he were wondering
+about things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the midst of this stillness it was rather startling when Colin half lifted
+his head and exclaimed in a loud suddenly alarmed whisper:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who is that man?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon and Mary scrambled to their feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Man!&rdquo; they both cried in low quick voices.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin pointed to the high wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look!&rdquo; he whispered excitedly. &ldquo;Just look!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary and Dickon wheeled about and looked. There was Ben Weatherstaff&rsquo;s
+indignant face glaring at them over the wall from the top of a ladder! He
+actually shook his fist at Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I wasn&rsquo;t a bachelder, an&rsquo; tha&rsquo; was a wench o&rsquo;
+mine,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;I&rsquo;d give thee a hidin&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never thowt much o&rsquo; thee!&rdquo; he harangued. &ldquo;I
+couldna&rsquo; abide thee th&rsquo; first time I set eyes on thee. A scrawny
+buttermilk-faced young besom, allus askin&rsquo; questions an&rsquo;
+pokin&rsquo; tha&rsquo; nose where it wasna, wanted. I never knowed how
+tha&rsquo; got so thick wi&rsquo; me. If it hadna&rsquo; been for th&rsquo;
+robin&mdash; Drat him&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ben Weatherstaff,&rdquo; called out Mary, finding her breath. She stood
+below him and called up to him with a sort of gasp. &ldquo;Ben Weatherstaff, it
+was the robin who showed me the way!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then it did seem as if Ben really would scramble down on her side of the wall,
+he was so outraged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; young bad &rsquo;un!&rdquo; he called down at her.
+&ldquo;Layin&rsquo; tha&rsquo; badness on a robin&mdash;not but what he&rsquo;s
+impidint enow for anythin&rsquo;. Him showin&rsquo; thee th&rsquo; way! Him!
+Eh! tha&rsquo; young nowt&rdquo;&mdash;she could see his next words burst out
+because he was overpowered by curiosity&mdash;&ldquo;however i&rsquo; this
+world did tha&rsquo; get in?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was the robin who showed me the way,&rdquo; she protested
+obstinately. &ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t know he was doing it but he did. And I
+can&rsquo;t tell you from here while you&rsquo;re shaking your fist at
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wheel me over there!&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;Wheel me quite close
+and stop right in front of him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s nose. It was really no wonder his mouth dropped open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know who I am?&rdquo; demanded the Rajah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know who I am?&rdquo; demanded Colin still more imperiously.
+&ldquo;Answer!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who tha&rsquo; art?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Aye, that I
+do&mdash;wi&rsquo; tha&rsquo; mother&rsquo;s eyes starin&rsquo; at me out
+o&rsquo; tha&rsquo; face. Lord knows how tha&rsquo; come here. But tha&rsquo;rt
+th&rsquo; poor cripple.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin forgot that he had ever had a back. His face flushed scarlet and he sat
+bolt upright.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not a cripple!&rdquo; he cried out furiously. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+not!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not!&rdquo; cried Mary, almost shouting up the wall in her
+fierce indignation. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not got a lump as big as a pin! I looked
+and there was none there&mdash;not one!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo;&mdash;tha&rsquo; hasn&rsquo;t got a crooked back?&rdquo; he
+said hoarsely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo; shouted Colin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo;&mdash;tha&rsquo; hasn&rsquo;t got crooked legs?&rdquo;
+quavered Ben more hoarsely yet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;even in whispers&mdash;and the perfectly simple belief in their
+existence which was revealed by Ben Weatherstaff&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come here!&rdquo; he shouted to Dickon, and he actually began to tear
+the coverings off his lower limbs and disentangle himself. &ldquo;Come here!
+Come here! This minute!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon was by his side in a second. Mary caught her breath in a short gasp and
+felt herself turn pale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He can do it! He can do it! He can do it! He can!&rdquo; she gabbled
+over to herself under her breath as fast as ever she could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a brief fierce scramble, the rugs were tossed on the ground, Dickon
+held Colin&rsquo;s arm, the thin legs were out, the thin feet were on the
+grass. Colin was standing upright&mdash;upright&mdash;as straight as an arrow
+and looking strangely tall&mdash;his head thrown back and his strange eyes
+flashing lightning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look at me!&rdquo; he flung up at Ben Weatherstaff. &ldquo;Just look at
+me&mdash;you! Just look at me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s as straight as I am!&rdquo; cried Dickon. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s
+as straight as any lad i&rsquo; Yorkshire!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; he burst forth, &ldquo;th&rsquo; lies folk tells!
+Tha&rsquo;rt as thin as a lath an&rsquo; as white as a wraith, but
+there&rsquo;s not a knob on thee. Tha&rsquo;lt make a mon yet. God bless
+thee!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon held Colin&rsquo;s arm strongly but the boy had not begun to falter. He
+stood straighter and straighter and looked Ben Weatherstaff in the face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m your master,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;when my father is away.
+And you are to obey me. This is my garden. Don&rsquo;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!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ben Weatherstaff&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! lad,&rdquo; he almost whispered. &ldquo;Eh! my lad!&rdquo; And then
+remembering himself he suddenly touched his hat gardener fashion and said,
+&ldquo;Yes, sir! Yes, sir!&rdquo; and obediently disappeared as he descended
+the ladder.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap22"></a>CHAPTER XXII.<br />
+WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN</h2>
+
+<p>
+When his head was out of sight Colin turned to Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go and meet him,&rdquo; he said; and Mary flew across the grass to the
+door under the ivy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can stand,&rdquo; he said, and his head was still held up and he said
+it quite grandly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told thee tha&rsquo; could as soon as tha&rsquo; stopped bein&rsquo;
+afraid,&rdquo; answered Dickon. &ldquo;An&rsquo; tha&rsquo;s stopped.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ve stopped,&rdquo; said Colin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then suddenly he remembered something Mary had said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you making Magic?&rdquo; he asked sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon&rsquo;s curly mouth spread in a cheerful grin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo;s doin&rsquo; Magic thysel&rsquo;,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s same Magic as made these &rsquo;ere work out o&rsquo;
+th&rsquo; earth,&rdquo; and he touched with his thick boot a clump of crocuses
+in the grass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin looked down at them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye,&rdquo; he said slowly, &ldquo;there couldna&rsquo; be bigger Magic
+than that there&mdash;there couldna&rsquo; be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew himself up straighter than ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to walk to that tree,&rdquo; he said, pointing to one a
+few feet away from him. &ldquo;I&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Ben Weatherstaff came through the door in the wall he saw him standing
+there and he heard Mary muttering something under her breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What art sayin&rsquo;?&rdquo; he asked rather testily because he did not
+want his attention distracted from the long thin straight boy figure and proud
+face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she did not tell him. What she was saying was this:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can do it! You can do it! I told you you could! You can do it! You
+can do it! You <i>can!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look at me!&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;Look at me all over! Am I a
+hunchback? Have I got crooked legs?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ben Weatherstaff had not quite got over his emotion, but he had recovered a
+little and answered almost in his usual way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not tha&rsquo;,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Nowt o&rsquo; th&rsquo; sort.
+What&rsquo;s tha&rsquo; been doin&rsquo; with thysel&rsquo;&mdash;hidin&rsquo;
+out o&rsquo; sight an&rsquo; lettin&rsquo; folk think tha&rsquo; was cripple
+an&rsquo; half-witted?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Half-witted!&rdquo; said Colin angrily. &ldquo;Who thought that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lots o&rsquo; fools,&rdquo; said Ben. &ldquo;Th&rsquo; world&rsquo;s
+full o&rsquo; jackasses brayin&rsquo; an&rsquo; they never bray nowt but lies.
+What did tha&rsquo; shut thysel&rsquo; up for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everyone thought I was going to die,&rdquo; said Colin shortly.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he said it with such decision Ben Weatherstaff looked him over, up and
+down, down and up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; die!&rdquo; he said with dry exultation. &ldquo;Nowt o&rsquo;
+th&rsquo; sort! Tha&rsquo;s got too much pluck in thee. When I seed thee put
+tha&rsquo; legs on th&rsquo; ground in such a hurry I knowed tha&rsquo; was all
+right. Sit thee down on th&rsquo; rug a bit young Mester an&rsquo; give me thy
+orders.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;getting well. The garden was doing it. No one
+must let him remember about having humps and dying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Rajah condescended to seat himself on a rug under the tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What work do you do in the gardens, Weatherstaff?&rdquo; he inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Anythin&rsquo; I&rsquo;m told to do,&rdquo; answered old Ben.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m kep&rsquo; on by favor&mdash;because she liked me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She?&rdquo; said Colin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; mother,&rdquo; answered Ben Weatherstaff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My mother?&rdquo; said Colin, and he looked about him quietly.
+&ldquo;This was her garden, wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, it was that!&rdquo; and Ben Weatherstaff looked about him too.
