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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."