The Humming Room
Author: Ellen Potter
Date: 2012-02-28 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Middle Grade; Fantasy; Mystery; Fiction; Realistic Fiction; Childrens; Juvenile; Young Adult; retellings; Contemporary
Description: Hiding is Roo Fanshaw's special skill. Living in a frighteningly unstable family, she often needs to disappear at a moment's notice. When her parents are murdered, it's her special hiding place under the trailer that saves her life. As it turns out, Roo, much to her surprise, has a wealthy if eccentric uncle, who has agreed to take her into his home on Cough Rock Island. Once a tuberculosis sanitarium for children of the rich, the strange house is teeming with ghost stories and secrets. Roo doesn't believe in ghosts or fairy stories, but what are those eerie noises she keeps hearing? And who i
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Rights: Copyright © 2012 by Ellen Potter.

The Humming Room was inspired by The Secret Garden,
a classic that Ellen Potter has reread every year of her adult life.

See how these two works complement each other
with a special e-book bonus –
the entire text of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s original novel.

Just keep reading!

For Daniel, Meagan,
and Matthew Linzer

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Acknowledgments

Preview

Chapter 1

There are no road signs to mark the tiny village of Limpette. It lies between two towns that you have never heard of. If you pass Ostrander’s goat farm, you’ve gone too far.

We won’t stay long in Limpette. There’s not much of anything here for us, except the girl. And the girl was not much of anything either, not back then. Her name was Roo Fanshaw and she was too small for her age. She had a narrow, bony face and a tight, dissatisfied mouth. Her rusty brown hair was shoulder length, with bangs that hung over her eyes. They were green eyes. Green eyes are often very captivating, but Roo’s eyes were the spent, dull green of smoke at the end of a fireworks show.

In order to see her, we need to get down on all fours and squeeze through an opening in the vinyl apron that surrounds the bottom of her family’s mobile home. It’s a small opening, and we’ll have more trouble getting through than Roo did. She can slip through the narrowest gaps like a ferret. Like all good thieves, she understands space. Space can be a friend or an enemy, so you should always know how much of it your body needs. Roo, being tiny, needs very little, and she feels most comfortable in cramped areas, like this one.

Duck your head. There she is. Let’s begin.

With her legs pulled up and her chin on her knee, Roo listened to the sound of men’s footsteps above her head. They tramped back and forth, from the living room to the bedroom beside it. She supposed they were tramping through her own bedroom too, but there was nothing of interest for them there.

The thing of interest was directly above her head. The men kept returning to that spot. She could hear their voices too, but could not make out the words. One man threw up. She heard the sound of retching and then footsteps rushing off. To the bathroom maybe?

She knew they were going to find her eventually. She considered, in an offhand way, what would happen to her when they did. In the end, she decided she didn’t really care. She had been shivering badly—whether from cold or from fear, she wasn’t sure. Now her body was still again. Quiet. There was nothing to do but wait.

She turned her attention to the tiny green snake that was balanced on the knee of her tan corduroys. The light from the narrow break in the trailer’s vinyl apron passed through the snake and turned it the sort of green Roo’s eyes might have been, had her life been different—emerald and clear. The snake’s undulating body looked so cool and smooth that Roo stuck out her tongue and licked it. Oddly, she could feel imperfections on the glass—small bumps and scuffs—that her eyes could not detect.

All around her on the icy, packed earth were dozens of tiny flowers, some made of blown glass, some trapped in Lucite domes—daisies, tiger lilies, a bouquet of pink roses, paper-thin red poppies. There was a pair of enamel earrings shaped like marigolds, large and gaudy, which she had stolen from the drugstore. She had mounded up earth and planted them by sticking their posts through the ground. Roo considered the little garden before nudging the poppies closer to the marigolds and putting the snake between them. Then she flung herself to the ground and listened to the earth. It was something she often did, checking the ground the way other girls might check the mirror. She could hear all its movements, small, fluttering sounds of life that fascinated her. Here, beneath the trailer, the sounds were stealthy, quiet stirrings of slow-moving bugs. The squeezing and shoving of ice crystals in the March thaw.

She heard a new sound, aboveground and close by. Opening her eyes, she saw the mouse a few feet away, staring at her. Very slowly, Roo stretched out her hand and wiggled her fingers toward him, happy to see him. He edged closer to her. Hoping for food, as usual. She wished she had some. In any case, he came close enough to let her stroke his back, the fur still thick from the winter and the color of buckwheat honey.

“Stay with me, stay with me,” she pleaded to him in a whisper.

But it was no good. The sound of footsteps above startled him and he was gone in a flash.

She heard the familiar suck of air as the front door to her family’s home was pulled open, then the metallic clattering of someone trying to open the storm door. The latch was sticky. You had to pull the screen door toward you first in order for the latch to snap into place. The man wouldn’t have known that. Roo listened as he struggled with it, trying to get out of the house, rattling the door with a few angry curses before it gave way and opened.

She held her breath. The green snake abruptly grew dark as the light from the opening was blocked by someone’s leg. Roo could see the state trooper’s gray pants with the thick black stripe down the sides. He was so close, Roo could have reached through the break in the apron and untied his shoes. He stood there for a moment, as still as Roo. Suddenly he shifted, moved forward. Two other legs could be seen now. These were bare and brown skinned. Lavender slippers with matted-down plush.

Mrs. Quick, the lady next door.

Roo narrowed her eyes.

“You the one I’m supposed to talk to?” Roo heard Mrs. Quick ask.

“Yes, ma’am. My name is Officer Catlin.”

“I know who you are, Jason Catlin, who lives down on Myrtle Street, so don’t officer me. Did you catch them who done this?”

“We have someone in custody, ma’am. How well did you know the family?” The state trooper sounded a little shaky. Maybe he was cold.

“Is all of them dead, then? The girl too?” Mrs. Quick’s voice was whispery, like she was talking in a dark room.

“Ma’am, please. How well do you know them?” The trooper’s voice was young. Roo noticed he changed to the present tense.

“I know the girl,” Mrs. Quick said.

“What about the parents?”

There was a pause. Roo could see Mrs. Quick’s toes punching the top of her slippers.

“Trash.”

“Trash? In what way, ma’am?”

“In what way?” Mrs. Quick made an nnnn sound. Roo knew that sound. It was Mrs. Quick’s sound of disgust. “They is trash in the same way trash is always trash. Their lives is a mess. Their children’s lives is a mess. Then they go hanging out with other trash and this…this is what happens. You better tell me right now, young man.” Mrs. Quick planted her legs farther apart. Roo guessed she was crossing her arms over her large chest. “What happened to the girl?”

“We don’t know where she is, ma’am,” the trooper admitted in a quiet voice. “When did you see her last?”

“Wasn’t but a few hours ago.”

“Can you say exactly?”

“After she come home from school. So maybe three forty? I seen her sitting outside her trailer, dressed in a T-shirt. A T-shirt in this weather! I told her to come in for pie. I feed her when I can. The child is stunted. Twelve years old and no bigger than my eight-year-old granddaughter. Roo’s mother…oh, what the heck’s the woman’s name…Joley,”—Mrs. Quick nnnn’ed—“she treats Roo like a stray cat, putting her out in the cold, never dressing her proper, never feeding her proper.”

Roo took the snake off her knee and placed it beside the marigold earring.

“Did she say anything about her family being in trouble? Or in danger?” the trooper asked.

“Roo? Ha! That child hardly never says nothing. She’s halfway to being a savage. She just woofed down her pie, stole the snake when my back was turned, and out she went.”

“She stole something?”

Roo stared at the glass snake on the ground, listening.

“Now, don’t get the wrong idea. She don’t steal nothing valuable. Just doodads, little this-and-thats I find at the dollar store. I leave them out for her. She wouldn’t take them if I gave them to her. Too proud. Though where she gets that kind of pride, with her parents being what they are, I have no idea. So I turn my back and let her steal them. Make her feel good. Make her feel like she got something nice in her life.”

A rush of blood heated Roo’s face. She made a fist and held it over the snake, poised to smash it, but found that she couldn’t. Instead she lunged forward toward the hole in the apron and spit. She had meant to spit on the ground, but at that moment Mrs. Quick stepped forward, and the spit landed on her bare leg. Roo watched the spit slide down Mrs. Quick’s leg and slip beneath her lavender slippers, but still Mrs. Quick did not move.

“What will you do with Roo when you all find her?” Mrs. Quick asked the trooper.

“A family member has already been contacted,” he said.

Roo frowned. Family? She had no other family. No cousins. No aunts or uncles. She supposed there might be grandparents somewhere but she didn’t know them or care about them. And since they’d never bothered to see her, she guessed they didn’t care about her either.

“They decent folks, Jason? These relatives of Roo’s?” Mrs. Quick asked.

“I couldn’t say, ma’am,” the trooper admitted. There was a pause, before he added in a low voice, “I did hear they have money.”

“You mean they’re rich?” Mrs. Quick’s voice sounded astonished.

“That’s what I heard,” the officer admitted.

“In that case, Officer Jason Catlin, you might want to peek under the trailer. Mind your fingers though. She bites.”

Chapter 2

As it turned out, Roo had an uncle. He didn’t come for her right away though. He was traveling, she was told, and no one could get in touch with him. In the meantime, Roo was placed in a foster home with a Mr. and Mrs. Burrow. She was wedged into a room with three other foster girls whom she instantly hated. They hated her right back.

She tried to stay clear of them, finding hiding places throughout the house. They hunted her down for sport, but rarely found her. One afternoon, in a brambly corner of the garden, she found a dilapidated greenhouse where Mr. Burrow started his tomato plants. Roo sat on a bag of fertilizer, watching a spider spin its web. Its tiny legs fretted and fussed with the webbing. It reminded her of the way her father’s fingers looked when they picked at his guitar listlessly while waiting for something to happen: a phone call, a knock on the door. Long, elegant fingers. Fingers that seemed to be on the wrong person’s hand.

Suddenly the greenhouse door was yanked open and the two older foster girls appeared. Roo looked up at them briefly, then her eyes slid back to the spider.

“Your uncle isn’t coming, you know,” one of the girls said. “They told him what a jerk you are, and he said, ‘No, thanks, you can keep her.’”

“I don’t care if he comes or not,” Roo said.

They tried a different approach. “Your parents were drug dealers.”

“So?”

“So…” The girl fumbled. “So. You’ll grow up bad too. It’s in the blood.”

“I might,” Roo said.

The girls did not know what to do with Roo. She never responded the way she should. In the end they left her alone, but in a fit of pique they padlocked the greenhouse door. It didn’t matter. She watched the spider finish her web and afterward easily crawled through a loose pane of glass in the roof.

Roo’s uncle did come to fetch her, although he didn’t come himself. Instead he sent his personal assistant. Ms. Valentine was slim and handsome, though not young. She had dark hair, fine pale skin, and an aquiline nose. Although she was primly dressed in tweed pants, a black wool coat, and a black cardigan, she wore a peculiar purple hat that was shaped like a thimble and wrapped with a brown velvet ribbon above the brim.

She eyed Roo’s Hefty bag full of clothes with distaste, before she put it up on the train’s luggage shelf, shoveling it into the compartment with her fingertips. As she did, Roo slipped by her and tucked herself into the window seat.

“Don’t expect a view,” Ms. Valentine warned, staring down at Roo. “It’s backyards and scrubby bits all the way.”

She waited for Roo’s face to register disappointment, but the faded green eyes stared back at her coolly.

Strange girl, Ms. Valentine thought. She doesn’t look as if she’s ever shed a tear.

Ms. Valentine removed her coat before she sat down, folding it neatly on her lap, and on top of that she placed her extraordinary hat. Then, with no jolt at all, the train moved smoothly out of the station.

“How old are you?” Ms. Valentine asked stiffly, after a time.

“Twelve.”

She turned to look at Roo fully now, the first time she had done so since she’d picked her up at the Burrows’ house. “That’s what they told us, but you seem much too small for twelve,” she pronounced. “Is there something the matter with you?”

“Is there something the matter with you?” Roo shot back.

“Now, there’s no room for touchiness at Cough Rock, young lady,” Ms. Valentine warned.

“What’s that?” Roo asked. “Cough Rock.”

“Your uncle’s place.” She glanced at Roo quickly and sighed. “You should be warned, I guess. It’s an odd place. You aren’t a nervous type, are you?”

Roo shook her head.

“Well, we’ll find out soon enough,” she said doubtfully. “The house is large, but you are not to go poking around, do you understand? Your uncle would be very angry. He has laid down rules, and we all follow them. You will too.”

Ms. Valentine rubbed her thumb against her hat’s ribbon. After a moment she added in a more gentle tone, “Of course, we are sorry about your loss. Your uncle adored your father, you know. He tells me they were very close, back when they were boys. I met your father once years ago. He was wild and foolish, but he was—” Ms. Valentine paused.

Roo looked up at her. For the first time that day she was interested in what Ms. Valentine had to say.

“I think he had a good heart. Underneath,” Ms. Valentine concluded.

It was what Roo had hoped to hear. It was what she felt about him herself, though no one else seemed to share that opinion. Her father was by turns considered a drug dealer, a shady character, a loser. Still Ms. Valentine’s words made her feel worse somehow.

“I was very sad to hear of his death,” Ms. Valentine said. “Your mother’s too, of course,” she added.

“It was their own fault,” Roo said simply. She turned away to stare out the dirt-flecked window.

Ms. Valentine’s tidy brow furrowed at this. Strange girl, she thought for the second time. But now it was more of a verdict.

“And she wasn’t my mother,” Roo added suddenly. “She was just his girlfriend.”

“Really?” Ms. Valentine turned to Roo, her voice rising with sudden interest. “You have a mother? Where is she?”

Roo shrugged.

The conductor approached and Ms. Valentine turned away from Roo to hand the man their tickets. He snapped holes in them and shoved them into the metal holder above the seats.

“What’s your mother’s name?” Ms. Valentine pursued after the conductor left.

Roo shrugged.

“What do you mean—?” Ms. Valentine imitated Roo’s shrug and scowl. “You don’t know your own mother’s name?”

“She was just another girlfriend. She didn’t want me. My father did. That’s all I know.”

They rode in silence for a while. The train was quiet, not rattly as Roo had imagined it would be. It slid along the rails, bellying from side to side, so that these two stiff creatures bumped against each other occasionally, and pretended they hadn’t.

After some time, Ms. Valentine spoke again.

“I suppose you’ve heard all sorts of nonsense about your uncle?”

“No,” Roo said.

She turned to Roo. “Well, what have you heard?”

“Nothing,” Roo said.

“Your father must have told you something about him.”

“I didn’t know I had an uncle.”

“Really?” Ms. Valentine gave the hat a little joggle. “Well,” she said, her voice sounding more businesslike, “then here’s what you should know about your uncle. You are not to upset him. You are not to pester him. You are not to ask him questions.”

“Questions about what?” she asked.

“About anything at all,” Ms. Valentine warned sharply. “He’s agreed to take you in, and that’s all you need to know. He feels very guilty about your father, although I don’t see why he should. Your father left home at fifteen—wanted to do things his own way, so I’m told—and his father washed his hands of him, money and all. Your uncle tried to track your father many times, but he couldn’t find him.”

“We moved around,” Roo muttered. In fact they moved every few months, whenever her father would get in trouble with the law. They had stayed in Limpette longer than any other place—nearly a year.

“Well, I hope he managed to keep you in school while he was moving you hither and thither.”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Ms. Valentine exclaimed.

In fact, they had moved around so much that she often missed long stretches of school, much to her relief. She hated school. Not the books and learning part; her mind was quick enough. What she hated was being forced to be around other kids. At every new school she went to, the kids made fun of her dirty, worn-out clothes and her wild-looking hair. She defied them by letting herself grow more wild until she looked so frightening that no one would come near her. And that suited her just fine.

There was a small plastic table that was latched flat against the seat in front of her. Roo flicked the latch carelessly with her index finger, causing the table to slam down loudly. The man in front of her turned to frown at her, as did Ms. Valentine.

Roo swung her legs up and rested her sneakers on the table.

“Feet off,” Ms. Valentine hissed, staring with disgust at Roo’s sneakers. “People eat on that table.”

It made Roo look at her feet more closely. The plastic soles of her sneakers were peeling up and the once-white tops were now gray. The bottoms of her pants were shredded from being too long and constantly stepped on. She felt Ms. Valentine’s eyes on her feet too. That made her mad, so she kept her sneakers on the table.

“If you become too much trouble,” Ms. Valentine cautioned, “you’ll be sent back straight to the Burrows, that’s a promise. It’s madness for your uncle to take you on. I told him so.”

She waited another moment for Roo to move her legs. When she didn’t, Ms. Valentine snuffled loudly through her fine, narrow nose. Then she rummaged through her bag, making the thick charm bracelet on her wrist chime, until she retrieved a copy of The New York Times and a store-bought yogurt parfait with a plastic spoon. She settled back into her seat, snapped the paper open, and from then on she pretended Roo no longer existed.

