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!”
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.
