The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
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the end of the year but we >> The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
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In the evening they had all sat round the fire,
and Martha and her mother had sewed patches on torn
clothes and mended stockings and Martha had told them
about the little girl who had come from India and who had
been waited on all her life by what Martha called "blacks"
until she didn't know how to put on her own stockings.
"Eh! they did like to hear about you," said Martha.
"They wanted to know all about th' blacks an' about th'
ship you came in. I couldn't tell 'em enough."
Mary reflected a little.
"I'll tell you a great deal more before your next day out,"
she said, "so that you will have more to talk about.
I dare say they would like to hear about riding on elephants
and camels, and about the officers going to hunt tigers."
"My word!" cried delighted Martha. "It would set 'em
clean off their heads. Would tha' really do that,
Miss? It would be same as a wild beast show like we heard
they had in York once."
"India is quite different from Yorkshire," Mary said slowly,
as she thought the matter over. "I never thought of that.
Did Dickon and your mother like to hear you talk about me?"
"Why, our Dickon's eyes nearly started out o' his head,
they got that round," answered Martha. "But mother, she was
put out about your seemin' to be all by yourself like.
She said, 'Hasn't Mr. Craven got no governess for her,
nor no nurse?' and I said, 'No, he hasn't, though Mrs. Medlock
says he will when he thinks of it, but she says he mayn't
think of it for two or three years.'"
"I don't want a governess," said Mary sharply.
"But mother says you ought to be learnin' your book by this time an'
you ought to have a woman to look after you, an' she says:
`Now, Martha, you just think how you'd feel yourself, in a big
place like that, wanderin' about all alone, an' no mother.
You do your best to cheer her up,' she says, an' I said I would."
Mary gave her a long, steady look.
"You do cheer me up," she said. "I like to hear you talk."
Presently Martha went out of the room and came back
with something held in her hands under her apron.
"What does tha' think," she said, with a cheerful grin.
"I've brought thee a present."
"A present!" exclaimed Mistress Mary. How could a cottage
full of fourteen hungry people give any one a present!
"A man was drivin' across the moor peddlin'," Martha explained.
"An' he stopped his cart at our door. He had pots an'
pans an' odds an' ends, but mother had no money to buy
anythin'. Just as he was goin' away our 'Lizabeth Ellen
called out, `Mother, he's got skippin'-ropes with red an'
blue handles.' An' mother she calls out quite sudden,
`Here, stop, mister! How much are they?' An' he says
`Tuppence', an' mother she began fumblin' in her pocket an'
she says to me, `Martha, tha's brought me thy wages like
a good lass, an' I've got four places to put every penny,
but I'm just goin' to take tuppence out of it to buy
that child a skippin'-rope,' an' she bought one an'
here it is."
She brought it out from under her apron and exhibited
it quite proudly. It was a strong, slender rope
with a striped red and blue handle at each end,
but Mary Lennox had never seen a skipping-rope before.
She gazed at it with a mystified expression.
"What is it for?" she asked curiously.
"For!" cried out Martha. "Does tha' mean that they've not
got skippin'-ropes in India, for all they've got elephants
and tigers and camels! No wonder most of 'em's black.
This is what it's for; just watch me."
And she ran into the middle of the room and, taking a
handle in each hand, began to skip, and skip, and skip,
while Mary turned in her chair to stare at her, and the
queer faces in the old portraits seemed to stare at her,
too, and wonder what on earth this common little cottager
had the impudence to be doing under their very noses.
But Martha did not even see them. The interest and curiosity
in Mistress Mary's face delighted her, and she went on skipping
and counted as she skipped until she had reached a hundred.
"I could skip longer than that," she said when she stopped.
"I've skipped as much as five hundred when I was twelve,
but I wasn't as fat then as I am now, an' I was in practice."
Mary got up from her chair beginning to feel excited herself.
"It looks nice," she said. "Your mother is a kind woman.
Do you think I could ever skip like that?"
"You just try it," urged Martha, handing her the skipping- rope.
"You can't skip a hundred at first, but if you practice
you'll mount up. That's what mother said. She says,
`Nothin' will do her more good than skippin' rope. It's th'
sensiblest toy a child can have. Let her play out in th'
fresh air skippin' an' it'll stretch her legs an' arms an'
give her some strength in 'em.'"