+&ldquo;She were main fond of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is my garden now. I am fond of it. I shall come here every
+day,&rdquo; announced Colin. &ldquo;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&mdash;but you must
+come when no one can see you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ben Weatherstaff&rsquo;s face twisted itself in a dry old smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come here before when no one saw me,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What!&rdquo; exclaimed Colin. &ldquo;When?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Th&rsquo; last time I was here,&rdquo; rubbing his chin and looking
+round, &ldquo;was about two year&rsquo; ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But no one has been in it for ten years!&rdquo; cried Colin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There was no door!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m no one,&rdquo; said old Ben dryly. &ldquo;An&rsquo; I
+didn&rsquo;t come through th&rsquo; door. I come over th&rsquo; wall. Th&rsquo;
+rheumatics held me back th&rsquo; last two year&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; come an&rsquo; did a bit o&rsquo; prunin&rsquo;!&rdquo; cried
+Dickon. &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t make out how it had been done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She was so fond of it&mdash;she was!&rdquo; said Ben Weatherstaff
+slowly. &ldquo;An&rsquo; she was such a pretty young thing. She says to me
+once, &lsquo;Ben,&rsquo; says she laughin&rsquo;, &lsquo;if ever I&rsquo;m ill
+or if I go away you must take care of my roses.&rsquo; When she did go away
+th&rsquo; orders was no one was ever to come nigh. But I come,&rdquo; with
+grumpy obstinacy. &ldquo;Over th&rsquo; wall I come&mdash;until th&rsquo;
+rheumatics stopped me&mdash;an&rsquo; I did a bit o&rsquo; work once a year.
+She&rsquo;d gave her order first.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t have been as wick as it is if tha&rsquo; hadn&rsquo;t
+done it,&rdquo; said Dickon. &ldquo;I did wonder.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you did it, Weatherstaff,&rdquo; said Colin.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll know how to keep the secret.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, I&rsquo;ll know, sir,&rdquo; answered Ben. &ldquo;An&rsquo;
+it&rsquo;ll be easier for a man wi&rsquo; rheumatics to come in at th&rsquo;
+door.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;Mary with quite breathless interest&mdash;he drove the end of
+the trowel into the soil and turned some over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can do it! You can do it!&rdquo; said Mary to herself. &ldquo;I tell
+you, you can!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon&rsquo;s round eyes were full of eager curiousness but he said not a
+word. Ben Weatherstaff looked on with interested face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin persevered. After he had turned a few trowelfuls of soil he spoke
+exultantly to Dickon in his best Yorkshire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; said as tha&rsquo;d have me walkin&rsquo; about here same as
+other folk&mdash;an&rsquo; tha&rsquo; said tha&rsquo;d have me diggin&rsquo;. I
+thowt tha&rsquo; was just leein&rsquo; to please me. This is only th&rsquo;
+first day an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve walked&mdash;an&rsquo; here I am
+diggin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ben Weatherstaff&rsquo;s mouth fell open again when he heard him, but he ended
+by chuckling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that sounds as if tha&rsquo;d got wits enow.
+Tha&rsquo;rt a Yorkshire lad for sure. An&rsquo; tha&rsquo;rt diggin&rsquo;,
+too. How&rsquo;d tha&rsquo; like to plant a bit o&rsquo; somethin&rsquo;? I can
+get thee a rose in a pot.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go and get it!&rdquo; said Colin, digging excitedly. &ldquo;Quick!
+Quick!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want to do it before the sun goes quite&mdash;quite down,&rdquo; he
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here, lad,&rdquo; he said, handing the plant to Colin. &ldquo;Set it in
+the earth thysel&rsquo; same as th&rsquo; king does when he goes to a new
+place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The thin white hands shook a little and Colin&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s planted!&rdquo; said Colin at last. &ldquo;And the sun is
+only slipping over the edge. Help me up, Dickon. I want to be standing when it
+goes. That&rsquo;s part of the Magic.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Dickon helped him, and the Magic&mdash;or whatever it was&mdash;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&mdash;laughing.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap23"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.<br />
+MAGIC</h2>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You should not have stayed so long,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You must not
+overexert yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not tired at all,&rdquo; said Colin. &ldquo;It has made me well.
+Tomorrow I am going out in the morning as well as in the afternoon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not sure that I can allow it,&rdquo; answered Dr. Craven. &ldquo;I
+am afraid it would not be wise.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would not be wise to try to stop me,&rdquo; said Colin quite
+seriously. &ldquo;I am going.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even Mary had found out that one of Colin&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you looking at me for?&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m thinking that I am rather sorry for Dr. Craven.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So am I,&rdquo; said Colin calmly, but not without an air of some
+satisfaction. &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t get Misselthwaite at all now I&rsquo;m not
+going to die.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry for him because of that, of course,&rdquo; said Mary,
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Am I rude?&rdquo; Colin inquired undisturbedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you had been his own boy and he had been a slapping sort of
+man,&rdquo; said Mary, &ldquo;he would have slapped you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But he daren&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said Colin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, he daren&rsquo;t,&rdquo; answered Mistress Mary, thinking the thing
+out quite without prejudice. &ldquo;Nobody ever dared to do anything you
+didn&rsquo;t like&mdash;because you were going to die and things like that. You
+were such a poor thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; announced Colin stubbornly, &ldquo;I am not going to be a
+poor thing. I won&rsquo;t let people think I&rsquo;m one. I stood on my feet
+this afternoon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is always having your own way that has made you so queer,&rdquo; Mary
+went on, thinking aloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin turned his head, frowning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Am I queer?&rdquo; he demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Mary, &ldquo;very. But you needn&rsquo;t be
+cross,&rdquo; she added impartially, &ldquo;because so am I queer&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to be queer,&rdquo; said Colin. &ldquo;I am not going
+to be,&rdquo; and he frowned again with determination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall stop being queer,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if I go every day to
+the garden. There is Magic in there&mdash;good Magic, you know, Mary. I am sure
+there is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So am I,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Even if it isn&rsquo;t real Magic,&rdquo; Colin said, &ldquo;we can
+pretend it is. <i>Something</i> is there&mdash;<i>something!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s Magic,&rdquo; said Mary, &ldquo;but not black. It&rsquo;s as
+white as snow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They always called it Magic and indeed it seemed like it in the months that
+followed&mdash;the wonderful months&mdash;the radiant months&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She was main fond o&rsquo; them&mdash;she was,&rdquo; Ben Weatherstaff
+said. &ldquo;She liked them things as was allus pointin&rsquo; up to th&rsquo;
+blue sky, she used to tell. Not as she was one o&rsquo; them as looked down on
+th&rsquo; earth&mdash;not her. She just loved it but she said as th&rsquo; blue
+sky allus looked so joyful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;they
+came alive day by day, hour by hour. Fair fresh leaves, and buds&mdash;and
+buds&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;t rain he spent in
+the garden. Even gray days pleased him. He would lie on the grass
+&ldquo;watching things growing,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;
+ways, beetles&rsquo; ways, bees&rsquo; ways, frogs&rsquo; ways, birds&rsquo;
+ways, plants&rsquo; ways, gave him a new world to explore and when Dickon
+revealed them all and added foxes&rsquo; ways, otters&rsquo; ways,
+ferrets&rsquo; ways, squirrels&rsquo; ways, and trout&rsquo; and
+water-rats&rsquo; and badgers&rsquo; ways, there was no end to the things to
+talk about and think over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world,&rdquo; he said
+wisely one day, &ldquo;but people don&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning, Ben Weatherstaff,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, aye, sir!&rdquo; 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.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am going to try a scientific experiment,&rdquo; explained the Rajah.
+&ldquo;When I grow up I am going to make great scientific discoveries and I am
+going to begin now with this experiment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, aye, sir!&rdquo; said Ben Weatherstaff promptly, though this was
+the first time he had heard of great scientific discoveries.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The great scientific discoveries I am going to make,&rdquo; he went on,
+&ldquo;will be about Magic. Magic is a great thing and scarcely anyone knows
+anything about it except a few people in old books&mdash;and Mary a little,
+because she was born in India where there are fakirs. I believe Dickon knows
+some Magic, but perhaps he doesn&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;like electricity and horses and
+steam.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This sounded so imposing that Ben Weatherstaff became quite excited and really
+could not keep still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, aye, sir,&rdquo; he said and he began to stand up quite straight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When Mary found this garden it looked quite dead,&rdquo; the orator
+proceeded. &ldquo;Then something began pushing things up out of the soil and
+making things out of nothing. One day things weren&rsquo;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, &lsquo;What is it? What is it?&rsquo; It&rsquo;s something.
