“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.