It was plain that there was not a great deal of strength
in Mistress Mary's arms and legs when she first began
to skip. She was not very clever at it, but she liked
it so much that she did not want to stop.
"Put on tha' things and run an' skip out o' doors,"
said Martha. "Mother said I must tell you to keep out o'
doors as much as you could, even when it rains a bit,
so as tha' wrap up warm."
Mary put on her coat and hat and took her skipping-rope
over her arm. She opened the door to go out, and then
suddenly thought of something and turned back rather slowly.
"Martha," she said, "they were your wages. It was your
two-pence really. Thank you." She said it stiffly
because she was not used to thanking people or noticing
that they did things for her. "Thank you," she said,
and held out her hand because she did not know what else
to do.
Martha gave her hand a clumsy little shake, as if she
was not accustomed to this sort of thing either.
Then she laughed.
"Eh! th' art a queer, old-womanish thing," she said.
"If tha'd been our 'Lizabeth Ellen tha'd have given me
a kiss."
Mary looked stiffer than ever.
"Do you want me to kiss you?"
Martha laughed again.
"Nay, not me," she answered. "If tha' was different,
p'raps tha'd want to thysel'. But tha' isn't. Run off
outside an' play with thy rope."
Mistress Mary felt a little awkward as she went out of
the room. Yorkshire people seemed strange, and Martha was
always rather a puzzle to her. At first she had disliked
her very much, but now she did not. The skipping-rope
was a wonderful thing. She counted and skipped,
and skipped and counted, until her cheeks were quite red,
and she was more interested than she had ever been since
she was born. The sun was shining and a little wind was
blowing--not a rough wind, but one which came in delightful
little gusts and brought a fresh scent of newly turned
earth with it. She skipped round the fountain garden,
and up one walk and down another. She skipped at last
into the kitchen-garden and saw Ben Weatherstaff digging
and talking to his robin, which was hopping about him.
She skipped down the walk toward him and he lifted
his head and looked at her with a curious expression.
She had wondered if he would notice her. She wanted him
to see her skip.
"Well!" he exclaimed. "Upon my word. P'raps tha'
art a young 'un, after all, an' p'raps tha's got
child's blood in thy veins instead of sour buttermilk.
Tha's skipped red into thy cheeks as sure as my name's
Ben Weatherstaff. I wouldn't have believed tha'
could do it."
"I never skipped before," Mary said. "I'm just beginning.
I can only go up to twenty."
"Tha' keep on," said Ben. "Tha' shapes well enough at it
for a young 'un that's lived with heathen. Just see how
he's watchin' thee," jerking his head toward the robin.
"He followed after thee yesterday. He'll be at it again today.
He'll be bound to find out what th' skippin'-rope is.
He's never seen one. Eh!" shaking his head at the bird,
"tha' curiosity will be th' death of thee sometime if tha'
doesn't look sharp."
Mary skipped round all the gardens and round the orchard,
resting every few minutes. At length she went to her
own special walk and made up her mind to try if she
could skip the whole length of it. It was a good long
skip and she began slowly, but before she had gone
half-way down the path she was so hot and breathless
that she was obliged to stop. She did not mind much,
because she had already counted up to thirty.
She stopped with a little laugh of pleasure, and there,
lo and behold, was the robin swaying on a long branch of ivy.
He had followed her and he greeted her with a chirp.
As Mary had skipped toward him she felt something heavy
in her pocket strike against her at each jump, and when she
saw the robin she laughed again.
"You showed me where the key was yesterday," she said.
"You ought to show me the door today; but I don't believe
you know!"
The robin flew from his swinging spray of ivy on to the
top of the wall and he opened his beak and sang a loud,
lovely trill, merely to show off. Nothing in the world
is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows
off--and they are nearly always doing it.
Mary Lennox had heard a great deal about Magic in her
Ayah's stories, and she always said that what happened
almost at that moment was Magic.
One of the nice little gusts of wind rushed down
the walk, and it was a stronger one than the rest.
It was strong enough to wave the branches of the trees,
and it was more than strong enough to sway the trailing
sprays of untrimmed ivy hanging from the wall. Mary had
stepped close to the robin, and suddenly the gust of wind
swung aside some loose ivy trails, and more suddenly
still she jumped toward it and caught it in her hand.
This she did because she had seen something under it--a round
knob which had been covered by the leaves hanging over it.