That was fine with Roo. For the rest of the trip Roo watched the passing stretches of dreary brown hills and bare trees, their branches crosshatched against the cold gray sky. Occasionally they passed towns that looked much like Limpette, with their lopsided houses and scrappy backyards, until they vanished, giving way to long stretches of woods. It might have made most people feel both wistful and frightened. But for Roo, who understood things in terms of space, feeling wistful about the past and nervous about the future was too much like standing alone and exposed in acres of open field. It was unsafe. Instead she tucked her mind into a smaller thought: What was it that her uncle did not want her to ask about?

Roo’s father and his girlfriend, Joley, had secrets, but they kept them very poorly. They fought too loudly, and all their troubles spilled out in an ugly mess. But most adults, Roo suspected, would be more careful.

Was her uncle involved in something illegal, like her father? It seemed unlikely that a criminal would have a personal assistant. And it seemed even more unlikely that someone like Ms. Valentine would work for a criminal.

Or maybe there was something wrong with him. Maybe he had a violent temper, like Joley. At least if it was a big house, she could find places to hide.

The train turned sharply and the late afternoon sun flooded the car. Ms. Valentine shielded her face with her hat. Roo closed her eyes and slipped her hand in her jacket pocket to feel the cool smoothness of the little glass snake. It was so thin that she could have snapped it in half between her fingers.

Another possibility occurred to her then, one that struck her as by far the most interesting. Maybe her uncle was exactly like her. Maybe he simply wanted to be left alone. Roo had never understood the strange attraction people had for one another. It baffled her the way people always herded up, endlessly talking, talking. What on earth did they have to say to each other?

Roo’s father liked to talk, but with him it was different. He didn’t care if you spoke back. He just knew the sort of things that people liked to hear, and told it to them in his dreamy, slow way. Every so often, someone would call him charming.

“Let’s see him charm the bars off his cell,” Joley had said as she stood at the top of the trailer’s steps and watched the police car haul him off one night. She laughed, the little metal stud in her tongue glinting off the police car’s headlights. But he was back home the following day, looking tired and with a bruise on his cheekbone but otherwise no worse for it.

No matter what sort of trouble he got into, he had always managed to slip out of it. Until a few weeks ago.

Thinking about her father made Roo’s chest ache. She forced her mind to collapse down again, until it was as narrow as a squint—just wide enough to numbly watch the miles and miles of dull brown views out the window. And to wonder what sort of place Cough Rock would be.

Chapter 3

They arrived in Clayton at dusk. The air was colder here. It pierced Roo’s lungs and made her cough. A steady wind blew her hair into her eyes so that she had to put up her sweatshirt hood and shove her hair beneath it in order to see.

Like Limpette, Clayton was a small town but the houses here were neat and pretty. The main street was flanked by a river so vast and gray and agitated that it looked more like an ocean. Here and there chunks of ice floated upriver. They seemed to follow each other, like migrating fish.

“This way,” Ms. Valentine said, and she began to walk briskly down the deserted main street. They passed souvenir shops and little eateries, some of which had signs hanging in the window saying CLOSED FOR THE SEASON. Finally they came to a pier, empty except for one gleaming white boat wildly bucking on the waves.

Ms. Valentine walked up next to it, leaned across, and pulled it close to the pier.

“Step in,” she told Roo.

“Why?” Roo asked, eyeing the boat as it jumped about on the waves.

“Because unless you have wings under your sweatshirt, there’s no other way. Cough Rock is an island.”

“I don’t like water. I can’t swim,” Roo told her, staring warily at the tossing boat.

“She’s a Boston Whaler. She won’t sink. In you go.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Roo stepped in the boat and immediately stumbled forward as it pitched, but caught herself before her chin slammed against the console. Meanwhile Ms. Valentine deftly untied the mooring ropes and hopped in. She pushed a button on the console, pushed forward a black lever, and turned the ignition. The motor burbled, then the boat sped away from the pier and into the open river.

The water looked thick, like an expanse of angry gray muscle. It shoved at the boat mercilessly, tossing them about, making Roo feel helpless and angry. Ms. Valentine, on the other hand, seemed completely untroubled. She sat very upright, just as though she were still riding the train, and steered lightly with only two fingers on the wheel.

There were islands everywhere, some quite small and others large enough to hold several houses. And not just houses; these were mansions, the sort that Roo had only ever seen on television, half hidden by a tangle of winter branches and evergreens. They looked as deserted as the town had.

Above them, a slender shadow suddenly appeared. Roo looked up to see a large bird, its neck as long as a swan’s, awkwardly pushing through the dimming sky. The bird followed them for a while. Roo twisted her head to get a better look at it, but it seemed to dodge her glances, moving over the top of the boat where the canopy blocked her view until finally, with a rough croak, it flew away.

“A heron,” Ms. Valentine told her. “Don’t worry, you’ll see plenty more.” Then added, more to herself, “Though it’s odd to see them this time of year.”

Finally, they turned toward one of the islands. It rose up high out of the water, its banks a tall ledge of sharp-edged rocks. Above the rocks the land leveled out. Occupying most of the island was a huge stone building. Despite its size, it was plain, with no adornments except for a deck that wrapped around its lower floor. It didn’t look like someone’s house, Roo thought. It looked like an old school or a factory. Someplace where no one would want to live.

Ms. Valentine circled the island and pulled the throttle. The boat slowed, and Ms. Valentine guided it toward a tremendous stone arch that served as a gateway into the island’s small lagoon. Because of the darkening sky, they were nearly beneath the arch when Roo could finally make out the words carved across the top of it: ST. THERESA’S CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL. Her muscles tightened.

Where had she been taken?

Once in the lagoon, Ms. Valentine pulled up alongside the pier and cut the motor.

“This is it,” Ms. Valentine said. “Out you go.”

“No.”

Ms. Valentine gazed down at Roo, and her slender nostrils dilated with indignation. Her purple hat was in her hand, the wind curling its rim up.

“No what?”

“I’m not going,” Roo said.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You have nowhere else to go,” she said, stepping out onto the pier.

“You lied to me,” Roo spat back at her.

“Are you completely mad?” Ms. Valentine looked appalled.

“I’m supposed to be going to my uncle’s, not a children’s hospital,” Roo said.

“What on earth are you talking about?” Ms. Valentine stared at Roo with angry befuddlement before she finally fluttered her eyes skyward and said, “The arch.”

Reaching into the back of the boat, she heaved up Roo’s Hefty bag, then said, not unkindly, “It’s an old sign, Roo. This hasn’t been a children’s hospital in over sixty years.”

Roo stared up at the windows of the house. There were many of them but no children in sight. The island was silent too. If anything, it seemed as abandoned as the other islands.

Roo stood and climbed out of the boat awkwardly, then followed Ms. Valentine up a stone walkway. The walkway cut through the island’s sparse lawn, still snow flecked, up red-veined granite stairs and through a massive set of oak doors.

In the entrance foyer, Ms. Valentine paused to remove her purple hat and place it on a brass peg on the wall before she led Roo into a large lobby, past a staircase, and then down a dark hallway. There were many rooms off the hallway. All of them, Roo noticed, were on the left-hand side. Most doors were shut but some were open, and in these Roo spied shadowy furnishings and large windows covered with heavy drapes. The walls along the hallway seemed strangely lumpy. Her fingers swiped at them surreptitiously but it was too dark in the hallway to see what they were.

Finally, Ms. Valentine stopped in front of a closed door. She gave Roo a look of sharp appraisal before extending one disdainful forefinger, intent on pushing aside Roo’s overgrown bangs. But Roo knocked her hand out of the way before she could.

“Fine, look like a beast then,” Ms. Valentine said. She gave the door a quiet rap with a flourish of her knuckles. After a pause, Roo heard a response from within.

“Yes. What is it?”

Roo listened hard to his voice. It sounded rough and tense. Nothing like her father’s easy crooning.

“Your niece has arrived, Mr. Fanshaw,” Ms. Valentine called.

There was no reply. Roo glanced up at Ms. Valentine to see what was wrong, but she seemed untroubled by the silence.

“Roo is right here, Mr. Fanshaw. Shall we come in?” Ms. Valentine persisted, polite but determined.

“No.” The response came. “Not now. I’ll see her later.”

Ms. Valentine stood at the door a moment longer, then sniffed and turned.

“Just as well,” she said to Roo. “You should have a bath first and fresh clothes. Come, I’ll show you your room.”

“Why wouldn’t he see me?” Roo asked as they walked back up the hallway toward the lobby.

“There’s no need to get offended,” Ms. Valentine said.

“I’m not. I just want to know why.”

After a moment Ms. Valentine said, “Your uncle has always been a private person. Circumstances have made him…more so.

“This is the west wing of the house,” Ms. Valentine told her as they began to climb the staircase in the lobby. “The upstairs renovations are still underway.” There was a dry tone in her voice that made Roo think that this wasn’t exactly the truth.

On the second-floor landing, Ms. Valentine’s low heels clicked briskly across the polished wooden hallway floor and turned into the first room on the left.

It was a massive bedroom, easily twice the size of the living room in the old trailer. There were very few furnishings—just a bed and a plain wardrobe—which made the room seem even larger. By the window was a recessed window seat with a view of the river.

“It’s nothing fancy but better than you’re used to,” Ms. Valentine said. “We’ve bought some clothes for you. They’re in the wardrobe, though I’m sure they won’t fit well. We didn’t expect you to be so small.” She opened a door by the wardrobe. “Bathroom.” She closed the door again. “Down the hall are some other rooms that have never been used. You are free to poke around. The east wing, however, is strictly off-limits. That’s one rule you do not want to break in this house.”

And with that, Ms. Valentine click-clacked out of the room and back down the hall.

It didn’t take Roo long to see that there was no good place to hide in this room. The bed was too low-slung. There was a wardrobe, but it was indeed full of clothes and difficult to close from the inside. It all made her feel so horribly trapped, like a wild young fox that someone had snatched from the woods, dropped into a strange cavernous room, and then left all alone.

Roo collapsed on the floor and began to cry. Her sobs were awful—the agonized tears of old sorrows and sorrows too new and raw to understand. She jammed her wrist in her mouth and bit it to make herself stop, but she succeeded only in turning her sobs into a muffled wail. She cried and cried until, quite suddenly, the tears stopped. She lifted her head. Through bleary eyes she gazed around as if trying to remember where she was. Her fingers slipped into her jacket pocket and closed around the green snake. Snorting back mucus, she shook her bangs out of her eyes, and went out into the hallway. She paused to listen. There was only silence.

Cautiously, she started up the hall, noting things along the way. The right side of the wall was covered with fresh Sheetrock, the screw heads still showing. The other side of the hall was painted a soft blue. There was an open door just past her bedroom. Peering in she found a smallish room with no furniture. The wooden floors were stripped down, dull, and pale and waiting for varnish. Up ahead, the hallway took a sharp turn. Everything here was different, as though she suddenly had stepped into another building. The right-hand walls still had the bare Sheetrock but the walls on the left were a liver color, peeling and grimy. The floors didn’t gleam as they did down the other hallway. Here they were scarred and worn, beneath a ceiling that dripped bare lightbulbs. The temperature had plummeted too, as though not even the heat wanted to linger here.

Was this the east wing, where she was forbidden to go?

She stood very still for a moment, listening. No, not listening exactly. It was more like sensing. She tested places in this way. In some places the air felt very full. These places smothered her; too many people came and went. She preferred the places where the air felt wispy, where everything passed through lightly and carefully. The crawlspace beneath the trailer had been like that. The dirt floor showed the occasional pinprick footprints of mice or the smudged ripple of a snake, but that was all.

This place, though, was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. The air was dead, as if all living smells had been deliberately scoured away.

She pushed on the doorknob of the first room she came to. This room was full of ancient, wicker-backed wheelchairs. Heaped on one of the wheelchairs were several white smocks, yellowed with age. There were three other doors in the hallway, one an old bathroom with its plumbing ripped out, and the other a room so tiny it could only have been some sort of closet.

The last door in the hallway wouldn’t open, but Roo could feel that it wanted to. She leaned all her weight against it. It budged a little but still would not give way. Holding the knob, she drew back and gave the door a sharp kick. With a crack the door flew open, and an acrid smell hit Roo’s nostrils, layered with the parched odor of dust. The room was large and painted the same awful color of the hallway, but there were curtains with a childish pattern of yellow and red rocking horses, faded where the sun hit it in the center but still bright along the edges. Lining two walls were a half-dozen iron bed frames, painted white, with no mattresses. The beds were small. Child-size. There was a washbasin in one corner, and a beadboard cabinet against the far wall. That was all. Except for the smell.

This must have once been part of the children’s hospital, she thought.

She walked over to one of the beds and ran her hand along the cold metal headboard. She sat on the bare springs and bounced a few times, listening to the squeak and breathing in the smell of rust. From this perch her sharp eyes slid across the room, studying every inch. She had learned that if you concentrated on anything long enough, the hidden things would show themselves. Sure enough, at the far end of the room, beneath a corner bed, she spotted a floorboard that did not lie flush with the floor. Hopping off the bed she went over to examine it. It was wedged tightly in place, though a sliver of its edges showed above the level of the floor. Roo pried at it with her narrow fingers, patiently nudging and pulling until the board came up in her hands. A puff of dust came up with it and in the space below was a wooden box painted a faded mustard color. She pulled it out and placed it in front of her. There was a small iron lock with a catch, which she flicked up with her pinky. Opening the lid, she found inside a flashlight, a ring, and an opened pack of Juicy Fruit gum. The flashlight was ancient looking, with a silver body and brass fittings on either end. She flipped the flashlight’s switch but the batteries were dead. The ring was nice though. A thin silver band with two tiny silver hearts fused together. She picked up the gum. The package was old-fashioned looking, with green and white stripes. She pulled out a stick of the gum. It was rock hard and wrapped in the same green-and-white paper, but instead of foil the gum itself was covered with a red wax paper. She put the flashlight and the gum back in the box, but slipped the ring on her finger. The feel of it steadied her and gave her more confidence. She shut the box’s lid and replaced it in its hiding place.

A sudden sound made Roo shove the floorboard back into place and jump to her feet. If Ms. Valentine found her here, in what she suspected was the forbidden east wing, she would be furious. Maybe Ms. Valentine would even go through with her threat to send Roo back to the Burrows. She felt the urge to hide, but she fought it with cool common sense.

What do I care if she sends me back there? One place is as good as another.

She waited, watching the open door to see if someone would pass by, but no one did. Crossing the room, Roo peered around the door into the hallway. There was no one in sight, but the next moment she heard the sound again. It was a droning noise, and at first Roo thought it might be some sort of motor. But as she listened she could hear that it rose and fell in pitch and volume at irregular intervals. It was a human sound, absolutely. The sound of humming. She listened for a tune, but there wasn’t one. The voice hummed on and on, joyless, as if someone were forcing it to hum.

Roo pressed her ear against the wall at the far end of the room. The sound was not there, not quite. Instead, it seemed to fill the air around her, to be everywhere and nowhere. Then, very suddenly, it stopped.

“Is someone in there?” she whispered to the wall, and put her ear against it again. Nothing. She knocked at the Sheetrock.

“Who’s there?” she asked more loudly.

She was answered by a scream, so loud and piercing that Roo instantly crouched down, muscles clenched, like an animal readying itself to escape or, if necessary, fight.

Chapter 4

The scream quickly changed to an outburst of laughter, loud and unrestrained. Roo looked up to see a remarkably pretty girl staring down at her with surprised delight. She was quite tall and broad shouldered, and looked to be twenty or so. Her sleek black hair was pulled back in a long braid and she wore a white cable sweater over jeans.

“Stop it!” Roo demanded, standing up. “Stop laughing at me!”

The girl did stop laughing, disarmingly fast. Her eyes grew wide as she gazed at Roo. “Ooo, so there it is,” she said.

When she didn’t explain herself, Roo was forced to ask, “There is what?”

The girl laughed again.

Roo lunged at her then, her hands stretched out, intent on slapping or shoving, but the girl caught Roo around her middle. She tipped her down so that she was parallel to the floor and held her like that as Roo kicked and screamed in a wild fit of anger. Remarkably, not a single kick landed.

“There’s the Fanshaw pride in you. Ms. Valentine said she didn’t see a single speck of it, but I guess she didn’t get you mad enough.”

“Let go!” Roo screeched.

“First calm down.”

“Let go!”

“Calm down.”

That infuriated Roo even more and she bellowed at the top of her lungs and flailed about so violently that this time she did manage a sharp jab of her elbow into the girl’s ribs.

The girl pulled in her breath so suddenly that Roo paused in satisfaction. But then the girl said in a reasonably cheery tone, “Is that the best you can do?”

Roo tried to do better, but the girl was strong and fast. She swiftly adjusted her hold. Now Roo’s arms and legs were held so fast that she could not move them at all. She frantically tried to squirm out of the girl’s grip but she only managed to paddle her feet and twist her head about.

“Tsss, tsss,” the girl said quietly. Her mouth was so close to Roo’s head that Roo could feel the warmth of her breath against her scalp. It was strangely pleasant. In another second Roo would remember to be angry again, but the girl let go right before that happened. Free, Roo jumped to her feet and backed herself up against the wall, staring at the girl.

“Well, that was fun,” the girl said, adjusting her sweater. “I’m Violet.”

