The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

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Dr. Craven sat down by him and felt his pulse and looked
at him curiously.

"It must be a very fine day," he said, "and you must
be very careful not to tire yourself."

"Fresh air won't tire me," said the young Rajah.

As there had been occasions when this same young gentleman
had shrieked aloud with rage and had insisted that fresh
air would give him cold and kill him, it is not to be
wondered at that his doctor felt somewhat startled.

"I thought you did not like fresh air," he said.

"I don't when I am by myself," replied the Rajah;
"but my cousin is going out with me."

"And the nurse, of course?" suggested Dr. Craven.

"No, I will not have the nurse," so magnificently that Mary
could not help remembering how the young native Prince
had looked with his diamonds and emeralds and pearls
stuck all over him and the great rubies on the small dark
hand he had waved to command his servants to approach
with salaams and receive his orders.

"My cousin knows how to take care of me. I am always better
when she is with me. She made me better last night.
A very strong boy I know will push my carriage."

Dr. Craven felt rather alarmed. If this tiresome
hysterical boy should chance to get well he himself would
lose all chance of inheriting Misselthwaite; but he
was not an unscrupulous man, though he was a weak one,
and he did not intend to let him run into actual danger.

"He must be a strong boy and a steady boy," he said.
"And I must know something about him. Who is he? What is
his name?"

"It's Dickon," Mary spoke up suddenly. She felt somehow
that everybody who knew the moor must know Dickon.
And she was right, too. She saw that in a moment
Dr. Craven's serious face relaxed into a relieved smile.

"Oh, Dickon," he said. "If it is Dickon you will be
safe enough. He's as strong as a moor pony, is Dickon."

"And he's trusty," said Mary. "He's th' trustiest lad i'
Yorkshire." She had been talking Yorkshire to Colin
and she forgot herself.

"Did Dickon teach you that?" asked Dr. Craven,
laughing outright.

"I'm learning it as if it was French," said Mary rather coldly.
"It's like a native dialect in India. Very clever
people try to learn them. I like it and so does Colin."
"Well, well," he said. "If it amuses you perhaps it won't
do you any harm. Did you take your bromide last night, Colin?"

"No," Colin answered. "I wouldn't take it at first
and after Mary made me quiet she talked me to sleep--in
a low voice--about the spring creeping into a garden."

"That sounds soothing," said Dr. Craven, more perplexed
than ever and glancing sideways at Mistress Mary sitting
on her stool and looking down silently at the carpet.
"You are evidently better, but you must remember--"

"I don't want to remember," interrupted the Rajah,
appearing again. "When I lie by myself and remember I
begin to have pains everywhere and I think of things
that make me begin to scream because I hate them so.
If there was a doctor anywhere who could make you forget
you were ill instead of remembering it I would have him
brought here." And he waved a thin hand which ought really
to have been covered with royal signet rings made of rubies.
"It is because my cousin makes me forget that she makes
me better."

Dr. Craven had never made such a short stay after a
"tantrum"; usually he was obliged to remain a very long
time and do a great many things. This afternoon he did
not give any medicine or leave any new orders and he was
spared any disagreeable scenes. When he went downstairs he
looked very thoughtful and when he talked to Mrs. Medlock
in the library she felt that he was a much puzzled man.

"Well, sir," she ventured, "could you have believed it?"

"It is certainly a new state of affairs," said the doctor.
"And there's no denying it is better than the old one."

"I believe Susan Sowerby's right--I do that," said Mrs. Medlock.
"I stopped in her cottage on my way to Thwaite yesterday
and had a bit of talk with her. And she says to me,
'Well, Sarah Ann, she mayn't be a good child, an' she mayn't
be a pretty one, but she's a child, an' children needs
children.' We went to school together, Susan Sowerby and me."

"She's the best sick nurse I know," said Dr. Craven.
"When I find her in a cottage I know the chances are that I
shall save my patient."

Mrs. Medlock smiled. She was fond of Susan Sowerby.

"She's got a way with her, has Susan," she went on
quite volubly. "I've been thinking all morning of one
thing she said yesterday. She says, `Once when I
was givin' th' children a bit of a preach after they'd
been fightin' I ses to 'em all, "When I was at school my
jography told as th' world was shaped like a orange an'
I found out before I was ten that th' whole orange
doesn't belong to nobody. No one owns more than his bit
of a quarter an' there's times it seems like there's
not enow quarters to go round. But don't you--none o'
you--think as you own th' whole orange or you'll find
out you're mistaken, an' you won't find it out without
hard knocks." `What children learns from children,'
she says, 'is that there's no sense in grabbin' at th'
whole orange--peel an' all. If you do you'll likely
not get even th' pips, an' them's too bitter to eat.'"