It was the knob of a door.
She put her hands under the leaves and began to pull
and push them aside. Thick as the ivy hung, it nearly
all was a loose and swinging curtain, though some had crept
over wood and iron. Mary's heart began to thump and her
hands to shake a little in her delight and excitement.
The robin kept singing and twittering away and tilting
his head on one side, as if he were as excited as she was.
What was this under her hands which was square and made
of iron and which her fingers found a hole in?
It was the lock of the door which had been closed ten
years and she put her hand in her pocket, drew out the key
and found it fitted the keyhole. She put the key in and
turned it. It took two hands to do it, but it did turn.
And then she took a long breath and looked behind
her up the long walk to see if any one was coming.
No one was coming. No one ever did come, it seemed,
and she took another long breath, because she could not
help it, and she held back the swinging curtain of ivy
and pushed back the door which opened slowly--slowly.
Then she slipped through it, and shut it behind her,
and stood with her back against it, looking about her
and breathing quite fast with excitement, and wonder,
and delight.
She was standing inside the secret garden.
CHAPTER IX
THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANY ONE EVER LIVED IN
It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place
any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it
in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses
which were so thick that they were matted together.
Mary Lennox knew they were roses because she had seen
a great many roses in India. All the ground was covered
with grass of a wintry brown and out of it grew clumps
of bushes which were surely rosebushes if they were alive.
There were numbers of standard roses which had so spread
their branches that they were like little trees.
There were other trees in the garden, and one of the
things which made the place look strangest and loveliest
was that climbing roses had run all over them and swung
down long tendrils which made light swaying curtains,
and here and there they had caught at each other or
at a far-reaching branch and had crept from one tree
to another and made lovely bridges of themselves.
There were neither leaves nor roses on them now and Mary
did not know whether they were dead or alive, but their
thin gray or brown branches and sprays looked like a sort
of hazy mantle spreading over everything, walls, and trees,
and even brown grass, where they had fallen from their
fastenings and run along the ground. It was this hazy tangle
from tree to tree which made it all look so mysterious.
Mary had thought it must be different from other gardens
which had not been left all by themselves so long;
and indeed it was different from any other place she had
ever seen in her life.
"How still it is!" she whispered. "How still!"
Then she waited a moment and listened at the stillness.
The robin, who had flown to his treetop, was still
as all the rest. He did not even flutter his wings;
he sat without stirring, and looked at Mary.
"No wonder it is still," she whispered again. "I am
the first person who has spoken in here for ten years."
She moved away from the door, stepping as softly as if she
were afraid of awakening some one. She was glad that there
was grass under her feet and that her steps made no sounds.
She walked under one of the fairy-like gray arches
between the trees and looked up at the sprays and tendrils
which formed them. "I wonder if they are all quite dead,"
she said. "Is it all a quite dead garden? I wish it wasn't."
If she had been Ben Weatherstaff she could have told
whether the wood was alive by looking at it, but she
could only see that there were only gray or brown sprays
and branches and none showed any signs of even a tiny
leaf-bud anywhere.
But she was inside the wonderful garden and she could
come through the door under the ivy any time and she
felt as if she had found a world all her own.
The sun was shining inside the four walls and the high arch
of blue sky over this particular piece of Misselthwaite
seemed even more brilliant and soft than it was over
the moor. The robin flew down from his tree-top and
hopped about or flew after her from one bush to another.
He chirped a good deal and had a very busy air, as if he
were showing her things. Everything was strange and
silent and she seemed to be hundreds of miles away from
any one, but somehow she did not feel lonely at all.
All that troubled her was her wish that she knew whether
all the roses were dead, or if perhaps some of them had
lived and might put out leaves and buds as the weather
got warmer. She did not want it to be a quite dead garden.
If it were a quite alive garden, how wonderful it would be,
and what thousands of roses would grow on every side!
Her skipping-rope had hung over her arm when she came
in and after she had walked about for a while she thought
she would skip round the whole garden, stopping when she
wanted to look at things. There seemed to have been
grass paths here and there, and in one or two corners
there were alcoves of evergreen with stone seats or tall
moss-covered flower urns in them.
As she came near the second of these alcoves she
stopped skipping. There had once been a flowerbed in it,
and she thought she saw something sticking out of the
black earth- -some sharp little pale green points.
She remembered what Ben Weatherstaff had said and she
knelt down to look at them.