She waited, but when Roo didn’t respond, Violet answered for her. “Hi, Violet. I’m Roo.”

Roo’s eyes were fixed on Violet, the way a wild cat watches a person who is cooing to it—steady and interested but exceedingly cautious.

“If you keep staring at me like that, I’m going to laugh again,” Violet warned. “And then we’ll have to start all over.”

Roo looked away.

“Thank you. And just so you know, I wasn’t laughing at you—not the first time anyway. I was laughing because you scared the you-know-what-skees out of me. I thought you were the Yellow Girl. So…Ms. Valentine says I’m supposed to make sure you clean yourself up.”

“That’s my business, not hers.”

Violet cocked her head to the side and looked Roo up and down. “You know who you remind me of? My aunt Fiona. Last spring she rowed out of Donkey Island with a backpack full of beer and a five-pound bag of cheese curd, then climbed up to an old osprey nest on top of a navigational marker. She sat there for days and days, poor Fiona, looking just like a skinny old bird sitting on her eggs. Wouldn’t come down, though we all begged and yelled and threatened from our boats. She said it was her business where she sat, and if the osprey didn’t mind, neither should we. She lasted a good week until she rolled over in her sleep and fell straight into the river. Poor old thing floated like a dried-out leaf, still sound asleep, and where do you think she washed up? Right back on Donkey Island, not twenty yards from her house. How’s that for luck?”

Roo’s jaw twitched. “Is that true?”

“Of course.”

“She sounds crazy.”

“There’s all brands of crazy,” Violet answered, raising her eyebrows. “Personally, I don’t give a baked bean if you want to go around looking like something drug out of a swamp, but I like my job and I need it. I’m not going to lie to you, Roo. I’ll haul you into the shower and hose you off with your clothes still on, if I have to.”

Had the threat come from Ms. Valentine, Roo might have challenged it. In any case, she would have kicked and screamed and made sure that Ms. Valentine took that shower right along with her. But with this girl…Roo could imagine her howling with laughter as she wrestled Roo into the shower. And that would be unbearable.

In the large white-and-coral-tiled bathroom Roo stripped down. Her skin puckered up instantly from the cold. She took a furtive glance at herself in the mirror above the sink—bony, narrow shoulders. A hard boy’s chest. She lifted her eyes to see her face, and stared back at herself suspiciously. She didn’t wonder if she were pretty or not—she knew that she wasn’t. She shook her bangs to one side. In her reflection she saw what she always saw: the downcast chin, the angry, caged-looking eyes. Her reflection shouted back at her: This is what you are! It’s in the cells of your body, it’s in the coils of your brain!

She looked away. On the sink was a dish of round pastel-colored candies that turned out to be soap. She picked them up, one at a time, and smelled each one. The smells were odd, flowery but not like any flowers she knew. She chose a yellow one and took it into the shower. The water was good and hot, not like the tepid trickle of the trailer’s shower. She showered quickly, rubbing the hard little ball of soap along the back of her neck and in her armpits, then sloshing a handful of shampoo through her hair. When she came out of the bathroom, wrapped in the bathrobe that had been left for her, she found Violet carrying in a tray of food.

“Well, that’s an improvement,” Violet said as she looked Roo up and down. She placed the tray of food down on the window seat.

“Nothing fancy,” Violet said. “Just chicken and salt potatoes. You can leave the tray, I’ll get it tomorrow.”

She started to leave but Roo blurted out, “Don’t go.”

Later Roo wondered why she had said it. She had never in her life wanted company. And if Violet had hesitated for even a second, Roo would have taken it back.

“All right,” Violet said gamely, and she plunked herself down on Roo’s bed. She leaned back against the headboard and watched as Roo curled into the window seat. Violet was such a big, strong, capable-looking girl that people often mistook her for a beautiful brute; but during quiet moments, like right now, her features were subtle and thoughtful.

Roo picked up a salt potato in her fingers and felt the delicate skin tear as she bit into it. It was good, and she was hungry, so she took a few more bites before pausing to ask Violet, “Are you going to tell Ms. Valentine that I was in the east wing?”

Violet tipped her head to one side and frowned. “When were you in the east wing?”

“Just now. Back there.”

“You mean back in the old girls’ dormitory? No, no, no.” Violet smiled, the worry leaving her face instantly. “That’s not the east wing. That’s the old part of the west wing.”

“Who lives in the west wing?” Roo asked, thinking of the humming sound.

Violet shrugged. “You. That’s all. No one’s lived in the west wing for years. This whole house used to be a tuberculosis sanitarium for children, oh, ages and ages ago. That’s why us locals call it Cough Rock. It had a more official name, of course, but no one ever remembers it. The girls’ dormitory was in this wing—that’s the last room down with all the beds—and the boys’ was in the east wing. After the hospital closed down, the place stood empty, right up until Mr. Fanshaw bought it. The Fanshaws had a house on Scotch Pine Island—it’s where your father spent his summers when he was a kid—but your uncle sold that about ten years ago and bought Cough Rock. It seems like a funny choice, but your uncle does things his own way.”

Roo picked at the skin of a chicken leg, considering this. “What’s he like, my uncle?”

Violet raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “We don’t see him very much. He travels.” She stopped talking abruptly, though it seemed like she would say more. Roo took this in. She turned back to her food, chewing and thinking.

“I heard someone humming when I was in the hallway,” Roo said.

“Humming?” Violet smiled a little. “Well, this house has got creaky old bones. It makes all kinds of noises, I guess.”

“It was a person,” Roo insisted.

“Maybe Ms. Valentine was humming,” Violet said falteringly.

Roo could not imagine Ms. Valentine humming. And anyway the voice sounded lighter, younger.

“You said something about a Yellow Girl,” Roo said. “Who is that?”

Violet widened her eyes. “Do you like ghost stories?”

“I don’t know,” Roo answered honestly.

“Let’s find out.” Violet leaned forward, clasped her hands together in her lap and gazed intently at Roo. “Years ago, when Mr. Fanshaw first started renovations on the house, he hired some contractors from Clayton. Soon after they started work, the men began to see a little girl, walking through the hallway, wrapped in a yellow sheet. The girl would look right at them, her eyes going all wide, and she’d whisper, “Shoot.” Then she’d vanish right in front of their eyes. The men thought that someone must have shot the girl, but when one of them told this story to his great-uncle, who had been alive when the sanitarium was still open, the old man shook his head. ‘That child wasn’t talking about guns. She was talking about the chute.’ According to the old man, the sanitarium wasn’t very good about keeping their patients alive. When one of the poor little things died, the nurses would wrap them up in a yellow sheet and send them down a secret chute. The chute led to the basement, and from there the sanitarium workers would take the body on a boat back to the mainland to be buried. This way they wouldn’t upset the other patients and were able to keep the deaths quiet.”

“That’s awful.” Roo looked away, out the window. Far below, the water was black now, except for filaments of moonlight clinging to the low crests.

“I’m a dope!” Violet cried. “Here I am, talking about ghosts after everything you’ve been through. Ignore me! All us folks from Donkey Island are the most superstitious people you’ll ever meet. Don’t believe a thing that comes out of our mouths. Of course, ghosts are nonsense. You don’t believe in them, do you?”

“Of course not,” Roo said irritably. And she didn’t, which made the humming all the more curious.

Chapter 5

The following day, the entire household seemed to have forgotten that Roo existed. That suited her perfectly. The first thing she did was to hurry down the hall in bare feet, still dressed in her pajamas, to listen for the humming. She waited for a while, sitting on the cold hallway floor, her arms wrapped around her legs to keep the chill off them. The only sound was the hiss of the waves outside. The silence in the house had an unnatural quality, as though everything were holding its breath, waiting. It reminded Roo of the silence right before the gunshots cracked above her head at their trailer. She fought an urge to flee and kept herself rooted, just as she had underneath the trailer. Waiting. Listening. But the house remained silent and still.

Back in her room she opened the wardrobe and fingered the clothes they had bought for her. The material was softer and thicker than she was used to. But Ms. Valentine was right; they were too big for her. She put on her old corduroys and a T-shirt from her Hefty bag, pulled her hooded sweatshirt over that, and went downstairs.

The first floor was as silent as the second, though the large windows in some of the rooms flooded the hallway with light and made the place seem less gloomy. Idly, Roo walked across the tiled floor, letting her fingers trail across the wall. Now she could see why the wall had seemed so lumpy the day before. Carved into the mahogany wainscoting were blooms of flowers. They trellised across the wall, huge and tropical looking. Hidden within the petals and crawling along the stem were tiny insects, their wings as thin as paper. Roo touched these very lightly, marveling at the hair-thin veins and the furled edges of wings. Farther up the hallway, she discovered the face of a carved monkey peering out from between a snarl of large leaves; its wide eyes stared back at her. She let her finger slip into its slightly open mouth and she felt the pinprick of tiny sharp teeth against her finger, poised to bite. She laughed at it, then stopped quickly when she heard a man’s voice from farther up the hall.

“Dr. Oulette?”

That’s my uncle, Roo thought.

She felt a jumble of curiosity and nervousness, though she could not understand why she should be afraid. She waited another minute, then stealthily crept along the hallway toward the room that Ms. Valentine had knocked on the day before. The door was open now. Roo peered around the door frame. It was a huge room, paneled with dark wood, its high ceiling braced with thick timber beams. Opposite the door was a large window trimmed with stained glass, giving a fine view of the stormy, gray seaway. In the center of the room was a large pool table. The green baize top was almost completely covered with maps. The maps looked as if they were photos of treetops, taken from a plane, and it was here Roo’s uncle Emmett stood, with his back to Roo, studying the maps.

He was tall and slim, dressed in loose tan trousers and a silky cream-colored shirt. He should have appeared elegant, but instead he looked frail. The wrists that poked out of his sleeves were too narrow and bony for a grown man. As he stared down at the map, the fingers of his right hand rested lightly on the edge of the pool table, while the other hand was in his pocket. Roo watched him for several minutes. He did not move the entire time, not the slightest bit.

He knows how to be still. Like me.

His head swiveled toward the door, quickly, as though he had just then felt her presence. When she saw him, her eyes went wide. In front of her stood her own father, miraculously alive again. Had his murder been a lie? Or was this…a ghost? No, that was impossible. She wanted to run to him, to fling her arms around him and press her face into his chest. But then she noticed his eyes—flat and hard looking. They were nothing like her father’s eyes. He gazed down at her, frowning absently, as though she were a disturbing thought that had suddenly popped into his head.

“I’m Roo,” she said.

“Who else could you possibly be?” he replied coldly.

Now that she looked at him more carefully, she could see the differences. The thin nose was not as short as her father’s. The lips more precise. He looked displeased as he took in her old sweatshirt and the frayed corduroys.

“Didn’t Ms. Valentine buy you new clothes?” he asked.

“I like my own,” Roo replied, her voice matching his in coldness.

He looked at her sharply, as though she had suddenly come into focus for him. “Your father was stubborn too. Much good it did him.” He paused, still staring at her circumspectly, then said, “Do you miss him?” He asked this in a peculiarly unemotional way, like a doctor might poke at a wound and say, “Does this hurt?”

It made Roo angry, and she answered defiantly, “No.” But her voice sounded odd. Her throat had tightened, and she realized with horror that she was a hairsbreadth away from tears.

Her uncle noticed. He sighed. His face softened, and suddenly Roo saw her father again, the likeness shocking. Mesmerizing.

“I hope you’ll be happy here, Roo,” he said. “If there’s anything you need, you can ask Ms. Valentine.”

Then he abruptly turned back to his maps. Roo stayed where she was, staring at him. She didn’t think she liked him. And he didn’t seem to like her very much either. Yet she wanted him to turn around again, to relive the sensation of her father being in front of her, still alive.

Turn around, turn around…she willed him in her thoughts. But no, he was lost in the maps’ green wilderness once again. He was done with her.

She retreated down the hallway until she found herself in the entrance lobby. Pushing open the massive front door, she stepped outside onto the cobblestone promenade. A light rain was falling, nudged this way and that by a fitful wind. Roo made her way down the granite steps toward a stretch of lawn mottled with thin patches of snow. She cut across it, past a semicircular patio, and headed toward the tiny lagoon where the moored Boston Whaler was now bobbing lightly. The wind blew more gently here, bringing with it a tangy odor of fish and cold fog. Following the path around the lagoon, she walked over the small footbridge that led to the stone archway. Here, she climbed out onto the great rocks that hemmed the edges of the island. The stones were splattered with gull droppings, but she found a clean spot and sat down.

The movement of the river was dizzying at first. The slate gray water rushed past, twisting and hissing like a tangle of frantic snakes. If you watched one spot you thought the water was rushing north, but if you shifted your glance it seemed as if it were heading east. After a few minutes Roo felt as though she were the one who was moving, and she had to take her eyes off the current to keep from feeling wobbly.

From this perch, she could see several of the other islands rising out of the restless St. Lawrence. Some had simple cottages on them, but many others had majestic houses with landscaped lawns, still winter dull and speckled with snow, sloping down toward the water. Roo had never seen anything like it. In Limpette, the fanciest building was the library, but its bricks were grimy and the front columns were peeling and listing to the right. These homes were by far the grandest she had ever seen. Yet, they all seemed deserted. No people, no boats. The only movement came from the tops of the pines as they shuddered in the wind.

The burr of a motor sliced through the river’s hiss. A small boat with a bright green hull and a white canopy curled around the island and was now heading straight for the stone arch entry. Roo stiffened and hurried to her feet, intent on hiding, but it was too late. The men in the boat had spotted her. There were two of them. The older man, with graying hair and glasses, was at the wheel. He raised his hand to her in greeting. Sitting in the passenger seat was a peculiar-looking younger man dressed in a black suit jacket. He had blond hair, as thick as a lion’s mane, and he stared at Roo steadily as the boat pulled through the arch and into the lagoon.

“Can it be? Is it? The famous Roo Fanshaw!” the older man called heartily to Roo as he climbed out of the boat, carrying a stack of envelopes.

This took Roo aback. How did he know who she was? She stared suspiciously at the man without saying a word. He approached her, holding out his hand, but when she didn’t step forward to take it, he withdrew it and smiled quizzically.

“A shy one? Well, that’s all right. Violet’s mouthy enough for twenty Roo Fanshaws. I’m Simon LaShomb, the island mail carrier. Want to run this in for your uncle?” He handed Roo the stack of envelopes, bound by a rubber band, and a small padded envelope marked FRAGILE.

The man with the blond hair was standing behind the mailman, listening and watching Roo intently. Now he stepped forward rigidly. The movement made the mailman’s mouth flicker briefly with displeasure.

“And who is the young lady?” the blond man asked, his eyes never leaving Roo’s face. He was a short, square-shaped man with skin too olive colored for his blond hair. His cheeks were thick and oily.

“Better shake a leg, Doc.” The mail carrier’s voice suddenly turned curt. “The weather is only going to get nastier as the day goes on.”

“Weather doesn’t bother me,” the blond man said evenly.

It certainly didn’t seem to. While the mail carrier was wearing a nylon winter jacket, the blond man’s jacket was thin, and beneath it he wore a white button-down shirt, with the top buttons undone.

“Maybe not, but it’s Valentine who’ll be shuttling you back to Clayton, and I’m sure she doesn’t want to get caught in a storm,” Simon replied gruffly.

The blond man said nothing. He stared back at the mail carrier with a half smile on his lips, waiting until the mailman’s shoulders shifted uneasily, before saying very pompously, “Thank you for the ride, kind sir.” He bowed with a flourish then started up the path toward the house.

Simon LaShomb clearly found the man offensive, but he also seemed baffled by him. He watched the man’s retreating back for a few moments, then he shook his head once, to himself.

“Who is that?” Roo asked.

“What? That guy? Ehh. Oulette. He’s your uncle’s doctor.”

“Is my uncle sick?” Roo asked.

Simon’s eyes flickered to the house, then back at Roo. He shrugged. “Couldn’t say.”

You won’t say, Roo thought, watching the man’s face carefully.

“So what do you think of island life so far?” Simon asked her, his voice more cheerful now.

“I don’t like it,” Roo said.

“No?” He looked surprised. But then he added, “Well, I guess it is lonely here this time of year. There’s some of us year-rounders on Donkey Island, but you can’t see Donkey from Cough Rock, and all the houses around here are shut up until summer. It feels like you’re the only person on the planet, doesn’t it? Well, when the weather turns, Violet can take you over to Donkey and find you a mess of summer kids to play with.”

“I don’t care about being alone,” Roo said.

Simon looked pleased at this. “Well, seems like you’re already a River Rat.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the sort of person who doesn’t like a lot of jibber-jabber. The river is company enough.”

“But I don’t like the river,” Roo said, looking out at the agitated waves.

“You don’t trust the river,” Simon said. “And you shouldn’t. You don’t know her yet and she doesn’t know you. But you got River Rat in your DNA—your grandfather was one. He knew every musky hole for miles around. Your father was a River Rat too. He was always out on the river, trolling between the islands. That kid knew how to handle a skiff before he could ride a bike.”