+It can&rsquo;t be nothing! I don&rsquo;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&rsquo;ve been in the garden I&rsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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, &lsquo;You can do it! You can do it!&rsquo; and I did. I had to try
+myself at the same time, of course, but her Magic helped me&mdash;and so did
+Dickon&rsquo;s. Every morning and evening and as often in the daytime as I can
+remember I am going to say, &lsquo;Magic is in me! Magic is making me well! I
+am going to be as strong as Dickon, as strong as Dickon!&rsquo; And you must
+all do it, too. That is my experiment Will you help, Ben Weatherstaff?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, aye, sir!&rdquo; said Ben Weatherstaff. &ldquo;Aye, aye!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I once heard an officer in India tell my mother that there were fakirs
+who said words over and over thousands of times,&rdquo; said Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard Jem Fettleworth&rsquo;s wife say th&rsquo; same thing
+over thousands o&rsquo; times&mdash;callin&rsquo; Jem a drunken brute,&rdquo;
+said Ben Weatherstaff dryly. &ldquo;Summat allus come o&rsquo; that, sure
+enough. He gave her a good hidin&rsquo; an&rsquo; went to th&rsquo; Blue Lion
+an&rsquo; got as drunk as a lord.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin drew his brows together and thought a few minutes. Then he cheered up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you see something did come of it. She used
+the wrong Magic until she made him beat her. If she&rsquo;d used the right
+Magic and had said something nice perhaps he wouldn&rsquo;t have got as drunk
+as a lord and perhaps&mdash;perhaps he might have bought her a new
+bonnet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ben Weatherstaff chuckled and there was shrewd admiration in his little old
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo;rt a clever lad as well as a straight-legged one, Mester
+Colin,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Next time I see Bess Fettleworth I&rsquo;ll give
+her a bit of a hint o&rsquo; what Magic will do for her. She&rsquo;d be rare
+an&rsquo; pleased if th&rsquo; sinetifik &rsquo;speriment
+worked&mdash;an&rsquo; so &rsquo;ud Jem.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think the experiment will work?&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;creatures&rdquo; with his happy wide
+smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled now and his smile was wider than usual.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;that I do. It&rsquo;ll work same as
+th&rsquo; seeds do when th&rsquo; sun shines on &rsquo;em. It&rsquo;ll work for
+sure. Shall us begin it now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will be like sitting in a sort of temple,&rdquo; said Colin.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m rather tired and I want to sit down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said Dickon, &ldquo;tha&rsquo; mustn&rsquo;t begin by
+sayin&rsquo; tha&rsquo;rt tired. Tha&rsquo; might spoil th&rsquo; Magic.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin turned and looked at him&mdash;into his innocent round eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; he said slowly. &ldquo;I must only think of
+the Magic.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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
+&ldquo;agen&rsquo; prayer-meetin&rsquo;s&rdquo; but this being the
+Rajah&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The &lsquo;creatures&rsquo; have come,&rdquo; said Colin gravely.
+&ldquo;They want to help us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now we will begin,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Shall we sway backward and
+forward, Mary, as if we were dervishes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I canna&rsquo; do no swayin&rsquo; back&rsquo;ard and
+for&rsquo;ard,&rdquo; said Ben Weatherstaff. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got th&rsquo;
+rheumatics.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Magic will take them away,&rdquo; said Colin in a High Priest tone,
+&ldquo;but we won&rsquo;t sway until it has done it. We will only chant.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I canna&rsquo; do no chantin&rsquo;&rdquo; said Ben Weatherstaff a
+trifle testily. &ldquo;They turned me out o&rsquo; th&rsquo; church choir
+th&rsquo; only time I ever tried it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No one smiled. They were all too much in earnest. Colin&rsquo;s face was not
+even crossed by a shadow. He was thinking only of the Magic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I will chant,&rdquo; he said. And he began, looking like a strange
+boy spirit. &ldquo;The sun is shining&mdash;the sun is shining. That is the
+Magic. The flowers are growing&mdash;the roots are stirring. That is the Magic.
+Being alive is the Magic&mdash;being strong is the Magic. The Magic is in
+me&mdash;the Magic is in me. It is in me&mdash;it is in me. It&rsquo;s in
+everyone of us. It&rsquo;s in Ben Weatherstaff&rsquo;s back. Magic! Magic! Come
+and help!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said it a great many times&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now I am going to walk round the garden,&rdquo; he announced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ben Weatherstaff&rsquo;s head had just dropped forward and he lifted it with a
+jerk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have been asleep,&rdquo; said Colin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nowt o&rsquo; th&rsquo; sort,&rdquo; mumbled Ben. &ldquo;Th&rsquo;
+sermon was good enow&mdash;but I&rsquo;m bound to get out afore th&rsquo;
+collection.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was not quite awake yet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not in church,&rdquo; said Colin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not me,&rdquo; said Ben, straightening himself. &ldquo;Who said I were?
+I heard every bit of it. You said th&rsquo; Magic was in my back. Th&rsquo;
+doctor calls it rheumatics.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Rajah waved his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was the wrong Magic,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You will get better.
+You have my permission to go to your work. But come back tomorrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to see thee walk round the garden,&rdquo; grunted Ben.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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
+&ldquo;creatures&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a procession which moved slowly but with dignity. Every few yards it
+stopped to rest. Colin leaned on Dickon&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Magic is in me!&rdquo; he kept saying. &ldquo;The Magic is making me
+strong! I can feel it! I can feel it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did it! The Magic worked!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;That is my first
+scientific discovery.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What will Dr. Craven say?&rdquo; broke out Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He won&rsquo;t say anything,&rdquo; Colin answered, &ldquo;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&rsquo;t have people whispering and asking questions and I won&rsquo;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 &lsquo;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.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He will think he is in a dream,&rdquo; cried Mary. &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t
+believe his eyes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll be obliged to believe them,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall have thee takin&rsquo; to boxin&rsquo; in a week or so,&rdquo;
+said Ben Weatherstaff. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo;lt end wi&rsquo; winnin&rsquo;
+th&rsquo; Belt an&rsquo; bein&rsquo; champion prize-fighter of all
+England.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin fixed his eyes on him sternly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Weatherstaff,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ax pardon&mdash;ax pardon, sir&rdquo; answered Ben, touching his
+forehead in salute. &ldquo;I ought to have seed it wasn&rsquo;t a jokin&rsquo;
+matter,&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap24"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.<br />
+&ldquo;LET THEM LAUGH&rdquo;</h2>
+
+<p>
+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
+&ldquo;creatures&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;d never get on as comfortable as we do,&rdquo; Mrs. Sowerby
+said, &ldquo;if it wasn&rsquo;t for Dickon&rsquo;s garden. Anything&rsquo;ll
+grow for him. His &rsquo;taters and cabbages is twice th&rsquo; size of anyone
+else&rsquo;s an&rsquo; they&rsquo;ve got a flavor with &rsquo;em as
+nobody&rsquo;s has.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All a chap&rsquo;s got to do to make &rsquo;em thrive, mother,&rdquo; he
+would say, &ldquo;is to be friends with &rsquo;em for sure. They&rsquo;re just
+like th&rsquo; &lsquo;creatures.&rsquo; If they&rsquo;re thirsty give &rsquo;em
+drink and if they&rsquo;re hungry give &rsquo;em a bit o&rsquo; food. They want
+to live same as we do. If they died I should feel as if I&rsquo;d been a bad
+lad and somehow treated them heartless.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was in these twilight hours that Mrs. Sowerby heard of all that happened at
+Misselthwaite Manor. At first she was only told that &ldquo;Mester Colin&rdquo;
+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&rsquo;s mother might &ldquo;come into the secret.&rdquo;
+Somehow it was not doubted that she was &ldquo;safe for sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s angry face peering over the wall and
+Mester Colin&rsquo;s sudden indignant strength, made Mrs. Sowerby&rsquo;s
+nice-looking face quite change color several times.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My word!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It was a good thing that little lass
+came to th&rsquo; Manor. It&rsquo;s been th&rsquo; makin&rsquo; o&rsquo; her
+an&rsquo; th&rsquo; savin, o&rsquo; him. Standin&rsquo; on his feet! An&rsquo;
+us all thinkin&rsquo; he was a poor half-witted lad with not a straight bone in
+him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She asked a great many questions and her blue eyes were full of deep thinking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do they make of it at th&rsquo; Manor&mdash;him being so well
+an&rsquo; cheerful an&rsquo; never complainin&rsquo;?&rdquo; she inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They don&rsquo;t know what to make of it,&rdquo; answered Dickon.