"Yes, they are tiny growing things and they might be
crocuses or snowdrops or daffodils," she whispered.
She bent very close to them and sniffed the fresh scent
of the damp earth. She liked it very much.
"Perhaps there are some other ones coming up in other places,"
she said. "I will go all over the garden and look."
She did not skip, but walked. She went slowly and kept
her eyes on the ground. She looked in the old border
beds and among the grass, and after she had gone round,
trying to miss nothing, she had found ever so many more sharp,
pale green points, and she had become quite excited again.
"It isn't a quite dead garden," she cried out softly to herself.
"Even if the roses are dead, there are other things alive."
She did not know anything about gardening, but the grass
seemed so thick in some of the places where the green
points were pushing their way through that she thought
they did not seem to have room enough to grow.
She searched about until she found a rather sharp piece
of wood and knelt down and dug and weeded out the weeds
and grass until she made nice little clear places around them.
"Now they look as if they could breathe," she said,
after she had finished with the first ones. "I am
going to do ever so many more. I'll do all I can see.
If I haven't time today I can come tomorrow."
She went from place to place, and dug and weeded,
and enjoyed herself so immensely that she was led on
from bed to bed and into the grass under the trees.
The exercise made her so warm that she first threw her
coat off, and then her hat, and without knowing it she
was smiling down on to the grass and the pale green points
all the time.
The robin was tremendously busy. He was very much
pleased to see gardening begun on his own estate.
He had often wondered at Ben Weatherstaff. Where gardening
is done all sorts of delightful things to eat are turned
up with the soil. Now here was this new kind of creature
who was not half Ben's size and yet had had the sense
to come into his garden and begin at once.
Mistress Mary worked in her garden until it was time
to go to her midday dinner. In fact, she was rather
late in remembering, and when she put on her coat
and hat, and picked up her skipping-rope, she could not
believe that she had been working two or three hours.
She had been actually happy all the time; and dozens
and dozens of the tiny, pale green points were to be seen
in cleared places, looking twice as cheerful as they had
looked before when the grass and weeds had been smothering them.
"I shall come back this afternoon," she said, looking all
round at her new kingdom, and speaking to the trees
and the rose-bushes as if they heard her.
Then she ran lightly across the grass, pushed open
the slow old door and slipped through it under the ivy.
She had such red cheeks and such bright eyes and ate such
a dinner that Martha was delighted.
"Two pieces o' meat an' two helps o' rice puddin'!" she said.
"Eh! mother will be pleased when I tell her what th'
skippin'-rope's done for thee."
In the course of her digging with her pointed stick
Mistress Mary had found herself digging up a sort of white
root rather like an onion. She had put it back in its
place and patted the earth carefully down on it and just
now she wondered if Martha could tell her what it was.
"Martha," she said, "what are those white roots that look
like onions?"
"They're bulbs," answered Martha. "Lots o' spring flowers
grow from 'em. Th' very little ones are snowdrops an'
crocuses an' th' big ones are narcissuses an' jonquils
and daffydowndillys. Th' biggest of all is lilies an'
purple flags. Eh! they are nice. Dickon's got a whole
lot of 'em planted in our bit o' garden."
"Does Dickon know all about them?" asked Mary, a new idea
taking possession of her.
"Our Dickon can make a flower grow out of a brick walk.
Mother says he just whispers things out o' th' ground."
"Do bulbs live a long time? Would they live years and
years if no one helped them?" inquired Mary anxiously.
"They're things as helps themselves," said Martha. "That's why
poor folk can afford to have 'em. If you don't trouble 'em,
most of 'em'll work away underground for a lifetime an'
spread out an' have little 'uns. There's a place in th'
park woods here where there's snowdrops by thousands.
They're the prettiest sight in Yorkshire when th'
spring comes. No one knows when they was first planted."
"I wish the spring was here now," said Mary. "I want
to see all the things that grow in England."
She had finished her dinner and gone to her favorite seat
on the hearth-rug.
"I wish--I wish I had a little spade," she said.
"Whatever does tha' want a spade for?" asked Martha, laughing.
"Art tha' goin' to take to diggin'? I must tell mother that, too."
Mary looked at the fire and pondered a little. She must
be careful if she meant to keep her secret kingdom.