This interested Roo. She had only ever seen her father in a boat once, when he took her fishing on a large pond hidden up in the hills. They had stayed for hours. But what she remembered best about the trip was that it was the first time he told her the story about Pendragon, the flying boat. It was a red-and-yellow boat captained by a boy named Vincent, who piloted it above the treetops and through the sky. Every so often Vincent would anchor his sky boat on a rain cloud. Then he would parachute down to earth, always landing in the middle of an impossibly dangerous situation. Roo had loved the story about Pendragon, and whenever she had trouble sleeping, she would beg her father for a new installment about the flying boat.

“Now, your uncle in there”—Simon nodded toward the house—“he never took to the water. Afraid of it, he says so himself. He doesn’t even own a boat; he has Ms. Valentine shuttle him around in hers.” There was a hint of disapproval in his voice.

“Then why does he stay here?” Roo asked.

Simon hesitated, his expression suddenly turning cautious. “I guess he has his reasons,” he replied. “Remember to give Valentine the mail. She won’t be expecting it. I generally bring the mail to the post office on Choke Cherry Island and Valentine fetches it, but when the weather’s nasty I sometimes pop by. Saves her a trip.” He held out his hand again “So long, Roo Fanshaw.”

This time she gave it a quick, reserved shake.

The sky was already darkening as Simon’s boat pulled out of the lagoon, spun to the right, and tore off. Its wake rolled back toward the island and thrashed against the rocks for a moment or two before quieting. The water was changing color too. It was now a slick black-gray, the color of wet stone. Here and there an ice floe drifted past slowly. The river had suddenly calmed, yet Roo could feel it gathering itself together, forming something new and spiteful. It reminded her of how the girls at the Burrows’ house conferred while standing a few yards away, quietly plotting some fresh torment for Roo.

From the west, a large bird appeared in the sky, its neck bent, its long body rising and dipping. A heron. Beneath the heron, drifting on the river, was a large ice floe with a curious dark shape on top of it. Roo fixed her eyes on the shadowy hump, perplexed. The floe skimmed the edge of the island closest to Cough Rock, an oval island with a neat terraced lawn that led up to a magnificent olive-green house. When the ice floe came close to the island, a black figure leapt off the ice and onto land.

Even from a distance, Roo could see that the figure was a boy. He stood on the bank for a moment, looking around. Then he grew perfectly still. It seemed to Roo that he was staring right at her, though at this distance she couldn’t be certain. The boy turned abruptly and bounded up the terraced lawn, climbing the ledges rather than the stairs, and disappeared around the backside of the house.

Roo hurried back over the footbridge, skirted the lagoon, and ran around the edge of the island, trying to catch another glimpse of the boy. At first she saw nothing. But after a few seconds she spotted him again. Astonishingly, he was now standing on one of the lower roofs of the house. Suddenly he raised one arm. Was he waving to her?

The very next minute, the water darkened and became opaque. The sky seemed to drop closer to the earth, as though the river had yanked it down. A torrent of fine icy rain began to lash at the ground and peck at Roo’s face. She shoved the mail beneath her shirt and pulled up her sweatshirt’s hood, but the thin cotton was already soaked through. Squinting through the curtain of rain, she watched the shadowy form on the roof. Suddenly, the wind changed directions, as though someone had summoned it. It drove into her face so violently that it felt like an assault, forcing her to run. Roo refused. She turned her back to the wind, twisting her head to keep her eyes on the boy. The river grew frantic, crashing against the island’s banks. Then the wind whipped around yet again, even more fiercely now, and this time Roo surrendered, running back to the house while the river thrashed and hissed triumphantly at her back.

Chapter 6

Roo burst through the door, very nearly colliding with Ms. Valentine, who was heading out, dressed in a long black raincoat and a leopard-spotted, brimmed rain hat tied under her chin. Her hand flew to her midsection in surprise. But in a blink she composed herself, taking in Roo’s dripping hair and sodden clothing.

“If you are hell-bent in playing outside in bad weather, no one here will stop you. But when you get sick, there’ll be no one to take care of you either.”

“I won’t get sick,” Roo said. “I’ve never been sick in my life.”

“This house was built for sick people,” Ms. Valentine warned. “People don’t tend to stay healthy here for very long.” Her eyes lowered suddenly and stared at Roo’s hand, which was cradling the mail beneath her sweatshirt. “Where did you get that ring?” she asked suspiciously. “I don’t remember you wearing it before.”

Roo looked at the thin silver ring that she had pilfered from the girls’ dormitory and then lied without any hesitation. “My father gave it to me for my twelfth birthday.”

“Hmm.” Ms. Valentine’s lips pressed together skeptically. “And what have you got under your shirt? You look like you’re hiding something.”

With a deft flick of her fingers, Roo tucked the padded envelope into her waistband while she extracted the stack of envelopes from beneath her sweatshirt.

“The mailman came,” she said, handing the stack to Ms. Valentine.

Ms. Valentine took the letters and quickly shuffled through them. Her expression lost some of its harshness, perhaps because now she did not have to run out for the mail in the bad weather.

“Go upstairs, Roo. Change into dry clothes. And don’t play in the rain.” Then Ms. Valentine started back toward the other end of the house, untying her rain hat as she went.

But Roo didn’t go upstairs, not right away. She waited until Ms. Valentine had disappeared across the lobby and through a small threshold at the far end of it. Roo followed, waiting until she was sure Ms. Valentine was well ahead of her. Passing through the vaulted threshold, Roo found herself in a short foyer that led to yet another lobby, this one far larger than the first. Here, the ceiling was so tall, Roo had to tilt her head back to see it. Covering the walls were dozens of masks, some very wild looking, made from woven fibers and strung with seeds. Others were carved out of wood or gourds, with faces that peered out with alert round eyes, as though she had just startled them. One mask had a curled tongue that stuck out of its mouth.

Opposite the front door was a staircase, this one much wider and grander than the other. Its banister was carved and it twisted up and around to the second floor. Roo thought she could hear voices coming from above, so she ducked into a corridor off the lobby. There were many doors along the corridor, every one of them shut. Roo tried them all. There was a cozy-looking parlor in one, with a fireplace and two plush maroon armchairs facing each other across a little round table. In another was a tremendously long dining table with a dozen high-backed chairs poised around it. There was even what looked to be a ballroom, with a piano in the corner and wide windows that overlooked the river. Yet every room looked too still. Each time she opened a door, the room seemed to startle, like the faces on the masks.

All the rooms were on one side of the hall, just as they had been in the other corridor, only here they were on the right-hand side instead of the left. This detail had struck her as odd when she first saw it, but so many new things were happening that she hadn’t had time to wonder about it. Now Roo began to consider this more carefully. The corridor turned gently as she followed it. It seemed to form a large circle, and indeed, after a few minutes she found herself back at her uncle’s office.

She remembered her first glimpse of the house from Ms. Valentine’s boat. It had looked huge. Yet from the inside it did not seem nearly as big. Maybe it was a trick. Maybe the house was built to impress people with its size when it was really a shell with nothing in the middle. Still, the doorless wall looked newer than the rest of the house, and there were no moldings along the bottom or top. It looked as though the wall were an afterthought, something that was built in a hurry and forgotten. The mystery of the wall nudged at Roo’s thoughts, but she could find no good solution to it.

Back in her room she pulled the stolen package from under her shirt and put it on the vanity, then peeled off her wet clothes. She changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from her Hefty bag, then sat by the window and picked at a cheese sandwich that Violet had left for her. She stared out at the rain and the river and the hummocks of grayish green islands. She looked for the island where she had seen the boy on the ice floe, but it wasn’t visible from the window. The sky was uniformly gray, with no hint of a break in the storm.

After she finished eating, she examined the stolen envelope. It was addressed to P. Fanshaw and was marked FRAGILE. HANDLE WITH CARE.

Who was P. Fanshaw?

The return address, stamped in dark blue letters, said it was from Taylor-Baines in Philadelphia. Roo tore open the envelope and looked inside. There was something hard and rectangular, swathed in bubble wrap. She pulled it out, picked off the tape at the seams, and unwrapped it. Inside was a plastic box and in the box was a small bone. It might have come from anything—a dog, a cat. Maybe even the bone of a finger? She shoved it back in the envelope, walked down the hall, and put the envelope in the wooden box under the floorboards in the girls’ dormitory.

There, she lay on the chilly floor. The silence in the house had a sound of its own. Thick, pulsing. Waiting. She listened hard for the humming, but it never came.

It was the loneliest afternoon Roo had ever spent.

True, she had never felt the need for other people’s company, but she now realized that she had never ever been absolutely alone. Even in the trailer’s crawlspace, there were living things all around her. Field mice, ants, spiders. There was even a pretty garter snake that would, if she kept very still, slide right onto her sneakers and rest on them. And in the Burrows’ woods there were wildflowers and foxes darting past and chipmunks weaving in and out of the underbrush.

But here, in this huge house, life seemed to be hiding from her.

She closed her eyes and thought about the mystery of the walls again. She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she heard was Violet laughing.

“There you are!” Violet said. She was holding the empty tray from Roo’s lunch and staring down at her with an amused expression on her face. “You’re a strange little person. Have you been sitting here all afternoon?”

Roo scrambled to her feet.

“Why are there no doors along one side of all the corridors?” The question sprang from her mind as though she had just been dreaming about it.

“I don’t know,” Violet answered, looking surprised. “I guess it was just built like that.” She turned and started back up the hall, and Roo followed, jogging to keep up with Violet’s long-legged stride.

“But there’s all this space in the middle of the house, just sitting there,” Roo persisted. “Why would someone waste it?”

Violet shrugged. “I guess rich people don’t think about things like that. The Summer People around here seem to live by their own rules.”

“But my uncle isn’t Summer People. He lives here in the winter too,” Roo said.

“He didn’t always. He only started living here year-round after he was married.” Violet blushed, the deep, ruddy blush of a dark-haired girl who has said too much.

“Uncle Emmett is married?” Roo asked, stunned.

After a hesitation, Violet admitted, “Was.”

“Are they divorced now?” Roo asked.

“Listen, Roo.” She stopped by Roo’s bedroom door. “It’s not my place to tell you this stuff. Why don’t you ask your uncle?”

“How can I ask him anything when he’ll barely speak to me?” Roo cried.

Violet’s eyes locked onto Roo’s. “My mother says that poking around at people’s private lives is like rummaging through their bedroom closets. You might find a few interesting knickknacks, but eventually you’ll discover something in an old shoebox that you’ll wish you hadn’t seen.”

“I’ve seen everything,” Roo replied evenly.

Violet looked at her with pity—a thing that Roo generally detested but somehow with Violet she didn’t mind so much.

“I guess you have.” She sighed and then quickly glanced at the stairs, then back at Roo. “Your uncle was married. For a short time. His wife died two years ago.”

“How?”

Violet twisted her lips to the left and considered. Outside, the wind must have changed direction because now it rattled the windows as the rain clicked furiously against the glass.

“It was sudden. That’s all I know. I didn’t work here back then.”

“What was her name?” Roo asked, thinking of the package addressed to P. Fanshaw.

“Ana.”

That was no good.

“Does anyone else live here?” Roo asked. “Besides my uncle and you and Ms. Valentine?”

Violet cocked her head and blew a puff of exasperation. “I’m beginning to think they’ve switched the real Roo Fanshaw for you! Your foster mother told us that you were quiet as a cup, but here you are yammering away with all your questions.”

“I have a lot of questions,” Roo said, “because everything here is so strange.”

“That’s just because it’s new,” Violet said dismissively.

“It is strange here!” Roo insisted. “This morning I saw a boy floating down the river on a piece of ice.”

Now Violet smiled and shook her head in wonder. “Your first day on Cough Rock and already you’ve caught a glimpse of the Faigne! People can live here for years and never spot him.”

“The Faigne?”

“That’s what they call him around here. I think it’s an old term from Guernsey. Most of us Donkey Island people have ancestors that come from Guernsey, an island off the coast of England. We still keep a lot of the Guernsey ways and one thing we love is stories of the supernatural. Ghosts, fairies. Sea people.”

“I think he made the storm come,” Roo said. It popped out of her mouth, and it sounded silly to her own ears as she said it.

“That’s not the first time I’ve heard something like that. There’s a fisherman who swears he saw the Faigne flying over Wiggle Room Island on the back of a heron. But then, that particular fisherman is known for sucking down home brew for breakfast. Do you want to know what the Donkey grannies say?”

Roo nodded.

“They say the Faignes are water creatures, not human at all. There’s an old story they tell. Many years ago, the water around Guernsey Island had been stormy and violent for months on end. Few local fishermen dared to go out on it, and those who did never came back. So the fishermen got together and thought up a plan. They would send the prettiest girls in the village out on the banks at dusk to try to lure the Faigne to shore, and when he stepped on land, they would capture him and keep him until he promised to quiet the sea. But the Faigne was as cunning as a cat. Every evening he saw one of the girls pacing along the bank. And every evening he just laughed and swam away. One night, though, he saw a girl sitting on a rock in a quiet cove. She was as pretty as the other girls but so odd that the people in the village would have nothing to do with her. Yet she fascinated the Faigne. Night after night they met in this secret cove, talking and laughing, until one day the girl’s brother spied on them and told. The next night the fishermen hid, and when the Faigne came on shore to talk to the girl they swooped in and ambushed him. But the Faigne was faster. He and the girl jumped into the water, hand in hand, and the girl was never seen again. But after that, for years and years, whenever someone spotted the Faigne, there was always a lovely snow-white dolphin swimming by his side.”

Roo rolled her eyes.

“Yes, well.” Violet shrugged. “It’s a nice story anyway. My mother says our Faigne is probably just some poor boy without a decent family. I’ve heard that in the winter he breaks into the homes of the Summer People, and squats there. And in the summer, he camps out on some of the islands. The grannies, heaven love them, fill their hats with food and leave them by the shore when they want the river to stay calm for a ride across to Clayton.”

There were quick footsteps on the stairs, and in a moment Ms. Valentine appeared on the landing, looking agitated.

“We need you,” she said to Violet in a pinched voice.

Violet glanced quickly at Roo, as if to gauge her reaction, then without a word she hurried downstairs, with Ms. Valentine behind her.

Roo waited a moment. Then she quietly crept downstairs, stopping midway when she had a view of the lobby. Crouching down, she peered through the railing in time to see Violet and Ms. Valentine rushing toward the east wing. Roo padded down the rest of the stairs, then paused to listen. Voices were coming from down the hall in the west wing. The lobby was empty, so Roo scurried across it and headed down the hall, stopping before she came to her uncle’s office. Peering around the doorjamb she saw her uncle slumped in an armchair. Dr. Oulette was standing over him, patting the left side of her uncle’s face with a cloth.

“It’s getting worse,” Mr. Fanshaw muttered.

“I told you that it might,” Dr. Oulette replied calmly. “Perhaps it’s time for a decision—”

“I’ll decide when I’m ready,” Mr. Fanshaw interrupted.

“Of course you will.” Dr. Oulette did not sound at all offended. “Hold still. You’re bleeding on your shirt.”

“Just let it be, for heaven’s sake! I’m fine.” Mr. Fanshaw jerked his head away from the cloth, revealing a jagged bite mark on the side of his cheek. “Go tell Ms. Valentine to give you a ride back over to Clayton. We’re done for now, I believe.”

Roo had been so perplexed at this scene that she heard the footsteps too late. She turned in time to find Ms. Valentine hurrying up the hall, staring at her with fury. Ms. Valentine didn’t say a word, which was somehow far more frightening than if she would have bellowed at her. Instead, she opened her eyes wide at Roo, jabbed her finger in the direction of the stairway, and mouthed, “NOW!”

Roo did as she was told. As she sat in bed she tried to make sense of what she had just seen. Who had bitten her uncle like that? It couldn’t have been Ms. Valentine or Violet. But then who else was in the house? She thought of the humming. There was someone else living here. Someone who was hidden away.

Roo mulled it over as she waited for Ms. Valentine to come upstairs and reprimand her. But she never did. And that was troubling too.

Chapter 7

The following morning Violet came in carrying a tray of breakfast.

“Good morning,” she said brightly when she saw that Roo was awake in her bed.

“Is my uncle okay?” Roo asked, her voice thick from sleep.

“Mr. Fanshaw? He’s fine, I guess. Why?”

“He was bleeding last night,” Roo said, lifting herself up and resting on her elbows.

“Was he? Maybe he fell,” Violet said breezily as she put the tray down on the window seat.

“No. Someone bit his face,” Roo said. “I saw it.”

“I don’t know about that, but I do know this: If I were twelve and the sun was shining”—Violet opened the window, poked her head out for a moment, then pulled it back in and turned to Roo—“I wouldn’t be lying in bed, worrying about a little scratch on someone’s face.”

“It was a bite, not a scratch—,” Roo started, but Violet was already heading for the door.

The house was silent and still. Through the open window, Roo heard the lulling sigh of the waves. It was as though the house and everyone in it, even the river itself, were trying to pretend that nothing had happened the night before.

Roo ate, then dressed and hurried downstairs, careful to keep her steps light and quiet. There was no one about, not in the west wing at least. She edged toward the east wing, listening. It was silent here too, though she stopped when she approached the threshold, not quite daring to get caught by Ms. Valentine again.