"She's a shrewd woman," said Dr. Craven, putting on his coat.

"Well, she's got a way of saying things," ended Mrs. Medlock,
much pleased. "Sometimes I've said to her, 'Eh! Susan,
if you was a different woman an' didn't talk such broad
Yorkshire I've seen the times when I should have said you
was clever.'"

That night Colin slept without once awakening and
when he opened his eyes in the morning he lay still
and smiled without knowing it--smiled because he felt so
curiously comfortable. It was actually nice to be awake,
and he turned over and stretched his limbs luxuriously.
He felt as if tight strings which had held him had
loosened themselves and let him go. He did not know that
Dr. Craven would have said that his nerves had relaxed
and rested themselves. Instead of lying and staring at
the wall and wishing he had not awakened, his mind was full
of the plans he and Mary had made yesterday, of pictures
of the garden and of Dickon and his wild creatures.
It was so nice to have things to think about. And he
had not been awake more than ten minutes when he heard
feet running along the corridor and Mary was at the door.
The next minute she was in the room and had run across
to his bed, bringing with her a waft of fresh air full
of the scent of the morning.

"You've been out! You've been out! There's that nice
smell of leaves!" he cried.

She had been running and her hair was loose and blown
and she was bright with the air and pink-cheeked, though
he could not see it.

"It's so beautiful!" she said, a little breathless
with her speed. "You never saw anything so beautiful!
It has come! I thought it had come that other morning,
but it was only coming. It is here now! It has come,
the Spring! Dickon says so!"

"Has it?" cried Colin, and though he really knew nothing
about it he felt his heart beat. He actually sat up
in bed.

"Open the window!" he added, laughing half with joyful
excitement and half at his own fancy. "Perhaps we may
hear golden trumpets!"

And though he laughed, Mary was at the window in a moment
and in a moment more it was opened wide and freshness and
softness and scents and birds' songs were pouring through.

"That's fresh air," she said. "Lie on your back and draw
in long breaths of it. That's what Dickon does when he's
lying on the moor. He says he feels it in his veins
and it makes him strong and he feels as if he could
live forever and ever. Breathe it and breathe it."

She was only repeating what Dickon had told her, but she
caught Colin's fancy.

"`Forever and ever'! Does it make him feel like that?"
he said, and he did as she told him, drawing in long deep
breaths over and over again until he felt that something
quite new and delightful was happening to him.

Mary was at his bedside again.

"Things are crowding up out of the earth," she ran on
in a hurry. "And there are flowers uncurling and buds
on everything and the green veil has covered nearly all
the gray and the birds are in such a hurry about their
nests for fear they may be too late that some of them
are even fighting for places in the secret garden.
And the rose-bushes look as wick as wick can be,
and there are primroses in the lanes and woods,
and the seeds we planted are up, and Dickon has brought
the fox and the crow and the squirrels and a new-born lamb."

And then she paused for breath. The new-born lamb Dickon
had found three days before lying by its dead mother
among the gorse bushes on the moor. It was not the first
motherless lamb he had found and he knew what to do with it.
He had taken it to the cottage wrapped in his jacket and he
had let it lie near the fire and had fed it with warm milk.
It was a soft thing with a darling silly baby face
and legs rather long for its body. Dickon had carried
it over the moor in his arms and its feeding bottle
was in his pocket with a squirrel, and when Mary had sat
under a tree with its limp warmness huddled on her lap she
had felt as if she were too full of strange joy to speak.
A lamb--a lamb! A living lamb who lay on your lap like a baby!

She was describing it with great joy and Colin was listening
and drawing in long breaths of air when the nurse entered.
She started a little at the sight of the open window.
She had sat stifling in the room many a warm day because her
patient was sure that open windows gave people cold.

"Are you sure you are not chilly, Master Colin?"
she inquired.

"No," was the answer. "I am breathing long breaths
of fresh air. It makes you strong. I am going to get up
to the sofa for breakfast. My cousin will have breakfast
with me."

