“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.”
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.
