LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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