She wasn't doing any harm, but if Mr. Craven found out
about the open door he would be fearfully angry and get
a new key and lock it up forevermore. She really could
not bear that.
"This is such a big lonely place," she said slowly, as if she
were turning matters over in her mind. "The house is lonely,
and the park is lonely, and the gardens are lonely.
So many places seem shut up. I never did many things
in India, but there were more people to look at--natives
and soldiers marching by--and sometimes bands playing,
and my Ayah told me stories. There is no one to talk to
here except you and Ben Weatherstaff. And you have to do
your work and Ben Weatherstaff won't speak to me often.
I thought if I had a little spade I could dig somewhere
as he does, and I might make a little garden if he would
give me some seeds."
Martha's face quite lighted up.
"There now!" she exclaimed, "if that wasn't one of th'
things mother said. She says, `There's such a lot o'
room in that big place, why don't they give her a
bit for herself, even if she doesn't plant nothin'
but parsley an' radishes? She'd dig an' rake away an'
be right down happy over it.' Them was the very words
she said."
"Were they?" said Mary. "How many things she knows,
doesn't she?"
"Eh!" said Martha. "It's like she says: `A woman as
brings up twelve children learns something besides her A
B C. Children's as good as 'rithmetic to set you findin'
out things.'"
"How much would a spade cost--a little one?" Mary asked.
"Well," was Martha's reflective answer, "at Thwaite
village there's a shop or so an' I saw little garden sets
with a spade an' a rake an' a fork all tied together for
two shillings. An' they was stout enough to work with, too."
"I've got more than that in my purse," said Mary.
"Mrs. Morrison gave me five shillings and Mrs. Medlock
gave me some money from Mr. Craven."
"Did he remember thee that much?" exclaimed Martha.
"Mrs. Medlock said I was to have a shilling a week to spend.
She gives me one every Saturday. I didn't know what to
spend it on."
"My word! that's riches," said Martha. "Tha' can buy
anything in th' world tha' wants. Th' rent of our
cottage is only one an' threepence an' it's like pullin'
eye-teeth to get it. Now I've just thought of somethin',"
putting her hands on her hips.
"What?" said Mary eagerly.
"In the shop at Thwaite they sell packages o'
flower-seeds for a penny each, and our Dickon he knows
which is th' prettiest ones an, how to make 'em grow.
He walks over to Thwaite many a day just for th' fun of it.
Does tha' know how to print letters?" suddenly.
"I know how to write," Mary answered.
Martha shook her head.
"Our Dickon can only read printin'. If tha' could print we
could write a letter to him an' ask him to go an' buy th'
garden tools an' th' seeds at th' same time."
"Oh! you're a good girl!" Mary cried. "You are, really! I
didn't know you were so nice. I know I can print letters
if I try. Let's ask Mrs. Medlock for a pen and ink and some paper."
"I've got some of my own," said Martha. "I bought 'em
so I could print a bit of a letter to mother of a Sunday.
I'll go and get it." She ran out of the room, and Mary stood
by the fire and twisted her thin little hands together
with sheer pleasure.
"If I have a spade," she whispered, "I can make the earth
nice and soft and dig up weeds. If I have seeds and can
make flowers grow the garden won't be dead at all--it
will come alive."
She did not go out again that afternoon because when Martha
returned with her pen and ink and paper she was obliged
to clear the table and carry the plates and dishes
downstairs and when she got into the kitchen Mrs. Medlock
was there and told her to do something, so Mary waited
for what seemed to her a long time before she came back.
Then it was a serious piece of work to write to Dickon.
Mary had been taught very little because her governesses
had disliked her too much to stay with her. She could
not spell particularly well but she found that she could
print letters when she tried. This was the letter Martha
dictated to her: "My Dear Dickon:
This comes hoping to find you well as it leaves me at present.
Miss Mary has plenty of money and will you go to Thwaite
and buy her some flower seeds and a set of garden tools
to make a flower-bed. Pick the prettiest ones and easy
to grow because she has never done it before and lived
in India which is different. Give my love to mother
and every one of you. Miss Mary is going to tell me a lot
more so that on my next day out you can hear about elephants
and camels and gentlemen going hunting lions and tigers.
"Your loving sister,
Martha Phoebe Sowerby."
"We'll put the money in th' envelope an' I'll get th'
butcher boy to take it in his cart. He's a great
friend o' Dickon's," said Martha.
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