+&ldquo;Every day as comes round his face looks different. It&rsquo;s
+fillin&rsquo; out and doesn&rsquo;t look so sharp an&rsquo; th&rsquo; waxy
+color is goin&rsquo;. But he has to do his bit o&rsquo;
+complainin&rsquo;,&rdquo; with a highly entertained grin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What for, i&rsquo; Mercy&rsquo;s name?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Sowerby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon chuckled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He does it to keep them from guessin&rsquo; what&rsquo;s happened. If
+the doctor knew he&rsquo;d found out he could stand on his feet he&rsquo;d
+likely write and tell Mester Craven. Mester Colin&rsquo;s savin&rsquo;
+th&rsquo; secret to tell himself. He&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; to practise his Magic
+on his legs every day till his father comes back an&rsquo; then he&rsquo;s
+goin&rsquo; to march into his room an&rsquo; show him he&rsquo;s as straight as
+other lads. But him an&rsquo; Miss Mary thinks it&rsquo;s best plan to do a bit
+o&rsquo; groanin&rsquo; an&rsquo; frettin&rsquo; now an&rsquo; then to throw
+folk off th&rsquo; scent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Sowerby was laughing a low comfortable laugh long before he had finished
+his last sentence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that pair&rsquo;s enjoyin&rsquo;
+theirselves I&rsquo;ll warrant. They&rsquo;ll get a good bit o&rsquo;
+actin&rsquo; out of it an&rsquo; there&rsquo;s nothin&rsquo; children likes as
+much as play actin&rsquo;. Let&rsquo;s hear what they do, Dickon lad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon stopped weeding and sat up on his heels to tell her. His eyes were
+twinkling with fun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mester Colin is carried down to his chair every time he goes out,&rdquo;
+he explained. &ldquo;An&rsquo; he flies out at John, th&rsquo; footman, for not
+carryin&rsquo; him careful enough. He makes himself as helpless lookin&rsquo;
+as he can an&rsquo; never lifts his head until we&rsquo;re out o&rsquo; sight
+o&rsquo; th&rsquo; house. An&rsquo; he grunts an&rsquo; frets a good bit when
+he&rsquo;s bein&rsquo; settled into his chair. Him an&rsquo; Miss Mary&rsquo;s
+both got to enjoyin&rsquo; it an&rsquo; when he groans an&rsquo; complains
+she&rsquo;ll say, &lsquo;Poor Colin! Does it hurt you so much? Are you so weak
+as that, poor Colin?&rsquo;&mdash;but th&rsquo; trouble is that sometimes they
+can scarce keep from burstin&rsquo; out laughin&rsquo;. When we get safe into
+the garden they laugh till they&rsquo;ve no breath left to laugh with.
+An&rsquo; they have to stuff their faces into Mester Colin&rsquo;s cushions to
+keep the gardeners from hearin&rsquo;, if any of, &rsquo;em&rsquo;s
+about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Th&rsquo; more they laugh th&rsquo; better for &rsquo;em!&rdquo; said
+Mrs. Sowerby, still laughing herself. &ldquo;Good healthy child laughin&rsquo;s
+better than pills any day o&rsquo; th&rsquo; year. That pair&rsquo;ll plump up
+for sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are plumpin&rsquo; up,&rdquo; said Dickon. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re
+that hungry they don&rsquo;t know how to get enough to eat without makin&rsquo;
+talk. Mester Colin says if he keeps sendin&rsquo; for more food they
+won&rsquo;t believe he&rsquo;s an invalid at all. Miss Mary says she&rsquo;ll
+let him eat her share, but he says that if she goes hungry she&rsquo;ll get
+thin an&rsquo; they mun both get fat at once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell thee what, lad,&rdquo; Mrs. Sowerby said when she could
+speak. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve thought of a way to help &rsquo;em. When tha&rsquo;
+goes to &rsquo;em in th&rsquo; mornin&rsquo;s tha&rsquo; shall take a pail
+o&rsquo; good new milk an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll bake &rsquo;em a crusty cottage
+loaf or some buns wi&rsquo; currants in &rsquo;em, same as you children like.
+Nothin&rsquo;s so good as fresh milk an&rsquo; bread. Then they could take off
+th&rsquo; edge o&rsquo; their hunger while they were in their garden an&rsquo;
+th, fine food they get indoors &rsquo;ud polish off th&rsquo; corners.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! mother!&rdquo; said Dickon admiringly, &ldquo;what a wonder
+tha&rsquo; art! Tha&rsquo; always sees a way out o&rsquo; things. They was
+quite in a pother yesterday. They didn&rsquo;t see how they was to manage
+without orderin&rsquo; up more food&mdash;they felt that empty inside.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re two young &rsquo;uns growin&rsquo; fast, an&rsquo;
+health&rsquo;s comin&rsquo; back to both of &rsquo;em. Children like that feels
+like young wolves an&rsquo; food&rsquo;s flesh an&rsquo; blood to
+&rsquo;em,&rdquo; said Mrs. Sowerby. Then she smiled Dickon&rsquo;s own curving
+smile. &ldquo;Eh! but they&rsquo;re enjoyin&rsquo; theirselves for sure,&rdquo;
+she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was quite right, the comfortable wonderful mother creature&mdash;and she
+had never been more so than when she said their &ldquo;play actin&rsquo;&rdquo;
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your appetite. Is improving very much, Master Colin,&rdquo; the nurse
+had said one day. &ldquo;You used to eat nothing, and so many things disagreed
+with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing disagrees with me now&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;At least things don&rsquo;t so often
+disagree with me. It&rsquo;s the fresh air.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps it is,&rdquo; said the nurse, still looking at him with a
+mystified expression. &ldquo;But I must talk to Dr. Craven about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How she stared at you!&rdquo; said Mary when she went away. &ldquo;As if
+she thought there must be something to find out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t have her finding out things,&rdquo; said Colin. &ldquo;No
+one must begin to find out yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Dr. Craven came that morning he seemed puzzled, also. He asked a number of
+questions, to Colin&rsquo;s great annoyance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You stay out in the garden a great deal,&rdquo; he suggested.
+&ldquo;Where do you go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin put on his favorite air of dignified indifference to opinion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will not let anyone know where I go,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I go
+to a place I like. Everyone has orders to keep out of the way. I won&rsquo;t
+be watched and stared at. You know that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You seem to be out all day but I do not think it has done you
+harm&mdash;I do not think so. The nurse says that you eat much more than you
+have ever done before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; said Colin, prompted by a sudden inspiration,
+&ldquo;perhaps it is an unnatural appetite.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not think so, as your food seems to agree with you,&rdquo; said Dr.
+Craven. &ldquo;You are gaining flesh rapidly and your color is better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps&mdash;perhaps I am bloated and feverish,&rdquo; said Colin,
+assuming a discouraging air of gloom. &ldquo;People who are not going to live
+are often&mdash;different.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Craven shook his head. He was holding Colin&rsquo;s wrist and he pushed up
+his sleeve and felt his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not feverish,&rdquo; he said thoughtfully, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t have him told!&rdquo; Colin broke forth fiercely.
+&ldquo;It will only disappoint him if I get worse again&mdash;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&rsquo;t have letters written to my
+father&mdash;I won&rsquo;t&mdash;I won&rsquo;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!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hush-h! my boy,&rdquo; Dr. Craven soothed him. &ldquo;Nothing shall be
+written without your permission. You are too sensitive about things. You must
+not undo the good which has been done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The boy is extraordinarily better,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary and Colin were much alarmed and talked together anxiously. From this time
+dated their plan of &ldquo;play actin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I may be obliged to have a tantrum,&rdquo; said Colin regretfully.
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to have one and I&rsquo;m not miserable enough now to
+work myself into a big one. Perhaps I couldn&rsquo;t have one at all. That lump
+doesn&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;particularly if there were delicate slices of sizzling ham sending
+forth tempting odors from under a hot silver cover&mdash;they would look into
+each other&rsquo;s eyes in desperation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think we shall have to eat it all this morning, Mary,&rdquo; Colin
+always ended by saying. &ldquo;We can send away some of the lunch and a great
+deal of the dinner.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do wish,&rdquo; Colin would say also, &ldquo;I do wish the slices of
+ham were thicker, and one muffin each is not enough for anyone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s enough for a person who is going to die,&rdquo; answered Mary
+when first she heard this, &ldquo;but it&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The morning that Dickon&mdash;after they had been enjoying themselves in the
+garden for about two hours&mdash;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!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Magic is in her just as it is in Dickon,&rdquo; said Colin. &ldquo;It
+makes her think of ways to do things&mdash;nice things. She is a Magic person.
+Tell her we are grateful, Dickon&mdash;extremely grateful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was given to using rather grown-up phrases at times. He enjoyed them. He
+liked this so much that he improved upon it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell her she has been most bounteous and our gratitude is
+extreme.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yesterday,&rdquo; he said one morning after an absence, &ldquo;I went to
+Thwaite for mother an&rsquo; near th&rsquo; Blue Cow Inn I seed Bob Haworth.