Outside the air felt as if it had been washed clean. The day was cool but the sun shone. Yesterday’s storm had swept the last remaining ice floes from the river. The water was calm now, the crests of its shallow waves turning silver in the sunlight.

Roo picked her way across the path to the bank. When she got there, she gazed at the island with the olive-colored mansion, searching for the boy, the one they called the Faigne. The windows in the house were dark. There was no sign of movement along the terraced landscape. She stared for a long time, waiting for a shifting shadow or a twitching treetop to betray him.

The river began to make a shush-shush sound, like a mother comforting her child. It drew Roo’s attention away from the house and out toward the water. She watched the ripples rush forward, turning from a fresh blue to a copper color as they came close to shore. She listened to the sound of waves breaking against the banks, as constant and regular as the ticking of a clock. It was so hypnotic that she stood there for some time, listening, until suddenly her eyes darted back to the olive-green house.

She had the funniest feeling that the boy was watching her now. It made her want to duck out of sight, but the rocks by the bank sloped steeply, offering no cover. A few yards off, though, her sharp eyes spotted a rock that jutted out more than the others. It would have been the perfect place to sit and watch the passing boats in summer, but it was the space beneath the rock that interested her. She walked over, glancing surreptitiously toward the olive house, and knelt down beside the rock. There was a tiny crevice between it and the rock below, just large enough for Roo. In a moment, she had squeezed through and found herself in a little cave with enough room for her to sit slightly crouched or to lie down on her side, legs bent.

The view was a good one. She kept her eyes fixed on the olive house, which she could see quite clearly from the cave, sure that if she waited long enough the boy would come out and she could catch another glimpse of him. But when she stayed that way for a good hour and there was still no sign of him, she began to wonder if he really was still there after all.

Sighing, she lay down on her side, her legs bent. Pressing her ear to the ground, she closed her eyes and listened to the hushed singing in the soil. It was such a tiny, complicated sound that it required the steadiest concentration. The stirring of worms’ eggs in their cocoons, the pulse of roots, the minute shifting of bugs. Immediately Roo felt herself relax. Her world collapsed down into a tiny little bundle, just the way she liked it.

After a while another sound rose above the earth’s hum. A soft pid-pad sound. Roo opened her eyes and looked through the crevice. Something was coming. She kept her body motionless and waited as the sound came nearer, hesitantly, as though nervous. Suddenly a small black-furred face peered into the cave. It was a squirrel, though not the gray type that Roo was used to seeing. This one was charcoal black, with eyes that were bright and quick. He stared curiously at Roo, and she stared back, not daring to move a muscle. They stayed that way for some time until the squirrel suddenly lifted its head. His delicate round ears twitched, and then in a flash he was gone. Roo quickly scrambled out of her hiding place to watch the squirrel dash up the rocks and across the grassy slope, finally disappearing into a tangle of ivy clinging to the house.

A moment later, she heard a boat motor rev up and saw Ms. Valentine pulling out of the lagoon in her Boston Whaler. In the passenger seat was Mr. Fanshaw, and Roo could see a pair of suitcases in the rear of the boat.

He was going away again.

Maybe it was because of what happened last night? She wondered when he’d be back again. Hadn’t Violet said he was often away? It might not be for a very long time. There was no reason for her to care really, but she felt disappointed anyway.

Each morning Roo woke early and wolfed down her breakfast. She had never had much of an appetite back in Limpette, but lately she always seemed to be hungry. After that, she returned to her little cave. She kept a close watch for the Faigne, straining to catch a glimpse of him, but he didn’t reappear. Still, she found that the island was full of other surprising things if you paid attention. Polished black water snakes that sunned themselves on the rocks then suddenly leapt into the river to churn the water near the bank. A mossy rock that unexpectedly trundled into the water and swam away, revealing itself to be a snapping turtle. Every day she put her ear to the ground inside the little cave and every day she heard something new. Things were moving more briskly in the earth. The sun was waking things up.

The black squirrel visited with her too. Sometimes he would just peek into the cave, as if to check that she was still there, then scurry away. One time, though, he walked right into the cave and sat with her very companionably, stripping the scales off a pinecone.

“You must be the only squirrel on the island. I haven’t seen any others,” she said to him.

He looked at her when she spoke, turning the pinecone in his paws. Then he made a chattering noise, which seemed so friendly and encouraging that she spoke to him again.

“I wonder how you got here. I don’t think squirrels can swim, so you couldn’t leave if you wanted to, could you?”

The squirrel let a pinecone scale drop to the ground and glanced up at her.

“But maybe you like it here.”

Later that same day she spied the green mail boat tearing through the river, with Simon LaShomb at the wheel.

I don’t mind him, she thought. Then she crawled out of the little cave to watch him approach the lagoon. This time when he held up his hand in greeting, she held hers up too.

“Just the lady I’m looking for!” he called out to her. From the back of his boat, he pulled out four boxes and stacked them up, largest to smallest. “These came for you.” He wrapped his arms around the bottom box, gave the stack a quick upward jab with his knee to position it better, then started toward the house. Even with his burden, his long legs glided quickly and easily, so that Roo had to jog to keep up with him

“What’s in them?” she asked.

“Too heavy to be tins of herring, too light to be bear cubs. My guess is it’s anything in between. Anyway, it’s awfully bulky for Ms. Valentine, so I thought I’d just pop round with it. So, Roo Fanshaw, what’s the verdict?” He gave her a sidelong glance. “Is Cough Rock growing on you?”

Roo thought for a minute.

“I don’t mind it,” she said for the second time that day.

Simon laughed. “‘I don’t mind it,’ she says.”

“Why is that funny?” Roo demanded.

“Because you sound exactly like an old River Rat. ‘Beautiful day out, isn’t it?’ ‘Oh, I don’t mind it.’ It’s high praise from a River Rat.”

“Well, the river has been quiet lately,” Roo defended her change of heart. “And no one bothers me here. I can do whatever I want all day long.”

“Well, sure, who wouldn’t like that?” Simon agreed, though his eyes flitted toward her with some concern, before he started up the front steps.

“Who was that little package for?” Roo asked abruptly. “The one you brought last time.”

“Hmm. Mr. Fanshaw, wasn’t it? Can you grab the door for me, Roo?”

Roo ran up ahead and pulled open the front door.

“But it was addressed to P. Fanshaw, not E.,” Roo said as Simon walked in the house.

“Eh, people are always misspelling names. It’s amazing that half the mail ever finds its way to the right place.”

He put the boxes down in the lobby and smiled at her. Roo looked at him carefully. His thick, round glasses obscured the expression in his eyes, but she could see nothing in his face to suggest that he was hiding anything.

“Well, whatever’s in them”—he slapped the box on top of the stack—“I hope it’s something you don’t mind. So long, Roo.”

After he left, Roo sat on the floor, picked up the smallest box and put it on her lap. It was a rectangular package the size of a cutting board. She had never received a package before, much less four of them. The shipping label said:

ROO FANSHAW, COUGH ROCK, CLAYTON, NY 13624

She found it oddly pleasing to see her name attached to the island. Her mind reached out toward the future and cautiously toyed with the idea of a life on Cough Rock. Summers that could be spent outside, all day. The earth would sing loudly and she had all the time in the world to listen to it. And in the winter, she could watch the ice begin to glaze the river, quieting it. It might grow so thick that she could walk out on it. The thought of standing on the river both frightened and excited her. And maybe she would see the Faigne again. Maybe…maybe she would even meet him some day. The idea thrilled her though she couldn’t quite say why. She had never in her life wanted to know anybody. Maybe it was because he hid too—and he seemed to do it better than she did.

She picked at the edges of the packing tape until it came up and then, slowly, she pulled it off across the box’s seam. Lifting the lid she found layers of silver tissue paper with twists of hairline-thin vines printed across it. She lifted up the paper one layer at a time until she uncovered something made of soft, brown material. Pulling it out of the box, the material unfolded, and Roo saw that it was a pair of pants. Brown corduroys, nearly identical to the ones she owned, but new and so velvety that she petted it like a cat. It was her size too.

The second box held sneakers. They weren’t the same brand as her own torn-up pair, but the color was nearly the same. The box contained another pair of shoes too, which was nothing like anything she owned but was something she might have chosen for herself—brown and plain with flat rubber soles that would make no noise along the hallways.

The third box held shirts in dark blues and dark greens, the same colors as her own T-shirts, and the last box held several pairs of jeans, some shorts, two nightgowns, and two hooded sweatshirts, nearly exactly like her own.

“What’s this?” Violet approached from the east wing, carrying a basket of laundry.

Roo held up one of the sweatshirts.

“Did you order these?” she asked Violet.

“Not me.” Violet put down the basket and came over to sift through one of the boxes until she found a packing slip. “Looks like your uncle ordered them.”

She picked up a few of the shirts and looked at them quizzically. “The things Ms. Valentine got for you were much nicer.”

“I told him I liked my own clothes better,” Roo said, remembering.

Violet looked around at the other clothes in the boxes, a surprised expression on her face. “So he bought you your own clothes.”

Roo nodded, frowning. Her uncle had barely seemed to notice her; and what he noticed, he hadn’t appeared to like.

“I don’t know what to think about him,” she said, looking up at Violet.

“Yes, well…no one really does.”

“Do you like him?” Roo asked her curiously.

Violet paused, as though she’d never really considered this before. “It’s hard to say…I doubt he cares if anyone likes him or not. That’s why people think he’s strange, I guess. It seems unnatural not to care what people think of you, doesn’t it? Like a person who never blinks.”

“People say that I’m strange,” Roo said.

“You are.” Violet nestled a sweatshirt back in its box. “But I’ve seen stranger.” She smiled in a private sort of way—a small, sad smile.

Up in her room, Roo tried on all the clothes. They fit perfectly, much better than her old clothes really, which were all stretched out. She peeked in the vanity mirror, standing back so as to see her whole body. Dressed in the new brown corduroys and a green shirt, she looked like a fresher version of herself, as though all the wear and tear of her life had never happened. She raked her hand through her hair. Was it her imagination or did her face look fresher too? The color of her skin and eyes seemed clearer.

“My name is Roo Fanshaw and I live on Cough Rock,” she murmured at her reflection. Her voice was timid, but the words themselves sounded right.

“I live on Cough Rock,” she repeated with more conviction. “I live with my uncle. He’s away a lot. But I don’t really mind. I found this little cave—” She stopped, realizing that she was no longer talking to her reflection but imagining what she might say to someone else. The shadowy image of the Faigne popped into her mind.

I might tell him about the cave, she thought. He seems like a person who could keep a secret. I might even tell him about the humming.

“Did you make the storm come?” she whispered to the mirror.

Roo jerked her head up suddenly, and her eyes narrowed. Something had changed in the room. It was such a slight shift that only someone whose senses were as keen as hers would have noticed it. The air quivered. She listened with the same concentration that she listened to the earth. Then she heard it. The humming.

She rushed down the hallway, the humming sound growing more and more distinct until she found herself inside the girls’ dormitory. Here, the sound was the loudest, though still muffled. She walked around the room, pressing her ear against the walls, yet she still could not pin down where it came from. It was so distant, yet it was coming from inside the house. Not a ghost. No, this was a person, a living person, she was sure of it. Was it P. Fanshaw? Was it the same person who had bit her uncle’s face?

Finally, Roo perched herself on the iron headboard of one of the beds and listened to it. There was nothing frightening in it. In fact, there was something familiar about it, though she couldn’t say what. It gave her the same sense of maddening familiarity she had felt when looking at her uncle’s face. The same yet not the same. It weaved through the air around her. Sometimes it sounded tentative, as if it were testing something out. Other times it would gain in force, calling out, almost pleading; then, as if it heard itself and was ashamed, it grew soft again.

Suddenly she knew why the humming sounded so familiar. It was exactly how she had sounded back in her own room, all alone and talking to her reflection in the mirror.

Chapter 8

Like most stretches of undisturbed freedom, Roo’s came to a sudden and unpleasant end. It happened the following day, while she was sitting in her cave watching a curious bundle of sticks moving across the water in the distance. It had a herky-jerky sort of propulsion that captured her attention. She watched it, squinting, trying to figure out how it could push against the current like that. At the sound of a boat motor starting up, the bundle of sticks swerved abruptly and beneath the sticks a large brown eye gazed in Roo’s direction. Roo blew out a breath of surprise and delight. Now she could see the stag’s rolling shoulders as it swam past Cough Rock, zigzagging with alarm. The motor sounded like it was coming from the lagoon. Roo poked her head out and craned her neck around the edge of the cave. There was Ms. Valentine, guiding her Boston Whaler beneath the stone arch and out into the river. That struck Roo as odd. It was too early for her to be collecting the mail. And anyway, she was going in the opposite direction of Choke Cherry Island. Roo watched the boat curl around Cough Rock and disappear from her line of sight.

Abandoning her cave, Roo hurried across the lawn, which the sun had recently coaxed from its dull brown into a bright green. When she reached the semicircular patio she perched on top of the low stone wall that hedged in the patio on one side, and she tracked the Whaler as it plowed across the river toward Clayton.

Maybe my uncle is coming back, she thought.

She felt a rush of nervous anticipation. She wondered if he’d be happy to see that she was dressed in the clothes he’d bought for her—a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved navy blue T-shirt. She looked down at herself. The knees of the jeans had some dirt on them from the cave. She stood up to wipe it off, gave the shirt a tug to smooth it out, then sat back on the wall to watch for Ms. Valentine’s return.

The view from the patio looked out onto the seaway, the channel between the islands and Clayton’s shores. It was here, Violet had told Roo, that the nurses had once wheeled the hospital’s children to sit and watch the ships pass while they breathed the icy air into their weak lungs. Roo wondered if the girl who owned the box under the floorboards had once sat here too, watching the boats zipping past. Speedboats, fancy wooden boats, small aluminum fishing boats. Every so often a massive freighter would lumber between channel markers like a great rust-streaked whale, making the other boats leap up and slam down in its wake.

Finally, Roo spotted the Whaler cutting across the waves and heading back to Cough Rock. As it came closer, Roo could see that there was someone in the passenger seat. Her stomach felt an anxious twist as her eyes strained to make out her uncle’s form, but the canopy obscured her view. It was only when the Whaler was finally moored in the lagoon, and the passenger stepped out that Roo saw it was not her uncle at all. It was a woman, thin and gray haired and dressed in a girlish bottle-green jumper dress. From the back of the boat, she hauled out a large, battered suitcase. Ms. Valentine tried to take it from her but the woman waved her away. Ms. Valentine took it anyway, and the two ladies started up the path toward the house.

Roo kept so still that Ms. Valentine might have walked by without noticing her, but the old lady saw her. She stopped in her tracks and said something to Ms. Valentine, whose head then swiveled toward the patio.

“Roo!” Ms. Valentine called. “Come here, please.”

Cautiously, Roo hopped off the wall and walked over to them. She didn’t like the look of this. Ms. Valentine’s expression was worrisomely satisfied, and the gray-haired woman stared at Roo with far too much interest.

“Roo, this is Mrs. Wixton. She’s going to be your tutor. And your companion.”

Mrs. Wixton clasped her hands in front of her dress and nodded to Roo very formally. Her hair was thin and so tightly permed that it looked like she had tiny packing peanuts glued to her scalp.

“I don’t want her,” Roo said.

“This is what I was talking about,” Ms. Valentine said to Mrs. Wixton in a confidential tone.

“I don’t need a tutor,” Roo insisted.

“The New York State School Board would beg to differ with you, and the local school is not an option,” Ms. Valentine retorted. “It’s an hour-and-half trip each way. And come winter you won’t be able to go in any case, once the river freezes.”

“Then let Violet be my tutor,” Roo said.

“She has enough to do,” Ms. Valentine replied. “And you’re the type who needs someone to keep a sharp eye on you.”

Roo shot Mrs. Wixton a look of cold resentment. Mrs. Wixton didn’t seem to mind. She smiled brightly at Roo. Her lipstick was pale pink—the sort of lipstick that a young girl would wear—but her blue eyes were steady and shrewd.

“Oh, I predict that Roo and I will be best buddies before the week is out,” Mrs. Wixton said confidently. She held Roo’s angry gaze, undisturbed by Ms. Valentine’s impatient shuffling, until Roo finally turned away and looked back out at the river.

Having Mrs. Wixton around was very hard on Roo. No one had ever kept a sharp eye on her before. Mrs. Wixton never left her side. There were hours of lessons every day. Mrs. Wixton had once, many years before, been a middle-school teacher and in her suitcase were stacks of moldy schoolbooks that made Roo sneeze when the pages were turned. At first Roo simply refused to do the lessons, but the old lady was used to dealing with rebellious children. She patiently explained that if Roo continued to disobey her, she’d have to inform Ms. Valentine. “And that would be a pity, since I believe I’m what you would call your ‘last hurrah.’ If I don’t work out, they may not be able to keep you. Ms. Valentine tells me there is a family back where you came from that will take you in…”

The threat of being sent back to the Burrows was enough. Roo did Mrs. Wixton’s lessons, first furiously, then sullenly. The lessons weren’t hard, only long and very dull. At first Roo sped through them quickly, in the hopes of being set free for the rest of the day. But Mrs. Wixton had been told to keep a sharp eye on Roo, and she did her job diligently. Even when Roo was given a break from work and allowed to go outside, Mrs. Wixton accompanied her, always hovering, following along behind her as Roo ran across the rocks. It was unbearable. Roo could not hide in her little cave and watch for the Faigne or listen to the earth. Even the black squirrel would not come out again to see her with Mrs. Wixton there.