The nurse went away, concealing a smile, to give
the order for two breakfasts. She found the servants'
hall a more amusing place than the invalid's chamber and
just now everybody wanted to hear the news from upstairs.
There was a great deal of joking about the unpopular young
recluse who, as the cook said, "had found his master,
and good for him." The servants' hall had been very tired
of the tantrums, and the butler, who was a man with a family,
had more than once expressed his opinion that the invalid
would be all the better "for a good hiding."

When Colin was on his sofa and the breakfast for two was
put upon the table he made an announcement to the nurse
in his most Rajah-like manner.

"A boy, and a fox, and a crow, and two squirrels,
and a new-born lamb, are coming to see me this morning.
I want them brought upstairs as soon as they come,"
he said. "You are not to begin playing with the animals
in the servants' hall and keep them there. I want them here."
The nurse gave a slight gasp and tried to conceal it with
a cough.

"Yes, sir," she answered.

"I'll tell you what you can do," added Colin, waving
his hand. "You can tell Martha to bring them here.
The boy is Martha's brother. His name is Dickon and he
is an animal charmer."

"I hope the animals won't bite, Master Colin," said the nurse.

"I told you he was a charmer," said Colin austerely.
"Charmers' animals never bite."

"There are snake-charmers in India," said Mary.
"and they can put their snakes' heads in their mouths."

"Goodness!" shuddered the nurse.

They ate their breakfast with the morning air pouring
in upon them. Colin's breakfast was a very good one
and Mary watched him with serious interest.

"You will begin to get fatter just as I did," she said.
"I never wanted my breakfast when I was in India and now I
always want it."

"I wanted mine this morning," said Colin. "Perhaps it
was the fresh air. When do you think Dickon will come?"

He was not long in coming. In about ten minutes Mary
held up her hand.

"Listen!" she said. "Did you hear a caw?"

Colin listened and heard it, the oddest sound in the world
to hear inside a house, a hoarse "caw-caw."

"Yes," he answered.

"That's Soot," said Mary. "Listen again. Do you hear
a bleat--a tiny one?"

"Oh, yes!" cried Colin, quite flushing.

"That's the new-born lamb," said Mary. "He's coming."

Dickon's moorland boots were thick and clumsy and though
he tried to walk quietly they made a clumping sound as he
walked through the long corridors. Mary and Colin heard him
marching--marching, until he passed through the tapestry
door on to the soft carpet of Colin's own passage.

"If you please, sir," announced Martha, opening the door,
"if you please, sir, here's Dickon an' his creatures."

Dickon came in smiling his nicest wide smile.
The new- born lamb was in his arms and the little red
fox trotted by his side. Nut sat on his left shoulder
and Soot on his right and Shell's head and paws peeped
out of his coat pocket.

Colin slowly sat up and stared and stared--as he had stared
when he first saw Mary; but this was a stare of wonder
and delight. The truth was that in spite of all he had
heard he had not in the least understood what this boy would
be like and that his fox and his crow and his squirrels
and his lamb were so near to him and his friendliness
that they seemed almost to be part of himself. Colin had
never talked to a boy in his life and he was so overwhelmed
by his own pleasure and curiosity that he did not even think of speaking.

But Dickon did not feel the least shy or awkward.
He had not felt embarrassed because the crow had not
known his language and had only stared and had not
spoken to him the first time they met. Creatures were
always like that until they found out about you.
He walked over to Colin's sofa and put the new-born
lamb quietly on his lap, and immediately the little
creature turned to the warm velvet dressing-gown and
began to nuzzle and nuzzle into its folds and butt its
tight-curled head with soft impatience against his side.
Of course no boy could have helped speaking then.

"What is it doing?" cried Colin. "What does it want?"

"It wants its mother," said Dickon, smiling more and more.
"I brought it to thee a bit hungry because I knowed tha'd
like to see it feed."

He knelt down by the sofa and took a feeding-bottle
from his pocket.

"Come on, little 'un," he said, turning the small
woolly white head with a gentle brown hand. "This is
what tha's after. Tha'll get more out o' this than tha'
will out o' silk velvet coats. There now," and he pushed
the rubber tip of the bottle into the nuzzling mouth
and the lamb began to suck it with ravenous ecstasy.

After that there was no wondering what to say.
By the time the lamb fell asleep questions poured forth
and Dickon answered them all. He told them how he had found
the lamb just as the sun was rising three mornings ago.
He had been standing on the moor listening to a skylark
and watching him swing higher and higher into the sky
until he was only a speck in the heights of blue.

