LITMIR.BIZ

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moment.

      “Because I am like this always, ill and having to lie down. My father won’t let people talk me over either. The servants are not allowed to speak about me. If I live I may be a hunchback, but I shan’t live. My father hates to think I may be like him.”

      “Oh, what a queer house this is!” Mary said. “What a queer house! Everything is a kind of secret. Rooms are locked up and gardens are locked up—and you! Have you been locked up?”

      “No. I stay in this room because I don’t want to be moved out of it. It tires me too much.”

      “Does your father come and see you?” Mary ventured.

      “Sometimes. Generally when I am asleep. He doesn’t want to see me.”

      “Why?” Mary could not help asking again.

      A sort of angry shadow passed over the boy’s face.

      “My mother died when I was born and it makes him wretched to look at me. He thinks I don’t know, but I’ve heard people talking. He almost hates me.”

      “He hates the garden, because she died,” said Mary half speaking to herself.

      “What garden?” the boy asked.

      “Oh! just—just a garden she used to like,” Mary stammered. “Have you been here always?”

      “Nearly always. Sometimes I have been taken to places at the seaside, but I won’t stay because people stare at me. I used to wear an iron thing to keep my back straight, but a grand doctor came from London to see me and said it was stupid. He told them to take it off and keep me out in the fresh air. I hate fresh air and I don’t want to go out.”

      “I didn’t when first I came here,” said Mary. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

      “Because of the dreams that are so real,” he answered rather fretfully. “Sometimes when I open my eyes I don’t believe I’m awake.”

      “We’re both awake,” said Mary. She glanced round the room with its high ceiling and shadowy corners and dim fire-light. “It looks quite like a dream, and it’s the middle of the night, and everybody in the house is asleep—everybody but us. We are wide awake.”

      “I don’t want it to be a dream,” the boy said restlessly.

      Mary thought of something all at once.

      “If you don’t like people to see you,” she began, “do you want me to go away?”

      He still held the fold of her wrapper and he gave it a little pull.

      “No,” he said. “I should be sure you were a dream if you went. If you are real, sit down on that big footstool and talk. I want to hear about you.”

      Mary put down her candle on the table near the bed and sat down on the cushioned stool. She did not want to go away at all. She wanted to stay in the mysterious hidden-away room and talk to the mysterious boy.

      “What do you want me to tell you?” she said.

      He wanted to know how long she had been at Misselthwaite; he wanted to know which corridor her room was on; he wanted to know what she had been doing; if she disliked the moor as he disliked it; where she had lived before she came to Yorkshire. She answered all these questions and many more and he lay back on his pillow and listened. He made her tell him a great deal about India and about her voyage across the ocean. She found out that because he had been an invalid he had not learned things as other children had. One of his nurses had taught him to read when he was quite little and he was always reading and looking at pictures in splendid books.

      Though his father rarely saw him when he was awake, he was given all sorts of wonderful things to amuse himself with. He never seemed to have been amused, however. He could have anything he asked for and was never made to do anything he did not like to do. “Everyone is obliged to do what pleases me,” he said indifferently. “It makes me ill to be angry. No one believes I shall live to grow up.”

      He said it as if he was so accustomed to the idea that it had ceased to matter to him at all. He seemed to like the sound of Mary’s voice. As she went on talking he listened in a drowsy, interested way. Once or twice she wondered if he were not gradually falling into a doze. But at last he asked a question which opened up a new subject.

      “How old are you?” he asked.

      “I am ten,” answered Mary, forgetting herself for the moment, “and so are you.”

      “How do you know that?” he demanded in a surprised voice.

      “Because when you were born the garden door was locked and the key was buried. And it has been locked for ten years.”

      Colin half sat up, turning toward her, leaning on his elbows.

      “What garden door was locked? Who did it? Where was the key buried?” he exclaimed as if he were suddenly very much interested.

      “It—it was the garden Mr. Craven hates,” said Mary nervously. “He locked the door. No one—no one knew where he buried the key.”

      “What sort of a garden is it?” Colin persisted eagerly.

      “No one has been allowed to go into it for ten years,” was Mary’s careful answer.

      But it was too late to be careful. He was too much like herself. He too had had nothing to think about and the idea of a hidden garden attracted him as it had attracted her. He asked question after question. Where was it? Had she never looked for the door? Had she never asked the gardeners?

      “They won’t talk about it,” said Mary. “I think they have been told not to answer questions.”

      “I would make them,” said Colin.

      “Could you?” Mary faltered, beginning to feel frightened. If he could make people answer questions, who knew what might happen!

      “Everyone is obliged to please me. I told you that,” he said. “If I were to live, this place would sometime belong to me. They all know that. I would make them tell me.”

      Mary had not known that she herself had been spoiled, but she could see quite plainly that this mysterious boy had been. He thought that the whole world belonged to him. How peculiar he was and how coolly he spoke of not living.

      “Do you think you won’t live?” she asked, partly because she was curious and partly in hope of making him forget the garden.

      “I don’t suppose I shall,” he answered as indifferently as he had spoken before. “Ever since I remember anything I have heard people say I shan’t. At first they thought I was too little to understand and now they think I don’t hear. But I do. My doctor is my father’s cousin. He is quite poor and if I die he will have all Misselthwaite when my father is dead. I should think he wouldn’t want me to live.”

      “Do you want to live?” inquired Mary.

      “No,” he answered, in a cross, tired fashion. “But I don’t want to die. When I feel ill I lie here and think about it until I cry and cry.”

      “I have heard you crying three times,” Mary said, “but I did not know who it was. Were you crying about that?” She did so want him to forget the garden.

      “I dare say,” he answered. “Let us talk about something else. Talk about that garden. Don’t you want to see it?”

      “Yes,” answered Mary, in quite a low voice.

      “I do,” he went on persistently. “I don’t think I ever really wanted to see anything before, but I want to see that garden. I want the key dug up. I want the door unlocked. I would let them take me there in my chair. That would be getting fresh air. I am going to make them open the door.”

      He had become quite excited and his strange eyes began to shine like stars and looked more immense than ever.

      “They

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