The nights were no better. The little room next to Roo’s had been hastily furnished and Mrs. Wixton was moved in. There was a narrow bed, a tiny dresser, and that was all. But Mrs. Wixton scrubbed the room and made it tidy and it seemed as if she would be perfectly content to stay there forever.

The first night of Mrs. Wixton’s stay, Roo waited until she was sure the old lady was asleep. Then she tiptoed out of her room and started down the hall to listen for the humming. But as she passed Mrs. Wixton’s room, Mrs. Wixton called out, “Roo, dear, where are you going?”

And then came the rustle of the old lady easing herself out of bed.

As it turned out, Mrs. Wixton slept as lightly as a cat.

Eventually Roo found a way to break up the monotony of the lessons during the day. She discovered that Mrs. Wixton was fascinated with the Fanshaw family. Every now and then she would interrupt her lesson to casually ask Roo a question about them. “Is this the only house they own?” “Why does your uncle stay all winter?”

At first Roo only shrugged glumly. But soon she realized that Mrs. Wixton would rather hear about the Fanshaws than teach Roo a lesson about geometry. So Roo began to make things up.

She told Mrs. Wixton that her uncle had a fear of birds, and in the spring he would have Ms. Valentine climb all the trees on the property and smash any birds’ eggs with a tiny silver hammer, and that one of her cousins had been born without eyebrows, and many other ridiculous things. Mrs. Wixton listened to it all without question. It seemed that there was nothing she wouldn’t believe about the Fanshaws, and she never tired of hearing about them.

Sometimes Roo was certain that Mrs. Wixton tailored her lessons to bring up the topic of the Fanshaws. Once when they were studying geography, Mrs. Wixton pointedly said that they would focus on Brazil that day, and she turned her fusty old textbook to a section on the Amazon rain forest. The shiny, yellowed paper held some black-and-white photos of the jungle. Mrs. Wixton flipped through the pages, then stopped at a photo of a squat, thick-bellied man, wearing nothing but a cloth around his waist. In his hand was a limp, lifeless monkey, held by the scruff of its neck.

“Fascinating place, the Amazon,” Mrs. Wixton said. “But then you must know quite a bit about it.”

“Why would I?” Roo asked irritably.

“Because of her,” Mrs. Wixton said. “Your aunt. Mr. Fanshaw’s late wife.” She was baiting Roo, trying yet again to glean some information about Uncle Emmett. But this time, Roo herself was interested.

“I never met her,” Roo said.

“But you must have heard about her,” Mrs. Wixton pressed.

Roo shook her head, hating to admit it, yet hoping that Mrs. Wixton would tell her more.

“Well, she came from Brazil, apparently. A little village on the edge of the rain forest. Her name was Ana. Your uncle spotted her on one of his trips and was instantly smitten, or so the story goes.” Mrs. Wixton was clearly thrilled to be able to offer up information that Roo didn’t have. “I saw her once in Clayton with Mr. Fanshaw. She was quite striking, with beautiful long black hair. But she had a wild look about her. I felt sorry for her, I actually did. Fish out of water. Though of course your uncle was so kind to her,” she added carefully. “All that gossip after she passed away made me sick to my stomach.”

“What gossip?” Roo asked.

“Oh, folks around here will say anything, especially if it’s about Summer People.”

“What did they say?”

“Well,” Mrs. Wixton began, rising off the bed for a moment to adjust her skirt, “some people believe she was murdered.” She waited a beat to see that she had Roo’s full interest before she continued. “It was because her death was so strangely sudden. She had been perfectly healthy and well, according to the people who had been working in this house. And then, quite out of the blue, she was dead. And to make matters worse, your uncle refused to speak about it. He immediately fired everyone who had been in the house, except Ms. Valentine. It made people suspicious.”

“Who do they think killed her?” Roo asked.

Mrs. Wixton now shifted on the bed, straightening her spine and crossing her legs. “Of course it was all malicious nonsense.”

“They don’t think it was my uncle, do they?” Roo asked, shocked. Her uncle had seemed cold and hard, but killing his own wife…she couldn’t imagine it.

“How did we get on this topic in the first place?” Mrs. Wixton looked at Roo as if it had been her idea. “Okay, hocus-pocus, let’s try to focus.” She patted the pages of the textbook.

As the days wore on, Roo’s captivity became harder and harder for her to bear. The bright spring light teased at her through the windows. She ached to be outside. The sun was melting deeper into the ground, waking everything up. The earth would be singing by now, and she was missing it! A hundred times a day she felt ready to bolt out of the room, fly down the stairs, and run outside to freedom. But the threat of being sent back to the Burrows kept her rooted. Gradually she began to feel sleepy and slow witted. Her pencil would droop in her hand while her mind wandered, though when Mrs. Wixton jolted her with a small shake and asked her what she was daydreaming about, she couldn’t remember.

She was glad for any time outdoors, even if she was under constant guard by Mrs. Wixton. As soon as she felt the sun on her skin she awoke. She ran around the island, knowing that Mrs. Wixton could not keep up; yet also knowing that there was nowhere really for her to go. She was desperate for freedom and for solitude, even if it was only for the few minutes when she was on one side of the island and Mrs. Wixton was on the other. It was during one of these runs when Roo had sprinted to one end of the island, leaving Mrs. Wixton far behind, that she saw the familiar jutting rock, which hid the little cave. In a flash she ducked inside.

Chapter 9

She kept still and quiet, which was the easiest thing in the world for her to do. She watched Mrs. Wixton pass once, then twice more. On the third pass, Mrs. Wixton was calling for her, though not very loudly.

She doesn’t want them to know that she’s lost me, Roo realized.

By her fifth pass Mrs. Wixton’s voice was sounding panicked. Her skinny legs moved faster. Roo couldn’t help but smile. The calls were louder and lasted for some time. Then they went quiet.

Roo wondered what would happen next. But when nothing did, she knew that nothing would. Mrs. Wixton wouldn’t want Ms. Valentine to know that her famously sharp eye was not quite sharp enough. She wouldn’t tell her that Roo was missing, not for as long as possible, and that would give Roo a few hours of beautiful freedom.

She curled up and lay down on her side, ear to the earth, and listened to the music. It was busy and insistent now, pulsing with energy. She slipped into the sound gratefully, the way a numb, cold body slips beneath warm blankets. When she had her fill, she propped herself up on one elbow and pushed her finger into the dirt, scraping until she found a thick pink-and-gray earthworm. She held it, watching as it nudged its tapered head in the palm of her hand to stop itself and let the rest of its body contract in ripples. After a while, Roo placed it back on the ground, poking her finger in the earth to give it a tunnel. It was then that she spied something on one side of the hole. A piece of green-and-white-striped paper. Carefully she extracted it. It was a Juicy Fruit gum wrapper with a red wax-paper wrapper inside. The same wrapper as the gum in the box beneath the floorboards. Roo remembered the flashlight in the box. Maybe the girl had found this cave too, all those years and years ago, and had escaped here, just like she had. Roo wondered if the girl had gotten well and gone home. But then she looked down at the ring with the two hearts, still on her finger. No, the girl had probably died here. She would have taken the ring with her if she had lived.

Roo stayed in her little cave for hours, watching the river change colors. Each time she thought she would finally come out of hiding, the river kept her rooted, enchanting her as its waves shifted from silver to copper to indigo. Evening approached, and she watched the sun slide down in the sky until it was just a splinter above the dark water. Layers of coral and pink smudged the horizon, peppered by a flock of Canada geese, their gulping barks bouncing off the surface of the river.

It began to grow chilly. Roo stretched her sweatshirt over her knees and huddled for warmth as she stared out at the water, black and silver now and moving gently, like a mind before sleep.

The water hissed suddenly. She remembered how it had reminded her of a snake when she first saw it. It hissed again, louder this time, and Roo lifted her head off her knee, frowning out at the river. There was a shadow moving along the southern edge of the island. It was long and narrow and it glided smoothly, like an alligator.

For the first time that day, Roo poked her head out of the cave. She glanced around quickly, making certain that no one was nearby. Then she crawled out of the cave and stood, stretching her cramped limbs. A cloud had drifted over the crescent moon, making the night so black that Roo had to search the river for some time before she spotted the shadow again. It had glided surprisingly far along the perimeter of the island. It drifted closer and closer to her before finally stopping several yards away. There it stayed, near to the banks, bobbing on the waves. Slowly, Roo approached the thing, making small decisions about it as she went along: It has a round head, a long snout. A bird? Too large for a bird. There, it moved! Some sort of animal?

When she finally reached it she saw that it was not an animal at all. It was a canoe, and sitting inside it was a boy of about fourteen with very pale hair tied back in a short ponytail. By the time she realized who she was looking at, she found that he was staring right back at her.

“You’re that boy,” Roo said, remembering to keep her voice low despite her surprise. “The Faigne.”

The boy smiled at her, as though he were pleased she had heard of him. “You can call me Jack.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“The river took me,” he said. “She was curious about you.”

“That’s not true. You paddled over here, I saw you.”

“I was curious too,” he said simply.

The moon sailed out from behind the clouds. Now she could see the boy more clearly. In the past, Roo had never thought much about boys. They had only ever teased her or called her trailer trash. Certainly she had never thought about the way they looked. But this boy, Jack, was so beautiful that it was alarming. She stared at him, as though his beauty were some sort of trick. He stared back in such a frank, pleased way that it embarrassed her.

“Do you really live on the river?” she asked him, trying to regain her composure.

“That’s right.” He watched her with an easy smile. He seemed to be asking his own questions about Roo without speaking a word, and finding the answers in her face.

“Where’s your family?” she asked.

He gestured vaguely toward the far shores.

“Why don’t you live with them?” Roo asked.

He hesitated, then replied lightly, “I prefer the river.”

But Roo knew better. She knew that unless things were very bad at home, you still would rather be with your family.

Suddenly a black shadow swooped down from the sky. It was a heron, the tip of its tremendous wing skimming the air just above Jack’s head. It gave off a single harsh croak then flew away again.

“Someone’s coming,” Jack said, and with a push of his paddle, his canoe slid away.

Roo ran back into the little cave, squeezed in, and peered out of the opening in time to see Jack’s canoe melt into the black sky and disappear. The wind began to settle. The river seemed to stretch itself out, smoothing out its ripples, and the air grew less chilled. In a moment a pair of legs passed the cave opening. Mrs. Wixton. Roo heard her footsteps stop a few yards away, then they retraced their path past the cave. Soon the house door thumped closed and all was quiet again.

She should go in, she knew she should. But instead she watched the black water late into the night, listening carefully for the hiss of a canoe paddle and the slow flapping of a heron’s wings.

She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, and when she awoke, it was to the sound of a violent downpour. She had no idea what time it was. From the lifting darkness outside, she guessed it was early morning. Five or six o’clock maybe. She poked her head through the cave’s opening to blink out at the rain. It bullied the island with its hard pecks, while thunder roared across the water and lightning flashed in the sky.

Roo glanced up at the house. The lights on the first floor were off. There were no lights on in the east wing and one light in the west wing. Mrs. Wixton was probably in a state of panic by now. Good.

Roo crawled through the opening and made a run for it across the rocks and over the muddy lawn to the front door. Once in her bedroom she sat on her bed and steeled herself for Mrs. Wixton. The old lady would certainly be listening for her in the next room. But when minutes passed and she didn’t appear, Roo stole into the hallway and peered into Mrs. Wixton’s bedroom. It was empty, the blankets on the bed neatly arranged.

The rain was pounding against the windows, but underneath the sound Roo now could hear another one coming from down the hall—the sound of someone crying.

Stupid woman! Roo thought. Ms. Valentine will hear her!

Roo hurried down the hallway, her anger growing by the second.

“Stop it! Stop it, Mrs. Wixton!” she called out as loud as she dared to. “I’m right here!”

She followed the awful bawling into the children’s dormitory. Here it was loudest but when she looked around, she found that the room was empty. There was a sudden, distant drumming sound—a fist against a wall maybe—and the crying changed to shrieks, raw and anguished. It was not Mrs. Wixton who was crying. The voice was too high, too young.

Every so often, people do things that are difficult to explain. Out of the blue, a person might suddenly feel like she should pull back a loose wallboard in her barn only to discover an abandoned litter of kittens hidden there. That morning, as the watery orange sun began to rise, Roo noticed a tiny, guttering light enter the children’s dormitory and dance across the floor. It climbed the far wall, like a spider lit from inside, until it finally settled on the brass latch of a little cabinet door set in the wall. Roo walked up to it, reached out to touch the light, and it was gone. All that was left was her hand on the cabinet latch and the oddest feeling that she should open it.

Chapter 10

Roo unhooked the latch and gave the cabinet door a yank. She thought it felt too heavy for such a small door until she realized that it was actually much larger than it looked. In fact, it was not a cabinet at all, but a door that stretched all the way down to the floor, its edges cleverly concealed in the beadboard wainscoting. As the door opened, cold damp air rushed out, smelling of stone and mold. Inside was a tunnel, neatly hewn out of granite. The ceiling was low but the tunnel was wide, and so long and dark that Roo could not see the end of it.

Roo stepped in, careful to let the door stay slightly ajar. There were gas lamps fastened to the wall, their glass globes shrouded in dust. Whatever this was, it looked as if no one had been there for a very long time. The crying was louder here. The farther Roo walked down the tunnel, the louder the crying became, until it seemed to pulse out of the stone walls. Roo could make out rhythms in the way the voice rose and fell, as if it were saying something, though she could not hear any real words. Finally the crying grew so loud that Roo squinted through the darkness, almost expecting to see the filmy shape of the Yellow Girl emerge in front of her.

Instead, she saw a door. It signaled the end of the tunnel. The pitch of the crying rose, like a question, then stopped. The crying had come from the other side of the door, Roo was sure of it. Reaching out, her hand closed over the knob and she turned it a little, making it squeal softly. She winced then paused to listen. There was only silence, but she sensed the person on the other side of the door was listening for her too.

Taking a deep breath, she gripped the knob and tried to turn it more. It wouldn’t move. She pushed against the door, but it wouldn’t budge either. It must have been locked from the other side.

“Is someone in there?” Roo whispered. She waited, but there was no answer. Stepping back, she looked around to see if there was another way in. There were no other doors, just solid stone walls all around.

Still, something caught her eye. It was on the wall near the floor, a disc of smooth blackness. Roo walked up to it, then crouched down to get a better look. It was an opening in the wall, perfectly round and so cool to the touch that it must have been lined with metal, though it was too dark to see.

Roo dropped down on all fours and ducked her head inside. She couldn’t see much, so she shimmied her body into the opening, crawling cautiously across the slick, cold metal. A second later she realized her mistake. The metal floor suddenly gave way beneath her, inclining so sharply that she found herself shooting headlong down the slippery tube. It was so surprising that she slid down several yards before she thought to brace herself against the sides, stopping her descent. But this was no good either, since she couldn’t turn around in the tight space and it was too steep to climb back up to the top. She had no choice but to keep going down.

Stretching her fingers out ahead of her, she pressed them against the metal, which enabled her to awkwardly crawl downward. The tube went on and on. She could not see the end of it. Her arms soon grew tired from holding herself back, so she relaxed her hands and let herself slide. She quickly picked up speed and just when she thought she’d better stop herself again, the tunnel angled up slightly, slowing her down.

In a moment, the tunnel walls opened out and she came to a halt on top of a flat metal platform. Cautiously, she rose and looked around. She was in a dark room with a low ceiling canopied with pipes. Wires hung down from some of the walls and there were large metal tanks in the corners.

She was in the basement.

It was then that Roo realized she had just traveled down the “body chute,” the tunnel that the old sanitarium had used to hide its human losses. The thought that she had slid down the same chute as so many dead children, bundled in yellow sheets, made the nape of her neck feel icy.

It was a long, long time ago, Roo told herself. Years and years.

Still, she hurried off the platform and gazed around the dark room, letting her eyes adjust so she could find a way out.

There. Along one of the walls, she could make out the shape of a door. She started toward it, but something ratlike passed close to her feet and made her jump. She never minded snakes or spiders or mice or other things that people were normally afraid of, but rats made her feel queasy. She stared around at the floor, trying to spot it so that it wouldn’t surprise her again. A movement from beside an overturned pail caught her eye, and a black shadow leapt forward. Roo sucked back her breath. But then she recognized the black squirrel. He approached slowly, stopping and starting, as if giving her time to remember who he was.

Roo knelt down and smiled. “Is this where you live? In this nasty basement?”

The squirrel stood up on its haunches, its bright eyes trained on her for a few seconds. Then it dropped down to all fours and scurried away behind a metal panel that stood, floor to ceiling, at one end of the room. The panel had many switches and timers, but there were wires dangling from the back of it that looked as if they had been cut.