+He&rsquo;s the strongest chap on th&rsquo; moor. He&rsquo;s the champion
+wrestler an&rsquo; he can jump higher than any other chap an&rsquo; throw
+th&rsquo; hammer farther. He&rsquo;s gone all th&rsquo; way to Scotland for
+th&rsquo; sports some years. He&rsquo;s knowed me ever since I was a little
+&rsquo;un an&rsquo; he&rsquo;s a friendly sort an&rsquo; I axed him some
+questions. Th&rsquo; gentry calls him a athlete and I thought o&rsquo; thee,
+Mester Colin, and I says, &lsquo;How did tha&rsquo; make tha&rsquo; muscles
+stick out that way, Bob? Did tha&rsquo; do anythin&rsquo; extra to make
+thysel&rsquo; so strong?&rsquo; An&rsquo; he says &lsquo;Well, yes, lad, I did.
+A strong man in a show that came to Thwaite once showed me how to exercise my
+arms an&rsquo; legs an&rsquo; every muscle in my body. An&rsquo; I says,
+&lsquo;Could a delicate chap make himself stronger with &rsquo;em, Bob?&rsquo;
+an&rsquo; he laughed an&rsquo; says, &lsquo;Art tha&rsquo; th&rsquo; delicate
+chap?&rsquo; an&rsquo; I says, &lsquo;No, but I knows a young gentleman
+that&rsquo;s gettin&rsquo; well of a long illness an&rsquo; I wish I knowed
+some o&rsquo; them tricks to tell him about.&rsquo; I didn&rsquo;t say no names
+an&rsquo; he didn&rsquo;t ask none. He&rsquo;s friendly same as I said
+an&rsquo; he stood up an&rsquo; showed me good-natured like, an&rsquo; I
+imitated what he did till I knowed it by heart.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin had been listening excitedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can you show me?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Will you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, to be sure,&rdquo; Dickon answered, getting up. &ldquo;But he says
+tha&rsquo; mun do &rsquo;em gentle at first an&rsquo; be careful not to tire
+thysel&rsquo;. Rest in between times an&rsquo; take deep breaths an&rsquo;
+don&rsquo;t overdo.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be careful,&rdquo; said Colin. &ldquo;Show me! Show me!
+Dickon, you are the most Magic boy in the world!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From that time the exercises were part of the day&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are eating next to nothing,&rdquo; said the nurse.
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll die of starvation if they can&rsquo;t be persuaded to take
+some nourishment. And yet see how they look.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Medlock indignantly. &ldquo;Eh! I&rsquo;m
+moithered to death with them. They&rsquo;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&mdash;and the poor woman fair
+<i>invented</i> a pudding for them&mdash;and back it&rsquo;s sent. She almost
+cried. She&rsquo;s afraid she&rsquo;ll be blamed if they starve themselves into
+their graves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;but it was
+even more worried when he sat down by Colin&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sorry to hear that you do not eat anything,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;That will not do. You will lose all you have gained&mdash;and you have
+gained amazingly. You ate so well a short time ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told you it was an unnatural appetite,&rdquo; answered Colin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; said Dr. Craven, turning to look at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary became quite severe in her manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was something between a sneeze and a cough,&rdquo; she replied with
+reproachful dignity, &ldquo;and it got into my throat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; she said afterward to Colin, &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t stop
+myself. It just burst out because all at once I couldn&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is there any way in which those children can get food secretly?&rdquo;
+Dr. Craven inquired of Mrs. Medlock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no way unless they dig it out of the earth or pick it off
+the trees,&rdquo; Mrs. Medlock answered. &ldquo;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&rsquo;s sent up to them they need only ask for it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Dr. Craven, &ldquo;so long as going without food
+agrees with them we need not disturb ourselves. The boy is a new
+creature.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So is the girl,&rdquo; said Mrs. Medlock. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s begun to be
+downright pretty since she&rsquo;s filled out and lost her ugly little sour
+look. Her hair&rsquo;s grown thick and healthy looking and she&rsquo;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&rsquo;re growing fat on that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps they are,&rdquo; said Dr. Craven. &ldquo;Let them laugh.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap25"></a>CHAPTER XXV.<br />
+THE CURTAIN</h2>
+
+<p>
+And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new
+miracles. In the robin&rsquo;s nest there were Eggs and the robin&rsquo;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&mdash;nothing which did not understand the
+wonderfulness of what was happening to them&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the boy began to walk by himself and even to move more quickly it was an
+immense relief. But for a long time&mdash;or it seemed a long time to the
+robin&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo; mother sometimes felt even a little dull because the
+children did not come into the garden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now that I am a real boy,&rdquo; Colin had said, &ldquo;my legs and arms
+and all my body are so full of Magic that I can&rsquo;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&rsquo;s quite early and the birds are just shouting
+outside and everything seems just shouting for joy&mdash;even the trees and
+things we can&rsquo;t really hear&mdash;I feel as if I must jump out of bed and
+shout myself. If I did it, just think what would happen!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary giggled inordinately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The nurse would come running and Mrs. Medlock would come running and
+they would be sure you had gone crazy and they&rsquo;d send for the
+doctor,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin giggled himself. He could see how they would all look&mdash;how horrified
+by his outbreak and how amazed to see him standing upright.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish my father would come home,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I want to tell
+him myself. I&rsquo;m always thinking about it&mdash;but we couldn&rsquo;t go
+on like this much longer. I can&rsquo;t stand lying still and pretending, and
+besides I look too different. I wish it wasn&rsquo;t raining today.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was then Mistress Mary had her inspiration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Colin,&rdquo; she began mysteriously, &ldquo;do you know how many rooms
+there are in this house?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About a thousand, I suppose,&rdquo; he answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s about a hundred no one ever goes into,&rdquo; said Mary.
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin started up on his sofa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A hundred rooms no one goes into,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I was thinking,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ring the bell,&rdquo; said Colin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the nurse came in he gave his orders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want my chair,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am going to run from one end of the gallery to the other,&rdquo; he
+said, &ldquo;and then I am going to jump and then we will do Bob
+Haworth&rsquo;s exercises.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All these,&rdquo; said Colin, &ldquo;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&mdash;not as you look now but as
+you looked when you came here. Now you are a great deal fatter and better
+looking.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So are you,&rdquo; said Mary, and they both laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad we came,&rdquo; Colin said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That morning they had found among other things such good appetites that when
+they returned to Colin&rsquo;s room it was not possible to send the luncheon
+away untouched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look at that!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;This is a house of mystery, and
+those two children are the greatest mysteries in it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If they keep that up every day,&rdquo; said the strong young footman
+John, &ldquo;there&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That afternoon Mary noticed that something new had happened in Colin&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know what you want me to tell you,&rdquo; said Colin, after she had
+stared a few minutes. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because it doesn&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are so like her now,&rdquo; said Mary, &ldquo;that sometimes I think
+perhaps you are her ghost made into a boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That idea seemed to impress Colin. He thought it over and then answered her
+slowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I were her ghost&mdash;my father would be fond of me,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you want him to be fond of you?&rdquo; inquired Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap26"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.<br />
+&ldquo;IT&rsquo;S MOTHER!&rdquo;</h2>
+
+<p>
+Their belief in the Magic was an abiding thing. After the morning&rsquo;s
+incantations Colin sometimes gave them Magic lectures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I like to do it,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Th&rsquo; best thing about lecturin&rsquo;,&rdquo; said Ben, &ldquo;is
+that a chap can get up an&rsquo; say aught he pleases an&rsquo; no other chap
+can answer him back. I wouldn&rsquo;t be agen&rsquo; lecturin&rsquo; a bit
+mysel&rsquo; sometimes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you thinking about, Ben Weatherstaff?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was thinkin&rsquo;&rdquo; answered Ben, &ldquo;as I&rsquo;d warrant
+tha&rsquo;s gone up three or four pound this week. I was lookin&rsquo; at
+tha&rsquo; calves an&rsquo; tha&rsquo; shoulders. I&rsquo;d like to get thee on
+a pair o&rsquo; scales.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the Magic and&mdash;and Mrs. Sowerby&rsquo;s buns and milk
+and things,&rdquo; said Colin. &ldquo;You see the scientific experiment has
+succeeded.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Magic works best when you work, yourself,&rdquo; he said this
+morning. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mary! Dickon!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Just look at me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They stopped their weeding and looked at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you remember that first morning you brought me in here?&rdquo; he
+demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, that we do,&rdquo; he answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary looked hard too, but she said nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just this minute,&rdquo; said Colin, &ldquo;all at once I remembered it
+myself&mdash;when I looked at my hand digging with the trowel&mdash;and I had
+to stand up on my feet to see if it was real. And it is real! I&rsquo;m
+<i>well</i>&mdash;I&rsquo;m <i>well!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, that th&rsquo; art!&rdquo; said Dickon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m well! I&rsquo;m well!&rdquo; said Colin again, and his face
+went quite red all over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;a sort
+of rapturous belief and realization and it had been so strong that he could not
+help calling out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall live forever and ever and ever!&rdquo; he cried grandly.