"I'd almost lost him but for his song an' I was wonderin'
how a chap could hear it when it seemed as if he'd
get out o' th' world in a minute--an' just then I
heard somethin' else far off among th' gorse bushes.
It was a weak bleatin' an' I knowed it was a new lamb
as was hungry an' I knowed it wouldn't be hungry if it
hadn't lost its mother somehow, so I set off searchin'.
Eh! I did have a look for it. I went in an' out among th'
gorse bushes an' round an' round an' I always seemed
to take th' wrong turnin'. But at last I seed a bit o'
white by a rock on top o' th' moor an' I climbed up an'
found th' little 'un half dead wi' cold an' clemmin'."
While he talked, Soot flew solemnly in and out of the open
window and cawed remarks about the scenery while Nut
and Shell made excursions into the big trees outside
and ran up and down trunks and explored branches.
Captain curled up near Dickon, who sat on the hearth-rug
from preference.

They looked at the pictures in the gardening books and
Dickon knew all the flowers by their country names and knew
exactly which ones were already growing in the secret garden.

"I couldna' say that there name," he said, pointing to one
under which was written "Aquilegia," "but us calls that
a columbine, an' that there one it's a snapdragon and they
both grow wild in hedges, but these is garden ones an'
they're bigger an' grander. There's some big clumps o'
columbine in th' garden. They'll look like a bed o' blue an'
white butterflies flutterin' when they're out."

"I'm going to see them," cried Colin. "I am going
to see them!"

"Aye, that tha' mun," said Mary quite seriously. "An' tha'
munnot lose no time about it."

CHAPTER XX

"I SHALL LIVE FOREVER--AND EVER--AND EVER!"

But they were obliged to wait more than a week because
first there came some very windy days and then Colin
was threatened with a cold, which two things happening
one after the other would no doubt have thrown him into
a rage but that there was so much careful and mysterious
planning to do and almost every day Dickon came in,
if only for a few minutes, to talk about what was happening
on the moor and in the lanes and hedges and on the borders
of streams. The things he had to tell about otters'
and badgers' and water-rats' houses, not to mention birds'
nests and field-mice and their burrows, were enough
to make you almost tremble with excitement when you
heard all the intimate details from an animal charmer
and realized with what thrilling eagerness and anxiety
the whole busy underworld was working.

"They're same as us," said Dickon, "only they have to
build their homes every year. An' it keeps 'em so busy
they fair scuffle to get 'em done."

The most absorbing thing, however, was the preparations
to be made before Colin could be transported with sufficient
secrecy to the garden. No one must see the chair-carriage
and Dickon and Mary after they turned a certain corner
of the shrubbery and entered upon the walk outside
the ivied walls. As each day passed, Colin had become
more and more fixed in his feeling that the mystery
surrounding the garden was one of its greatest charms.
Nothing must spoil that. No one must ever suspect
that they had a secret. People must think that he
was simply going out with Mary and Dickon because he
liked them and did not object to their looking at him.
They had long and quite delightful talks about their route.
They would go up this path and down that one and cross
the other and go round among the fountain flower-beds
as if they were looking at the "bedding-out plants"
the head gardener, Mr. Roach, had been having arranged.
That would seem such a rational thing to do that no one
would think it at all mysterious. They would turn into
the shrubbery walks and lose themselves until they came
to the long walls. It was almost as serious and elaborately
thought out as the plans of march made by geat generals
in time of war.

Rumors of the new and curious things which were occurring
in the invalid's apartments had of course filtered
through the servants' hall into the stable yards
and out among the gardeners, but notwithstanding this,
Mr. Roach was startled one day when he received orders
from Master Colin's room to the effect that he must report
himself in the apartment no outsider had ever seen,
as the invalid himself desired to speak to him.

"Well, well," he said to himself as he hurriedly changed
his coat, "what's to do now? His Royal Highness that wasn't
to be looked at calling up a man he's never set eyes on."

Mr. Roach was not without curiosity. He had never
caught even a glimpse of the boy and had heard a dozen
exaggerated stories about his uncanny looks and ways
and his insane tempers. The thing he had heard
oftenest was that he might die at any moment and there
had been numerous fanciful descriptions of a humped
back and helpless limbs, given by people who had never seen him.

"Things are changing in this house, Mr. Roach,"
said Mrs. Medlock, as she led him up the back staircase
to the corridor on to which opened the hitherto mysterious chamber.

"Let's hope they're changing for the better, Mrs. Medlock,"
he answered.