Roo waited for the squirrel to return, and when he didn’t she followed him to see where he had gone. The panel, she discovered, had a flight of wooden stairs behind it, and the squirrel was sitting patiently on the third step, waiting. At the sight of her, he darted up the rest of the stairs and slipped through a small hole in the ceiling.

Roo frowned up at the hole, noting that it was, in fact, a gnawed-out bit of a trapdoor, lying flush with the ceiling. Climbing to the top of the steps, Roo put her hand flat on the little door and gave it a small push, expecting it to be locked. To her surprise, the door flipped over on its hinges, and a whoosh of warm, moist air hit her face. The smell was musty and earthy. High above her, she could see the pale early morning sky, making her think that she had found an entrance to the outside. But in a moment, she realized that she was seeing the sky through hundreds of tiny panes of glass shaped in diamonds and forming a clear dome that stretched up as high as the house itself.

Climbing the last step, she hoisted herself out of the basement and gazed around in astonishment. The glass dome enclosed what looked like an ancient, brittle jungle. Dead trees towered up out of the dirt floor. Their branches were thin, many broken and hanging, trapped within the spindly arms of other branches. Thick, ropy vines twisted around the dead trees, climbing up to the very top then tumbling down in thick gray sheets, like grim waterfalls. Clinging to some of the panes on the dome were brown creepers, pressing themselves against the glass as though pleading to be let out. Underfoot, there were spiny bushes and collapsed ferns and limp brown plants, and everything, all of it, was dead.

It was the saddest and most beautiful place Roo had ever seen.

“What happened here?” she whispered.

There was only silence, yet she could feel an answer trying to push out, mute but struggling to be heard. Stepping in farther, she saw a patch of slate gray beneath the undergrowth and found a flagstone footpath. She followed it, nudging away the dead plants that covered it most thickly as she went. The path twisted through the atrium, following the contours of a gentle incline until it ended below a shelf of rock that formed a small cliff. There were smaller rocks alongside the little cliff, and these Roo used as footholds to climb, with some difficulty, to the top of the rock shelf. Beside it stood a large boulder. Roo sat on it and looked down at the ruined garden, at the towering gray trees and the wraithlike tangle of drooping branches.

If there were ghosts in this house, she thought, this is where they would live.

A scratching sound from above startled her. She looked up in time to see a branch on one of the great trees shiver. She did not believe in ghosts, but still she held her breath as she stared at the tree. Its trunk was completely encased by a thick vine that coiled around it, right to the tip of the uppermost branch. And there, on the narrow end of the branch, was the black squirrel. Roo watched as he leapt to another branch and raced across it.

“How can you stand it, being the only living thing in this place?”

It was then that she noticed a patch of leaves on the ground, near one of the atrium walls, which were much darker than the rest—almost black. Sliding off the boulder, she walked to the dark spot and kneeled down to inspect it. To her surprise she found that the leaves were damp. Everything else in the garden was bone dry, yet here…She leaned forward and poked a finger deep into the leaves. The soil was wet too. She gazed around, looking for the water source, finally finding it when she glanced up. There was a broken pane on the dome, close to the edge. The morning light was growing brighter now, and the rain had stopped, but Roo could just make out the path of rivulets, trailing down the wall of the atrium and ending near the patch of damp leaves. She raked the thick layer of leaves to one side and yanked up the dead grass beneath it, exposing a patch of bare soil. With the sun beating down on the damp spot, maybe something could grow there.

She squinted up at the ceiling, searching for other broken panes, and found several more. It was all the encouragement she needed. Roo went to work, tugging at the dead grass and plants around the damp spots, gathering up the dried leaves and piling them in a corner. The black squirrel inched up to her once, to see what she was doing. He came so close that she could have reached out and stroked his fur, but Roo was so busy working that she hardly noticed him.

She worked for hours until she was drenched with sweat, and so thirsty that her throat stung. Finally, she sat back on her heels, exhausted but happy. The sun was pouring into the atrium now, bathing the garden in pale light. The little plots of bare dark earth looked so promising that she leaned down, put her ear to the ground, and listened.

Astonishingly, she heard nothing at all.

That had never happened before. Even in the crawl space under the trailer, in the middle of winter, she could hear life beneath the soil; it was a languid, subtle sound, but it was there.

In this garden, though, there was only silence. It was the nothingness of death. Frighteningly permanent. The garden had been erased from the world, in the same way that her father had been erased, extinguishing everything that he was—the good and the bad.

Once more she pressed her ear to the earth. Concentrating fiercely, her sensitive ears strained to hear a sound, the smallest sound. She stayed that way for a long time, motionless, eyes closed. Then, after many minutes, she thought she heard something. It was weak and frayed around the edges, and it came and went, like shallow, feverish breathing. Sometimes it fell silent for so long, Roo thought it had stopped altogether. But after a while it would start again, struggling. So fragile, so almost-not-there.

“Stay alive,” Roo pleaded.

Chapter 11

It was late morning when Roo finally left the garden. The door that led outside was badly warped and stuck tight, but with some effort she managed to budge it. A thick covering of ivy pulled away from the house as the door opened. Now she could see why she had never noticed the door before; the vines had grown so thickly over this side of the house that it had completely concealed it. This was the back of the house, too, where the space between the banks and the house itself was so narrow, and the drop so precipitous, that Roo hadn’t spent much time there.

Outside, the sun shone bright but the air felt cool against her hot, damp skin. As she started back toward the front entrance of the house, she plotted how she might return to the garden. It would be tricky to get past Mrs. Wixton again. Maybe she could make some sort of deal with the old lady. She wouldn’t run off again if Mrs. Wixton would give her an hour a day to herself. She could do a lot in an hour. She could clear the garden more thoroughly, getting rid of all the dead branches and leaves. The garden would need water too—the little trickles from rainwater weren’t enough. She could haul in water from the river.

Roo had just rounded the corner of the house, when a voice came from down by the banks.

“Was this your little hidey-hole?”

Turning sharply, Roo saw Violet kneeling by the jutting rock that marked the little cave. “You must be part snake to have squeezed in there,” Violet said.

“Mrs. Wixton told,” Roo said.

“Mrs. Wixton has been fired.”

“Really?” Roo’s voice brightened at the news, but Violet’s expression was uncharacteristically grim.

“We found her looking around some empty rooms this morning. Ms. Valentine got suspicious.” Violet shook her head, her brown eyes severe. “Do you realize we’ve been turning the house inside out all morning, looking for you? Ms. Valentine’s been frantic. She thought you might have drowned.”

“And now she’ll see that I’m fine,” Roo replied.

She met Violet’s gaze, but Violet looked away.

“What?” Roo asked. Her stomach suddenly felt queasy. “What will she do?” She watched Violet’s mouth tighten. “Will she send me away?”

“This is not a good place for you, Roo.”

“Yes, it is,” Roo insisted, her voice rising.

“No, Roo. It’s not really a good place for anyone.”

“You stay,” Roo accused.

“I’m paid to stay. I have three little sisters back on Donkey and a mom who’s raising them on her own. I need this job. And I’m needed here. You’re not.”

Roo thought of the garden, of the freshly cleared earth, bare now but full of possibilities.

I am needed here, she thought.

“Come on,” Violet said. She walked over to Roo and took her hand, squeezing it once. “Let’s go inside and get this over with. Ms. Valentine will be so relieved to see you she might forget to tear you into bits and feed you to the gulls.”

Ms. Valentine was relieved. In fact, at the sight of Roo, she rushed up and hugged her; but the hug was brief and the fury quickly followed.

“We’ve tried with you, Roo, we’ve tried, even Mr. Fanshaw cannot deny we’ve tried but now I’m done. What were you thinking? Do you realize what a panic you put us into? We thought you were dead. No, no, this won’t work. We should have never taken you here in the first place.”

Roo opened her mouth to protest, but Ms. Valentine held up her hand. “Mr. Fanshaw gave me leave to make this decision. I hate to do it but you’ve forced my hand. I’ve made arrangements for the Burrows to take you back.”

“No!” Roo cried.

“You’ll be able to go to your own school, in your own town. It’s where you belong—”

“I belong here!” Roo insisted, and then she surprised everyone, including herself, by bursting into tears. For a moment, Ms. Valentine and Violet just stared at her, not knowing what to do.

“The Burrows are good people, Roo…,” Ms. Valentine said, her voice softening. But Roo was not crying about the Burrows, as much as she hated the thought of living with them and all the other foster children again. She was not even crying because she would have to leave Cough Rock, which she had grown to love. Her tears were for the garden. She felt it tug at her like nothing ever had before. If she left, no one would care about it. No one would try to help it. It would remain a graveyard. Not quite dead and not quite alive, which seemed to Roo to be worse than death.

Violet wrapped her arm around Roo’s shoulder and led her upstairs. She didn’t try to console Roo—Violet saw that it would do no good. Instead she removed Roo’s muddy shoes and put her straight into bed. She pulled the blankets up to Roo’s chin, kissed her softly on her forehead, as though she were sick, and let her be.

For a long while Roo lay very still, staring up at the ceiling, while her body went through the small hiccupping aftershocks of a hard cry. She tried to tuck her thoughts in, as she always did, making them very small. But for the first time in her life, it wouldn’t work. She could feel her thoughts flexing against their confinement, the way a foot pushes against a shoe that it’s outgrown. She could not keep her mind from the garden. She imagined the sun beating down on the soil now that the weeds and leaves were cleared. What if it didn’t rain for a while? The areas she had cleared would become as dry as dust. Had she made things worse by trying to help? Her worries went around in circles. Eventually the small hiccups began to subside, and her breathing grew quiet. That was when she heard the crying again. It stopped her thoughts, made her sit up, and listen harder. The crying was steady, emotionless but imploring, like a bird calling out to another bird.

Throwing off her covers, Roo jumped out of bed. She felt a sudden, angry determination to find the source, once and for all. She hurried to the girls’ dormitory and went straight to the secret door in the beadboard cabinet. This time she entered the passageway with more confidence. She headed straight for the door at the end of the passage, but at the sight of the black round chute to the garden she hesitated. She could go down there now. She could haul water in from the river and pour it on the soil. It wouldn’t be enough, but it might help a little.

The crying grew more insistent, as if the person knew she was there. Forcing her attention back to the door, Roo put her hand on the knob and turned it, expecting it to be locked again. But this time the knob turned all the way. The crying suddenly stopped. Whoever was on the other side must have been watching the door, waiting for her. It made her stomach feel tight and she wavered, thinking about the bite mark on her uncle’s face. Pressing her ear to the door, she listened. She didn’t hear anything, but once again she sensed someone listening for her as well.

I’m fast, she reassured herself. I’m fast and small. If I have to, I can outrun whoever this is.

She took a breath, turned the knob, then inched the door open, so that if something started to come out, she could slam the door fast.

On the other side of the door was a chair. And sitting in the chair was a boy. He stared at her with a look of both terror and anticipation, his dark, deeply shadowed eyes still damp from crying. In an instant, though, his expression changed to irritation.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

He looked to be a little younger than Roo, and was as skinny as she was; but while Roo was hard and wiry, he looked withered. His blue pajamas drooped on his thin frame.

“Stop staring at me!” he screamed at her.

“Are you the one who’s always humming?” Roo asked.

“Who are you? I don’t know you.”

“I live here,” Roo said, though that would change very soon.

“No, you don’t. There’s only me and my father here.”

“Who’s your father?”

“Emmett Fanshaw, who do you think? There’s only me and him. And the help. Oh”—he sat up straighter and looked at her very imperiously—“did they hire you to clean? I hope so. Violet is too clumsy. She’s broken five of my bones since she’s started here.”

“That’s a lie,” Roo said. “And I’m not your maid, I’m your cousin.”

She started to close the door then, but the boy called out, “Wait!”

Roo stopped, glaring back at him.

“What?”

“You can’t be my cousin,” the boy said, his voice less disdainful now. “I don’t have any cousins.”

“I’m your cousin because our fathers were brothers.”

The boy thought about this. “I remember once hearing something about my father’s brother.” He looked up at Roo, and she braced herself for him to say something awful about her father. Instead, the boy stood and said, “All right then. You can come in and see my coyote.”

Roo drew back her head, one eyebrow raised dubiously. “You have a coyote in your room?”

“A small one.”

Chapter 12

Roo hesitated. She didn’t like the boy, and she doubted very much that he had a coyote in his room. In the end, though, she gave in to her curiosity.

The room was very large and the drawn curtains made it dark, but Roo could see that it had the same long rectangular shape as the girls’ dormitory.

This must have been where the boys slept, Roo thought. And they also had a door that led to the body chute.

This room was far more luxurious, though. The furniture was formal and heavy, with a large four-poster bed in one corner. There was a stone fireplace whose mantel held stacks of board games and books. The other end of the room was lined with shelves, and on the shelves were dozens of animal skeletons mounted on wooden blocks.

“I’m still working on the coyote,” the boy said, pointing to a large skeleton that sat on a desk in the corner. It was propped up with metal posts and wire, and there were bottles of glue and a small drill on the desk. The coyote was such a spindly thing, it seemed to be made up of birch branches bent to form a spine and legs and the most delicate toes imaginable. The skeleton tilted to one side, as though it were limping, and Roo noticed that the bottom part of its right hind leg was missing.

“Are they real bones?” Roo asked, reaching toward one of the coyote’s legs.

“Don’t touch. Yes, of course they’re real.”

The boy watched Roo as she walked around the room, examining the shelves. There were birds, frogs, lizards, coiled snakes. She stopped at a skeleton with a long tail that was shaped like a conical seashell and what looked to be half a beehive covering its back.

“Armadillo,” the boy said. “Look at the joints in the shell. That’s how they can roll up in a ball. And that one there…” He pointed to a long, squat skeleton with impossibly fine ribs and the head of a tiny dinosaur. “A Gila monster. She was tricky to put together. The coyote was easy.” He ran his finger lightly over the coyote’s front leg. “See how the elbows turn in and the feet turn out. That’s so the legs can swing in a straight line. Makes them faster. But Violet snapped one of the metatarsals on this hind leg, so I’m waiting on a new one. What do you think?”

“I think it’s creepy,” Roo said.

“That’s what Violet says. But it’s not very different from doing a puzzle. When things are all in pieces, don’t you want to put them together again? I do.”

He seemed more likable somehow now, Roo thought. More like a regular boy. She looked at him carefully, taking in his bony shoulders, slightly curled in like an old man’s, and the bruised purple shadows beneath his eyes. His wide jawline made it seem as if he were meant to be more substantial than he was. His lips were full, though dry and pale, and his hair was black and thick and wild looking.

“What’s your name?” Roo asked.

“Phillip. What’s yours?”

“Roo. How come I’ve never seen you around the house before? Or out by the water?”

The question appeared to displease him.

“I prefer my room.” His tone grew cold and self-important again. It reminded Roo of his father. “I suppose you don’t know how to play canasta?”

“No.”

“You’ll learn.” He walked over to the fireplace and took two packs of cards from the top of the mantel. Then he sat down on his bed and stared at Roo, his back stiff and head held high, waiting.

“Well?” he said when Roo didn’t move.

“I never said I would play,” Roo replied.

“But I want you to play,” Phillip said, looking genuinely shocked, as if no one had ever denied him a thing in his entire life.

“Then you had better ask me to—nicely—not order me around like I’m your servant.”

Phillip opened his mouth to say something—and from the look on his face it wasn’t going to be anything polite. But then he shut his mouth again. After staring up at the ceiling for a moment, he looked back at Roo.

“Please,” he said stiffly.

It was just short of civil, but Roo accepted it.

The game was complicated and Roo had to focus. But she was a fast learner and before long her thoughts began to wander back to the garden.

“I’d better go,” she said finally, laying down her cards.

“But why?” Phillip cried.

“I have things to do.”

“What things? What things?” he demanded, his voice growing sharp.

“It’s none of your business what I do,” Roo retorted.

“It is my business! It’s my house!” Then his anger turned to shrieks: “Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go!” until a door on the far side of the room was flung open and in rushed Ms. Valentine and Violet. At the sight of Roo, Ms. Valentine’s mouth popped open. She looked from Phillip to Roo and back again, as if unable to convince herself that she was seeing them both together.

“How did this happen?” she asked in a thin, horrified voice.

Violet hurried past her and gripped Roo by the shoulder, quickly guiding her out the door and shutting it. She turned to Roo, poised to scold.

“Don’t!” Roo warned her. “It doesn’t matter anyway. You couldn’t drag me back in there. I don’t know how you can stand him, I really don’t. He’s awful.”

“Not awful, Roo,” Violet said. “He’s just had a rough time of it.”

“So have a lot of other people.”

“Like you?” Violet asked.

“Well, you don’t hear me screeching, do you?” Roo said.

Phillip’s screams filled the hallway, interspersed with Ms. Valentine’s attempts to calm him down.

“No, I don’t,” Violet agreed. “You suck it all in. You keep yourself as hard as a steel beam. Phillip lets it rip, but in a few minutes he’ll be done. He’ll go limp and I can hug him and wipe his eyes and cheer him up. Which is better? I don’t know.”