+&ldquo;I shall find out thousands and thousands of things. I shall find out
+about people and creatures and everything that grows&mdash;like
+Dickon&mdash;and I shall never stop making Magic. I&rsquo;m well! I&rsquo;m
+well! I feel&mdash;I feel as if I want to shout out something&mdash;something
+thankful, joyful!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ben Weatherstaff, who had been working near a rose-bush, glanced round at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; might sing th&rsquo; Doxology,&rdquo; he suggested in his
+dryest grunt. He had no opinion of the Doxology and he did not make the
+suggestion with any particular reverence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Colin was of an exploring mind and he knew nothing about the Doxology.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is that?&rdquo; he inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dickon can sing it for thee, I&rsquo;ll warrant,&rdquo; replied Ben
+Weatherstaff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dickon answered with his all-perceiving animal charmer&rsquo;s smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They sing it i&rsquo; church,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Mother says she
+believes th&rsquo; skylarks sings it when they gets up i&rsquo; th&rsquo;
+mornin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If she says that, it must be a nice song,&rdquo; Colin answered.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never been in a church myself. I was always too ill. Sing it,
+Dickon. I want to hear it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tha&rsquo; must take off tha&rsquo; cap,&rdquo; he said to Colin,
+&ldquo;an&rsquo; so mun tha&rsquo;, Ben&mdash;an&rsquo; tha&rsquo; mun stand
+up, tha&rsquo; knows.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;t know exactly why he was doing this remarkable thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Praise God from whom all blessings flow,<br />
+Praise Him all creatures here below,<br />
+Praise Him above ye Heavenly Host,<br />
+Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.<br />
+            Amen.&rdquo;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s face was thoughtful and appreciative.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a very nice song,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I like it. Perhaps it
+means just what I mean when I want to shout out that I am thankful to the
+Magic.&rdquo; He stopped and thought in a puzzled way. &ldquo;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&rsquo;s my song.
+How does it begin? &lsquo;Praise God from whom all blessings
+flow&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And they sang it again, and Mary and Colin lifted their voices as musically as
+they could and Dickon&rsquo;s swelled quite loud and beautiful&mdash;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
+&ldquo;Amen&rdquo; 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&mdash;his chin was twitching and he was staring and winking and his
+leathery old cheeks were wet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never seed no sense in th&rsquo; Doxology afore,&rdquo; he said
+hoarsely, &ldquo;but I may change my mind i&rsquo; time. I should say
+tha&rsquo;d gone up five pound this week Mester Colin&mdash;five on
+&rsquo;em!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin was looking across the garden at something attracting his attention and
+his expression had become a startled one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who is coming in here?&rdquo; he said quickly. &ldquo;Who is it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s books. She had wonderful affectionate eyes which seemed
+to take everything in&mdash;all of them, even Ben Weatherstaff and the
+&ldquo;creatures&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s eyes lighted like lamps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s mother&mdash;that&rsquo;s who it is!&rdquo; he cried and went
+across the grass at a run.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin began to move toward her, too, and Mary went with him. They both felt
+their pulses beat faster.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s mother!&rdquo; Dickon said again when they met halfway.
+&ldquo;I knowed tha&rsquo; wanted to see her an&rsquo; I told her where
+th&rsquo; door was hid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin held out his hand with a sort of flushed royal shyness but his eyes quite
+devoured her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Even when I was ill I wanted to see you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you and
+Dickon and the secret garden. I&rsquo;d never wanted to see anyone or anything
+before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! dear lad!&rdquo; she broke out tremulously. &ldquo;Eh! dear
+lad!&rdquo; as if she had not known she were going to say it. She did not say,
+&ldquo;Mester Colin,&rdquo; but just &ldquo;dear lad&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you surprised because I am so well?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She put her hand on his shoulder and smiled the mist out of her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, that I am!&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;but tha&rsquo;rt so like thy
+mother tha&rsquo; made my heart jump.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think,&rdquo; said Colin a little awkwardly, &ldquo;that will
+make my father like me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, for sure, dear lad,&rdquo; she answered and she gave his shoulder a
+soft quick pat. &ldquo;He mun come home&mdash;he mun come home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Susan Sowerby,&rdquo; said Ben Weatherstaff, getting close to her.
+&ldquo;Look at th&rsquo; lad&rsquo;s legs, wilt tha&rsquo;? They was like
+drumsticks i&rsquo; stockin&rsquo; two month&rsquo; ago&mdash;an&rsquo; I heard
+folk tell as they was bandy an&rsquo; knock-kneed both at th&rsquo; same time.
+Look at &rsquo;em now!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Susan Sowerby laughed a comfortable laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re goin&rsquo; to be fine strong lad&rsquo;s legs in a
+bit,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Let him go on playin&rsquo; an&rsquo;
+workin&rsquo; in the garden an&rsquo; eatin&rsquo; hearty an&rsquo;
+drinkin&rsquo; plenty o&rsquo; good sweet milk an&rsquo; there&rsquo;ll not be
+a finer pair i&rsquo; Yorkshire, thank God for it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She put both hands on Mistress Mary&rsquo;s shoulders and looked her little
+face over in a motherly fashion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An&rsquo; thee, too!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo;rt grown near as
+hearty as our &rsquo;Lisabeth Ellen. I&rsquo;ll warrant tha&rsquo;rt like thy
+mother too. Our Martha told me as Mrs. Medlock heard she was a pretty woman.
+Tha&rsquo;lt be like a blush rose when tha&rsquo; grows up, my little lass,
+bless thee.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not mention that when Martha came home on her &ldquo;day out&rdquo; and
+described the plain sallow child she had said that she had no confidence
+whatever in what Mrs. Medlock had heard. &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t stand to
+reason that a pretty woman could be th&rsquo; mother o&rsquo; such a fou&rsquo;
+little lass,&rdquo; she had added obstinately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary had not had time to pay much attention to her changing face. She had only
+known that she looked &ldquo;different&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;a
+sort of warm, supported feeling. It seemed as if she understood them as Dickon
+understood his &ldquo;creatures.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose learnin&rsquo; &rsquo;em to fly is like learnin&rsquo;
+children to walk, but I&rsquo;m feared I should be all in a worrit if mine had
+wings instead o&rsquo; legs,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was because she seemed such a wonderful woman in her nice moorland cottage
+way that at last she was told about the Magic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you believe in Magic?&rdquo; asked Colin after he had explained about
+Indian fakirs. &ldquo;I do hope you do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That I do, lad,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I never knowed it by that
+name but what does th&rsquo; name matter? I warrant they call it a different
+name i&rsquo; France an&rsquo; a different one i&rsquo; Germany. Th&rsquo; same
+thing as set th&rsquo; seeds swellin&rsquo; an&rsquo; th&rsquo; sun
+shinin&rsquo; made thee a well lad an&rsquo; it&rsquo;s th&rsquo; Good Thing.
+It isn&rsquo;t like us poor fools as think it matters if us is called out of
+our names. Th&rsquo; Big Good Thing doesn&rsquo;t stop to worrit, bless thee.
+It goes on makin&rsquo; worlds by th&rsquo; million&mdash;worlds like us. Never
+thee stop believin&rsquo; in th&rsquo; Big Good Thing an&rsquo; knowin&rsquo;
+th&rsquo; world&rsquo;s full of it&mdash;an&rsquo; call it what tha&rsquo;
+likes. Tha&rsquo; wert singin&rsquo; to it when I come into th&rsquo;
+garden.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I felt so joyful,&rdquo; said Colin, opening his beautiful strange eyes
+at her. &ldquo;Suddenly I felt how different I was&mdash;how strong my arms and
+legs were, you know&mdash;and how I could dig and stand&mdash;and I jumped up
+and wanted to shout out something to anything that would listen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Th&rsquo; Magic listened when tha&rsquo; sung th&rsquo; Doxology. It
+would ha&rsquo; listened to anything tha&rsquo;d sung. It was th&rsquo; joy
+that mattered. Eh! lad, lad&mdash;what&rsquo;s names to th&rsquo; Joy
+Maker,&rdquo; and she gave his shoulders a quick soft pat again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see we can&rsquo;t help laughing nearly all the time when we are
+together,&rdquo; explained Colin. &ldquo;And it doesn&rsquo;t sound ill at all.
+We try to choke it back but it will burst out and that sounds worse than
+ever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s one thing that comes into my mind so often,&rdquo; said
+Mary, &ldquo;and I can scarcely ever hold in when I think of it suddenly. I
+keep thinking suppose Colin&rsquo;s face should get to look like a full moon.