"They couldn't well change for the worse," she continued;
"and queer as it all is there's them as finds their
duties made a lot easier to stand up under. Don't you
be surprised, Mr. Roach, if you find yourself in the middle
of a menagerie and Martha Sowerby's Dickon more at home
than you or me could ever be."

There really was a sort of Magic about Dickon, as Mary
always privately believed. When Mr. Roach heard his name
he smiled quite leniently.

"He'd be at home in Buckingham Palace or at the bottom
of a coal mine," he said. "And yet it's not impudence,
either. He's just fine, is that lad."

It was perhaps well he had been prepared or he might
have been startled. When the bedroom door was opened
a large crow, which seemed quite at home perched on
the high back of a carven chair, announced the entrance
of a visitor by saying "Caw--Caw" quite loudly.
In spite of Mrs. Medlock's warning, Mr. Roach only just
escaped being sufficiently undignified to jump backward.

The young Rajah was neither in bed nor on his sofa.
He was sitting in an armchair and a young lamb was standing
by him shaking its tail in feeding-lamb fashion as Dickon
knelt giving it milk from its bottle. A squirrel was
perched on Dickon's bent back attentively nibbling a nut.
The little girl from India was sitting on a big footstool
looking on.

"Here is Mr. Roach, Master Colin," said Mrs. Medlock.

The young Rajah turned and looked his servitor over--at
least that was what the head gardener felt happened.

"Oh, you are Roach, are you?" he said. "I sent for you
to give you some very important orders."

"Very good, sir," answered Roach, wondering if he was
to receive instructions to fell all the oaks in the park
or to transform the orchards into water-gardens.

"I am going out in my chair this afternoon," said Colin.
"If the fresh air agrees with me I may go out every day.
When I go, none of the gardeners are to be anywhere near
the Long Walk by the garden walls. No one is to be there.
I shall go out about two o'clock and everyone must
keep away until I send word that they may go back to
their work."

"Very good, sir," replied Mr. Roach, much relieved to hear
that the oaks might remain and that the orchards were safe.
"Mary," said Colin, turning to her, "what is that thing
you say in India when you have finished talking and want
people to go?"

"You say, `You have my permission to go,'" answered Mary.

The Rajah waved his hand.

"You have my permission to go, Roach," he said.
"But, remember, this is very important."

"Caw--Caw!" remarked the crow hoarsely but not impolitely.

"Very good, sir. Thank you, sir," said Mr. Roach,
and Mrs. Medlock took him out of the room.

Outside in the corridor, being a rather good-natured man,
he smiled until he almost laughed.

"My word!" he said, "he's got a fine lordly way with him,
hasn't he? You'd think he was a whole Royal Family rolled
into one--Prince Consort and all.".

"Eh!" protested Mrs. Medlock, "we've had to let him
trample all over every one of us ever since he had feet
and he thinks that's what folks was born for."

"Perhaps he'll grow out of it, if he lives," suggested Mr. Roach.

"Well, there's one thing pretty sure," said Mrs. Medlock.
"If he does live and that Indian child stays here I'll
warrant she teaches him that thewhole orange does not
belong to him, as Susan Sowerby says. And he'll be likely
to find out the size of his own quarter."

Inside the room Colin was leaning back on his cushions.

"It's all safe now," he said. "And this afternoon I
shall see it--this afternoon I shall be in it!"

Dickon went back to the garden with his creatures and Mary
stayed with Colin. She did not think he looked tired
but he was very quiet before their lunch came and he
was quiet while they were eating it. She wondered why
and asked him about it.

"What big eyes you've got, Colin," she said. "When you
are thinking they get as big as saucers. What are you
thinking about now?"

"I can't help thinking about what it will look like,"
he answered.

"The garden?" asked Mary.

"The springtime," he said. "I was thinking that I've really
never seen it before. I scarcely ever went out and when I
did go I never looked at it. I didn't even think about it."

"I never saw it in India because there wasn't any,"
said Mary.

Shut in and morbid as his life had been, Colin had more
imagination than she had and at least he had spent a good
deal of time looking at wonderful books and pictures.

"That morning when you ran in and said `It's come! It's
come!, you made me feel quite queer. It sounded as if
things were coming with a great procession and big bursts
and wafts of music. I've a picture like it in one of my
books--crowds of lovely people and children with garlands
and branches with blossoms on them, everyone laughing
and dancing and crowding and playing on pipes. That was
why I said, `Perhaps we shall hear golden trumpets'
and told you to throw open the window."

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