+It isn&rsquo;t like one yet but he gets a tiny bit fatter every day&mdash;and
+suppose some morning it should look like one&mdash;what should we do!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bless us all, I can see tha&rsquo; has a good bit o&rsquo; play
+actin&rsquo; to do,&rdquo; said Susan Sowerby. &ldquo;But tha&rsquo;
+won&rsquo;t have to keep it up much longer. Mester Craven&rsquo;ll come
+home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think he will?&rdquo; asked Colin. &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Susan Sowerby chuckled softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose it &rsquo;ud nigh break thy heart if he found out before
+tha&rsquo; told him in tha&rsquo; own way,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Tha&rsquo;s
+laid awake nights plannin&rsquo; it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t bear anyone else to tell him,&rdquo; said Colin.
+&ldquo;I think about different ways every day, I think now I just want to run
+into his room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;d be a fine start for him,&rdquo; said Susan Sowerby.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to see his face, lad. I would that! He mun come
+back&mdash;that he mun.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s garden and would not come back until they were tired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are just what I&mdash;what I wanted,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I wish
+you were my mother&mdash;as well as Dickon&rsquo;s!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All at once Susan Sowerby bent down and drew him with her warm arms close
+against the bosom under the blue cloak&mdash;as if he had been Dickon&rsquo;s
+brother. The quick mist swept over her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! dear lad!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Thy own mother&rsquo;s in this
+&rsquo;ere very garden, I do believe. She couldna&rsquo; keep out of it. Thy
+father mun come back to thee&mdash;he mun!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap27"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.<br />
+IN THE GARDEN</h2>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;just mere thoughts&mdash;are as powerful as
+electric batteries&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So long as Mistress Mary&rsquo;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 &ldquo;creatures,&rdquo; there was no room
+left for the disagreeable thoughts which affected her liver and her digestion
+and made her yellow and tired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Where you tend a rose, my lad,<br />
+A thistle cannot grow.&rdquo;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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, &ldquo;Archibald Craven, Misselthwaite Manor, Yorkshire,
+England.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had traveled far and wide since the day he saw Mistress Mary in his study
+and told her she might have her &ldquo;bit of earth.&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he said, almost in a whisper, and he passed his hand
+over his forehead. &ldquo;I almost feel as if&mdash;I were alive!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am going to live forever and ever and ever!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;sometimes half-hours&mdash;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&mdash;slowly&mdash;for no reason that he knew
+of&mdash;he was &ldquo;coming alive&rdquo; with the garden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;my body is growing stronger.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was growing stronger but&mdash;because of the rare peaceful hours when his
+thoughts were changed&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Archie! Archie! Archie!&rdquo; it said, and then again, sweeter and
+clearer than before, &ldquo;Archie! Archie!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lilias! Lilias!&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Lilias! where are you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the garden,&rdquo; it came back like a sound from a golden flute.
+&ldquo;In the garden!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;a lightness as if the cruel thing which had been done had not
+happened as he thought&mdash;as if something had changed. He was remembering
+the dream&mdash;the real&mdash;real dream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the garden!&rdquo; he said, wondering at himself. &ldquo;In the
+garden! But the door is locked and the key is buried deep.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<blockquote> <div>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+&ldquo;<i>Dear Sir:</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;if you will
+excuse me, sir&mdash;I think your lady would ask you to come if she was here.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+    Your obedient servant,<br />
+                Susan Sowerby.&rdquo;<br />
+</p>
+
+</div> </blockquote>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Craven read the letter twice before he put it back in its envelope. He kept
+thinking about the dream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will go back to Misselthwaite,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ll
+go at once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he went through the garden to the villa and ordered Pitcher to prepare for
+his return to England.<br /><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 &ldquo;coming
+alive&rdquo; began to think in a new way and he thought long and steadily and
+deeply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps I have been all wrong for ten years,&rdquo; he said to himself.
+&ldquo;Ten years is a long time. It may be too late to do anything&mdash;quite
+too late. What have I been thinking of!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course this was the wrong Magic&mdash;to begin by saying &ldquo;too
+late.&rdquo; Even Colin could have told him that. But he knew nothing of
+Magic&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Could it be possible that she sees that I may be able to do him good and
+control him?&rdquo; he thought. &ldquo;I will go and see her on my way to
+Misselthwaite.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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. &ldquo;Our Dickon,&rdquo; they volunteered, was over at the Manor
+working in one of the gardens where he went several days each week.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 &ldquo;our
+&rsquo;Lizabeth Ellen&rdquo; who was the oldest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you divide that into eight parts there will be half a crown for each
+of, you,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then amid grins and chuckles and bobbing of curtsies he drove away, leaving
+ecstasy and nudging elbows and little jumps of joy behind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;how
+wonderful and clear the voice which called back to him, &ldquo;In the
+garden&mdash;In the garden!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will try to find the key,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I will try to open
+the door. I must&mdash;though I don&rsquo;t know why.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How is Master Colin, Medlock?&rdquo; he inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; Mrs. Medlock answered,
+&ldquo;he&rsquo;s&mdash;he&rsquo;s different, in a manner of speaking.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Worse?&rdquo; he suggested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Medlock really was flushed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you see, sir,&rdquo; she tried to explain, &ldquo;neither Dr.
+Craven, nor the nurse, nor me can exactly make him out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why is that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To tell the truth, sir, Master Colin might be better and he might be
+changing for the worse. His appetite, sir, is past understanding&mdash;and his
+ways&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Has he become more&mdash;more peculiar?&rdquo; her master, asked,
+knitting his brows anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s it, sir. He&rsquo;s growing very peculiar&mdash;when you
+compare him with what he used to be. He used to eat nothing and then suddenly
+he began to eat something enormous&mdash;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&rsquo;ve gone through to get him to go out in his chair would leave a body
+trembling like a leaf. He&rsquo;d throw himself into such a state that Dr.
+Craven said he couldn&rsquo;t be responsible for forcing him. Well, sir, just
+without warning&mdash;not long after one of his worst tantrums he suddenly
+insisted on being taken out every day by Miss Mary and Susan Sowerby&rsquo;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&rsquo;ll credit it,
+sir, out of doors he will stay from morning until night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How does he look?&rdquo; was the next question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If he took his food natural, sir, you&rsquo;d think he was putting on
+flesh&mdash;but we&rsquo;re afraid it may be a sort of bloat. He laughs
+sometimes in a queer way when he&rsquo;s alone with Miss Mary. He never used to
+laugh at all. Dr. Craven is coming to see you at once, if you&rsquo;ll allow
+him. He never was as puzzled in his life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is Master Colin now?&rdquo; Mr. Craven asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the garden, sir. He&rsquo;s always in the garden&mdash;though not a
+human creature is allowed to go near for fear they&rsquo;ll look at him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Craven scarcely heard her last words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the garden,&rdquo; he said, and after he had sent Mrs. Medlock away
+he stood and repeated it again and again. &ldquo;In the garden!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;but he did not know exactly where it lay&mdash;that buried key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he stopped and stood still, looking about him, and almost the moment after
+he had paused he started and listened&mdash;asking himself if he were walking
+in a dream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;as
+their excitement mounted&mdash;would burst forth. What in heaven&rsquo;s name
+was he dreaming of&mdash;what in heaven&rsquo;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?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then the moment came, the uncontrollable moment when the sounds forgot to
+hush themselves. The feet ran faster and faster&mdash;they were nearing the
+garden door&mdash;there was quick strong young breathing and a wild outbreak of
+laughing shouts which could not be contained&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;eyes full of boyish
+laughter and rimmed with black lashes like a fringe. It was the eyes which made
+Mr. Craven gasp for breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who&mdash;What? Who!&rdquo; he stammered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was not what Colin had expected&mdash;this was not what he had planned. He
+had never thought of such a meeting. And yet to come dashing out&mdash;winning
+a race&mdash;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&mdash;inches taller.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Father,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m Colin. You can&rsquo;t believe
+it. I scarcely can myself. I&rsquo;m Colin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like Mrs. Medlock, he did not understand what his father meant when he said
+hurriedly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the garden! In the garden!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; hurried on Colin. &ldquo;It was the garden that did
+it&mdash;and Mary and Dickon and the creatures&mdash;and the Magic. No one
+knows. We kept it to tell you when you came. I&rsquo;m well, I can beat Mary in
+a race. I&rsquo;m going to be an athlete.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said it all so like a healthy boy&mdash;his face flushed, his words tumbling
+over each other in his eagerness&mdash;that Mr. Craven&rsquo;s soul shook with
+unbelieving joy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colin put out his hand and laid it on his father&rsquo;s arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you glad, Father?&rdquo; he ended. &ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you
+glad? I&rsquo;m going to live forever and ever and ever!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Craven put his hands on both the boy&rsquo;s shoulders and held him still.
+He knew he dared not even try to speak for a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take me into the garden, my boy,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;And tell
+me all about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so they led him in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought it would be dead,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mary thought so at first,&rdquo; said Colin. &ldquo;But it came
+alive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then they sat down under their tree&mdash;all but Colin, who wanted to stand
+while he told the story.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;the coming of the spring&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he said at the end of the story, &ldquo;it need not be a
+secret any more. I dare say it will frighten them nearly into fits when they
+see me&mdash;but I am never going to get into the chair again. I shall walk
+back with you, Father&mdash;to the house.&rdquo;<br /><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ben Weatherstaff&rsquo;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&rsquo; hall by Mrs. Medlock to drink a glass of
+beer he was on the spot&mdash;as he had hoped to be&mdash;when the most
+dramatic event Misselthwaite Manor had seen during the present generation
+actually took place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you see either of them, Weatherstaff?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ben took his beer-mug from his mouth and wiped his lips with the back of his
+hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, that I did,&rdquo; he answered with a shrewdly significant air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Both of them?&rdquo; suggested Mrs. Medlock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Both of &rsquo;em,&rdquo; returned Ben Weatherstaff. &ldquo;Thank ye
+kindly, ma&rsquo;am, I could sup up another mug of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Together?&rdquo; said Mrs. Medlock, hastily overfilling his beer-mug in
+her excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Together, ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; and Ben gulped down half of his new mug at
+one gulp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where was Master Colin? How did he look? What did they say to each
+other?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didna&rsquo; hear that,&rdquo; said Ben, &ldquo;along o&rsquo; only
+bein&rsquo; on th&rsquo; stepladder lookin over th&rsquo; wall. But I&rsquo;ll
+tell thee this. There&rsquo;s been things goin&rsquo; on outside as you house
+people knows nowt about. An&rsquo; what tha&rsquo;ll find out tha&rsquo;ll find
+out soon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look there,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if tha&rsquo;s curious. Look
+what&rsquo;s comin&rsquo; across th&rsquo; grass.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;
+hall and stood looking through the window with their eyes almost starting out
+of their heads.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;Master Colin!<br /><br />
+</p>
+
+<h5>
+THE END
+</h5>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET GARDEN ***</div>
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diff --git a/old/old/113.txt b/old/old/113.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Secret Garden
+
+Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+Release Date: May 15, 2008 [EBook #113]
+[This file last updated: February 3, 2011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET GARDEN ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+In Honor of Lisa Hart's 9th Birthday
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+CHAPTER  TITLE
+
+      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 SOME ONE CRYING--THERE WAS!"
+    VII  THE KEY TO THE GARDEN
+   VIII  THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY
+     IX  THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANY ONE 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
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SECRET GARDEN
+
+BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
+
+
+
+
+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 some one.  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.
+
+"Some one 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
+any one.  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 some one 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 crepe 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 a
+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 any one 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
+house-maids. 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 any one 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 any one."
+
+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 any one can find, an'
+none as is any one'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 her self.
+
+"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, forward 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 any one
+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 some one.
+
+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 any one crying?" she said.
+
+Martha suddenly looked confused.
+
+"No," she answered.  "It's th' wind.  Sometimes it sounds like as if
+some one 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 some one 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 SOME ONE 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 any one 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 some one 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 some one 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 some one 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 as 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' goodnatured 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."
+
+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 any one 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 any one 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 ANY ONE EVER LIVED IN
+
+
+It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one 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 some one.  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 any one, 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
+every one 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 Phoebe 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 any one 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 every one 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 a cross.
+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' some one 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 any one 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 some one'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 some one
+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 any one 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 any one? 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 some one 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 some one 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 absentmindedly.
+
+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 to-day 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
+some one 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 some one 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 any one 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 any one.' 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 any one 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.  "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 any one 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 fight 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 any one
+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.  Any one
+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 any
+one 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 any one 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 any one 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 some one 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 any one 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 some one 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 any one'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 any one 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 some one 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
+every one 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 down stairs 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 some one'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 crowned 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
+some one 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 any one
+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 every one
+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 any one 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' their-selves 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 any one know where I go," he answered.  "I go to a
+place I like.  Every one 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 any one."
+
+"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 down-stairs 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 to-day 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."
+
+"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 any one 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 any one 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 any one 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 any one 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 any one
+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 shows 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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
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+
+
+
+
+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
+
+CHAPTER  TITLE
+
+      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 SOME ONE CRYING--THERE WAS!"  
+    VII  THE KEY TO THE GARDEN  
+   VIII  THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY 
+     IX  THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANY ONE 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  
+    XIV  "LET THEM LAUGH" 
+    XXV  THE CURTAIN  
+   XXVI  "IT'S MOTHER!" 
+  XXVII  IN THE GARDEN  
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SECRET GARDEN
+BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
+
+
+
+
+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 some one.  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. 
+
+"Some one 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 tightening 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 any one.  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 some one 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 lookedat 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
+crepe 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 a 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 any one 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 girlfound 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 our 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 blackingbrush 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 house-maids. 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 any one 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 any one."
+
+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 any
+one can find, an' none as is any one'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 her self. 
+
+"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,
+forward 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 any one 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 some one. 
+
+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 any one crying?" she said. 
+
+Martha suddenly looked confused. 
+
+"No," she answered.  "It's th' wind.  Sometimes it
+sounds like as if some one 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 some one
+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 SOME ONE 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 any one 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 tightened 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 some one 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 some one 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 some one 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 as 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 thining 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' goodnatured 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."
+
+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 any one 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 any one 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 ANY ONE EVER LIVED IN
+
+
+It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place
+any one 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 some one.  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
+any one, 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 every one 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 Phoebe 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 any one 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 ifhe 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 every
+one 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 a cross.  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' some one 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 any one 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 some one'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 some one 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
+any one before.  And she tried to ask it in Yorkshire
+because that was his lan- guage, 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 any one? 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 some one 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 some
+one 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 absentmindedly. 
+
+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 to-day 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 littlebeds 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 some one 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 some one 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 gettingfresh 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 any one 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 any one.' 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 any one 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.  "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 he 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
+any one 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 every- where 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 fight 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 any one 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. 
+Any one 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 any one 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 any one 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 any one 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 some one 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 any one 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 some one 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 any one'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 any one 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
+srteamed 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 some
+one 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 geat 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 every one 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 thewhole 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 down
+stairs 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 some one'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 crowned 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 litle 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 some one 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 any one 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 makethe
+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 every one 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 any one
+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' their-selves 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 any one know where I go," he answered. 
+"I go to a place I like.  Every one 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 any one."
+
+"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 any- thing,"
+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 down-stairs 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 to-day 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."
+
+"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 any one
+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 any one 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 in- creasing 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 any one 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 any one 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 sweptthe 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 any one 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 shows 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. 
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of "The Secret Garden"
+
+
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+
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+CHAPTER  TITLE
+
+      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 SOME ONE CRYING--THERE WAS!"
+    VII  THE KEY TO THE GARDEN
+   VIII  THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY
+     IX  THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANY ONE 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
+    XIV  "LET THEM LAUGH"
+    XXV  THE CURTAIN
+   XXVI  "IT'S MOTHER!"
+  XXVII  IN THE GARDEN
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SECRET GARDEN
+BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
+
+
+
+
+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 some one.  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.
+
+"Some one 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 any one.  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 some one 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
+crepe 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 a 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 any one 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 our 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 house-maids. 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 any one 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 any one."
+
+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 any
+one can find, an' none as is any one'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 her self.
+
+"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,
+forward 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 any one 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 some one.
+
+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 any one crying?" she said.
+
+Martha suddenly looked confused.
+
+"No," she answered.  "It's th' wind.  Sometimes it
+sounds like as if some one 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 some one
+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 SOME ONE 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 any one 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 some one 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 some one 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 some one 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 as 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' goodnatured 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."
+
+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 any one 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 any one 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 ANY ONE EVER LIVED IN
+
+
+It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place
+any one 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 some one.  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
+any one, 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 every one 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 Phoebe 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 any one 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 every
+one 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 a cross.  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' some one 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 any one 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 some one'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 some one 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
+any one 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 any one? 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 some one 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 some
+one 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
+absentmindedly.
+
+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 to-day 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 littlebeds 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 some one 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 some one 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 any one 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 any one.' 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 any one 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.  "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
+any one 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 fight 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 any one 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.
+Any one 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 any one 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 any one 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 any one 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 some one 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 any one 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 some one 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 any one'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 any one 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 some
+one 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 geat 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 every one 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 down
+stairs 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 some one'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 crowned 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 litle 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 some one 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 any one 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 every one 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 any one
+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' their-selves 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 any one know where I go," he answered.
+"I go to a place I like.  Every one 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 any one."
+
+"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 down-stairs 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 to-day 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."
+
+"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 any one
+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 any one 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 any one 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 any one 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 any one 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 shows 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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of "The Secret Garden"
+
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