“Anyway,” said Roo, shaking this off, “why did you keep us a secret from each other? You lied to me when I asked about the humming.”

Violet sighed, blinked quickly, and glanced away. After a moment she said, “Phillip is strung tight as a fiddle. There’s no denying he’s lived a strange life, cooped up on this island with no other children around and his father gone so much. He adored his mother and she adored him back. She was all he had, really, and they were always together, best friends. So when she died—well, it shattered the poor thing.” Violet shook her head. “I’ve never seen a person grieve so hard. He just stays in his room all day, tinkering with those awful bones, growing more gloomy and sullen. He barely eats a thing. He’s just wasting away. We thought it might help him if he had friends, so this past summer Ms. Valentine arranged for some children to visit him. Two brothers close to Phillip’s own age who live on Murray Island. They came once, but while they were here Phillip went into a rage, screaming and breaking things.”

“He was the one who bit my uncle’s face?” Roo guessed.

Violet nodded. “Mr. Fanshaw is worried—we’re all worried—about his mental state. He’s convinced himself of all kinds of odd things. It just seemed best to keep the two of you apart for a while. We were going to tell him about you eventually, of course. We wanted him to get used to the idea before he met you.” She paused, a little smile starting on her lips. “My mother thought that was foolish. She thought we should let you and Phillip meet. She said two strong tempers are like a pair of waves coming at each other. Sometimes they smooth each other out.”

“Well, obviously that didn’t work,” Roo said, jabbing a thumb back at Phillip’s door. The shrieking had now changed over to wild sobs.

“What did you say to him anyway?”

“Nothing!” Roo insisted. “All I did was start to leave. He wanted me to stay.”

Violet laughed. “Well, maybe Mom was right after all. When I first met you, I thought you and your cousin were much of a muchness.”

When Roo screwed up her face, Violet explained, “It means you two are just the same. Both of you so proud and snappish.” She rubbed her knuckles gently against Roo’s chin. “What do you think? Can you stay out of trouble for the rest of the day?”

Roo wasted no time. As soon as Violet went back upstairs to Phillip, Roo went outside and walked the perimeter of the house until she came to the overgrown ivy that concealed the basement door. She glanced around quickly before she opened it a crack and slipped through.

Once inside the garden, Roo went to work straightaway, clearing more dead grass and leaves, adding to the pile in the corner. She strained and pulled at roots till her hands were red and her shoulders ached.

In the basement she found an old bucket caked with dried cement and took it outside to the river. There were many boats on the water today. The Summer People had begun to arrive. Only a few weeks ago, Roo would have admired the fearless way they plowed through the waves in their speedboats and Jet Skis, but now they seemed only careless and clumsy. She thought of Jack’s silent approach in his canoe; the way he rode the river as easily as a loon. Glancing over at the island with the olive-green house, she saw that there was now a boat docked by the pier. Four candy-colored Adirondack chairs were set outside the front of the house. Jack would be long gone. She wouldn’t get to see him again before she left. It bothered her to think about that. Would he wonder what had happened to her?

Pretty soon she’d be back at the Burrows’ house. She thought about the cramped room she would have to share with the other foster girls. When they saw her, they would know that she had been tossed out of her uncle’s house. They would love that. Roo felt her face heat up and her muscles tighten. The tinny voice of an approaching tour boat spliced into her thoughts.

“—at a time when it was thought fresh, cold air could help in the treatment of tuberculosis. Unfortunately, the sanitarium killed more children than it healed. It finally closed its doors in 1961 and the island is now privately owned.”

Roo quickly dragged the side of the bucket on the bottom of the shallows, scooping up as much water as she could hold, then hauled the bucket back into the garden before the tour boat swung around the island into view.

Back in the garden, she tipped the bucket and let the water spill out onto the soil, walking backward. By the time the bucket was empty, only a narrow swath of earth had been dampened. It would take hours and hours to water the entire garden this way. And the soil was so dry that it drank up the water quickly and still needed more. It was futile, she knew. Yet she kept at it, filling the bucket again and again and pouring it on the earth, until every part of her body ached and the daylight began to dim. Violet would bring supper soon and would be looking for her. She should go back upstairs. Dropping to her knees, she put her ear to the ground and listened. The silence lasted so long that she began to feel sick, worried that somehow she had done more harm than good. Then she heard it. The sound was as faint as before, but still there. She smiled with relief, but the very next moment she sat up in alarm. Something was in the garden with her. She had seen it move—just a quick flash in her peripheral vision, a shadow gliding up the slope toward the boulder. It had been too large and shaped all wrong to have been the black squirrel.

Roo got to her feet and stared all around her. Nothing moved. The garden was perfectly still and so quiet she could hear her own breath. Yet, she felt something was there with her. Watching. The way she had watched others from her own hiding places.

Chapter 13

“It looks like the Burrows will have to live without you for a while longer,” Violet said when she brought in breakfast the next morning.

“What do you mean?” Roo sat up in bed, squinting against the sunlight as Violet pulled back the curtains.

“Phillip threw a fit when he heard you were leaving,” Violet said. “He’s threatened to have us both fired if you go. Ms. Valentine’s not too pleased about it, I can tell you.”

“What does he want with me?” Roo asked, too baffled to feel the full impact of the reprieve.

Violet shrugged. “Who knows? He’s the most changeable person I’ve ever met. In any case, he’s your ticket to stay here—though I can’t imagine why you’d want to. If I were you, though, I’d try and be nice to him. He’ll change his mind in a blink if you make him mad.”

Violet stared hard at Roo for a moment, cocking her head to one side.

“What?” Roo asked, frowning.

“You have the greenest eyes, don’t you? I don’t know why I never noticed before. It seems like they’ve gone greener though. And you’ve filled out too. Do you know what my mother would say about you?”

Roo shook her head.

“She’d say, ‘That girl’s got a bloom on her.’ Bah, don’t look at me like that! It’s a good thing! It means you’re shaping up to be nice looking.”

Roo scowled at this. “I know what I look like.”

“Do you? Next time you pass a mirror, take a good long look in it. You might just surprise yourself. Now go on. Eat your breakfast and get dressed. Your cousin wants to see you this morning. Don’t ruffle his feathers if you can help it.”

Phillip was still in bed when Roo came to his room, using the east wing hallway this time, rather than the secret passage. He looked paler than he had the day before, but he smiled when he saw her. It was a nice smile too, Roo couldn’t help but think.

“Sit down,” he said, nodding toward the edge of his bed. They sat in silence for a while.

“Do you to want to play canasta again?” Roo asked finally.

“I’m not in the mood,” he said.

“Fine,” Roo replied.

She stuffed her hands beneath her legs and rolled her eyes. Let Phillip be difficult. It didn’t matter. She was going to stay at Cough Rock. She could tend her garden and maybe even see Jack again, and if Phillip wanted to act like a brat, she would simply ignore him.

“What are you thinking about?” he demanded.

Roo shifted on the bed. “I don’t know. Nothing.”

Phillip frowned down at his thick blankets, then rearranged them fitfully.

Roo sighed and decided it would be in her best interest to at least try not to upset him.

“I was thinking about Jack,” she said, not wanting to mention the garden.

“Who’s Jack?” He said the name in a contemptuous way that made Roo want to slap him. But she took a breath and tried to keep her voice even.

“He lives on the water. Hasn’t Violet told you about him?”

Phillip shook his head.

So Roo told him all the stories that Violet had told her, and to her surprise Phillip seemed just as riveted as she had been when she first heard them.

“Have you met him?” Phillip asked.

“Once.”

“Did you like him?”

“Yes.”

“More than you like me.” Phillip said this as a statement of fact, and of course it was true.

She didn’t want to provoke him though, so she quickly changed the subject.

“What’s that song I keep hearing you humming?” she asked.

“I don’t hum songs,” he said testily.

“Yes, you do,” Roo said, her patience failing.

“They’re not songs.”

“Well, I heard you humming something.”

Phillip let out an exasperated breath, but Roo kept her eyes on him, waiting for an answer.

“It’s just a thing my mother used to do, if you must know,” Phillip said.

“Hum?”

“It was a special sort of humming. I can’t do it the way she did. I try, but it’s all wrong. She said it was something the mothers in her village used to do. It was supposed to make the children grow up strong. She told me all kinds of stories about the jungle. About jaguars and macaws and spirits that live inside every tree and every plant. She told me about these vines that wrap themselves around trees, all the way to the top.”

Roo nodded. She knew those vines. The garden was covered with them.

“They’re called lianas,” he said. “She told me that they’re the tongues of jungle spirits, and if you want to summon someone, you hold the end of a liana on a treetop and call out the person’s name three times. They have to come if you do that, no matter where they are. She talked about the jungle all the time. My father built her a garden, here in the house, and he filled it with plants and flowers and trees from the rain forest. My mother and I used to spend hours there, playing and climbing trees and vines and splashing around in the water. You’ve never seen a more beautiful garden in your life.”

While he spoke, Roo didn’t move; she hardly breathed, afraid she would do something that might give away her secret.

“What happened to it?” Roo asked quietly.

“My father destroyed it,” Phillip said, his voice turning dark. “After she died, he tore the whole garden out and walled it up.”

He doesn’t know, Roo thought with relief.

“Why did he do it?” Roo asked, remembering what Mrs. Wixton had said about people thinking Ana had been murdered.

“I asked him once,” Phillip said. “He said something bad had happened there, and he hated to think about it. But that was all he’d say.”

Phillip shifted in his bed, and suddenly looked at Roo intently. “If I tell you something,” he said, “will you keep it a secret?”

“Okay.”

“You promise?” he persisted.

“I just said I would, didn’t I?”

“The first time I heard you behind that door,” Phillip said, his eyes darting toward the door that led to the passageway, “I thought it was my mother.”

“But she’s dead.”

Phillip’s gaze returned to Roo. There was a damp, feverish look in his eyes that Roo found unsettling.

“She’s still here,” he said. “She’s still in this house. I hear her.”

The words, spoken with such gravity in the darkened room, spooked Roo. But she quickly collected herself and replied tersely, “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“My mother said the jungle was full of them.”

“She was just telling you stories,” Roo said.

“No, she wasn’t,” he protested.

“Then she was silly and superstitious.”

“Shut up! What do you know anyway? You’re just a thief! I heard Ms. Valentine and Violet arguing about you this morning. Ms. Valentine said that you were a thief. She said your foster mother warned her that you stole things.”

Roo felt her own anger rear up and she drew back to slap him; but at the very last second she thought about the garden. She took a breath. Her body shook with the effort to control herself, but she stood up.

“Where are you going?” Phillip demanded.

“I’ll be back,” she muttered, heading toward the doorway that led to the passageway.

“No! You’re lying! Where are you going?” He began to shriek again, but she turned on him now, her face full of fury, and warned, “If you start shrieking again I won’t come back at all.”

This stopped him, and he managed to keep his temper until Roo returned a few minutes later, holding something in her fist. She tossed it on the bed.

“It’s yours,” she said.

Phillip picked it up and turned it this way and that. “A metatarsal,” he said. “A coyote metatarsal.” He looked up at her. “But where did you get it?”

“I stole it.”

Phillip eyed her suspiciously. “Why are you giving it back?”

“So that the coyote won’t limp.”

Chapter 14

After she left Phillip, Roo spent the rest of the morning in the garden. The black squirrel watched from his perch on the tree as Roo carried buckets of river water into the garden and spilled it out onto the earth. It was lovely to see the parched soil drink up the water, but it was never enough. It had gone thirsty for too long.

As she worked, her mind kept wandering back to Phillip. He would want to see the garden again, she knew. He would want to know that it hadn’t been completely destroyed after all. But each time she had nearly convinced herself that she should tell him, another part of her argued vociferously against it. If she did tell him, no doubt he would go and tell Violet or Ms. Valentine or his father, and then the garden would be shut off forever and left to die.

Roo had been thinking so deeply about this while filling her bucket by the river that she didn’t see the canoe until it was right in front of her, bouncing lightly in the shallows. In the daylight she saw that Jack’s hair was such a pale blond it was nearly silver where the sun hit it, but his skin was tan and his cheeks were ruddy. His clothes were strangely formal—black dress pants and an un-tucked button-down white dress shirt—but they were too big on him and tattered and dirty in places. His head was tilted to one side, watching Roo with quiet interest.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Roo asked finally, glowering with discomfort.

“You look different,” he answered.

Roo felt her gut pinch. She suddenly remembered that he’d seen her only from a distance and at night. Now that he saw her up close, in the light of day, he would realize how plain she was. It hurt her feelings, but still she answered defiantly, “This is what I look like.”

He maneuvered the canoe close to the rocks, plunging his paddle into the shallow water to hold it still.

“Do you want to come for a ride?” he asked.

“I’m busy.”

Jack glanced at her bucket, and then back at her. “The water will still be in the river when you get back.”

Thoughts of the Faigne crept into Roo’s mind. What had Violet said? That the Faigne was a water creature, not human at all. That was silly, of course, she told herself. He was just a boy. But still, when she looked at him she found that his beauty was almost otherworldly.

“I can’t swim,” Roo said.

“You won’t have to,” he replied.

Roo stared uncertainly at the little canoe. “Will it hold two people? What if I sink it?”

He laughed. “You don’t weigh more than a rabbit.”

He stretched out his hand and kept it there, waiting until she made her decision. After a few moments’ deliberation, she put the bucket down and stepped across the rocks. Leaning over, she took Jack’s hand. He steadied her as she stepped into the canoe.

“Bend your legs,” he told her when the canoe began to rock. She shifted her body until the rocking settled, and then sat down opposite Jack. The sun had squeezed his pupils into pinpricks. His irises looked so unnaturally gray that Roo once again found herself thinking of the Faigne. But then the canoe slid away from the shore, putting the sun behind them, and his eyes looked more human again.

At first, Roo gripped the edges of the canoe, her heart lurching every time they hit a wave. But it wasn’t long before she felt her body adjust to the motion. The little canoe rode the river lightly, rearing and dipping while Jack deftly maneuvered it. The water seemed to be grabbing the paddle at each stroke, passing the canoe hand to hand over its surface.

There were other boats on the river, though Jack avoided coming too close to these. Once, though, a fisherman spotted them. He stood up in his boat and shielded his eyes against the sun to see them better.

Tonight he’ll tell his friends that he had saw the Faigne, thought Roo, and that a strange girl was with him. Maybe they’ll think I’m a sea creature too. Roo smiled.

Suddenly a long, loping shadow appeared above them. Roo looked up to see the white belly of a heron, its slender legs stretched behind it and its neck folded back against its shoulders. Roo expected the bird to pass on by, but instead it seemed to hover over them, keeping pace with the canoe. Now and then it would fly ahead of them and circle back, finally disappearing altogether when a large freighter trudged through the seaway.

“It’s almost like that bird was following us,” Roo said.

“He was. That’s Sir.”

“He’s yours?” Roo asked, amazed.

Jack laughed. “I’m his,” he said. “He’s adopted me. He stays with me through the winter, even though almost all the other herons go south. He knows everything that happens on this river. He even told me when you first arrived here.”

Roo shot him a doubtful look. But then she remembered seeing the heron that flew over the Boston Whaler on her way to Cough Rock, and how Ms. Valentine had said it was odd to see the bird at that time of year.

On and on they went, past stretches of polished shoal, peppered with cormorants; weaving around islands, some with homely cottages and others with gigantic mansions. The beauty of the St. Lawrence was staggering. Great green knolls rose up out of the water, like a relief map come to life, forming complicated labyrinths. The canoe skirted by a tremendous cliff made of red-veined rock. Jack pointed out a raven’s nest on the cliff, but even Roo’s sharp eyes could not make it out. Jack lifted his chin and let out a low, croaking sound and a shiny black bird emerged magically from one of the fissures. She croaked in response, staring down at them as they passed.

Finally they came to a narrow channel between two of the larger islands. Jack rowed to the top of the channel, then lifted his paddle out of the water.

“What are you doing?” Roo asked nervously.

Jack didn’t answer. He just stretched out his legs and leaned back a little. The canoe bobbled in place for a moment. Then something seemed to seize it and the next second they were shooting down the channel. The little canoe vaulted over waves, then pitched down again at breathless speed. To Roo’s surprise, she wasn’t frightened at all. In fact, it made her laugh out loud, which seemed to delight Jack. The water sounded like it was laughing too—the muted, trilling sound of someone laughing in a rainstorm. Then suddenly it was over. The canoe slowed. Jack put out his paddle again and began to row.

“What was that?” Roo asked, catching her breath and smiling.

“Dumbfounder’s Current. It sucks you in and spits you straight to the other side.”

“The river sounded like it was laughing,” Roo said.

“It was.” He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “I think I know why you look so different.”

Roo’s smile dissolved.

“Why?” She eyed him warily.

“You’re not fighting the wind anymore,” Jack said.

Roo frowned. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

Jack tucked his head down and hunched his shoulders slightly…and there it was. The same look she had always noticed in the mirror. The look of a thief. It bothered her that he had seen it too.

“So what do I look like now?” she asked.

“Like a girl who might capture a Faigne,” he replied, smiling lightly.

She didn’t know how to respond, so she turned away and fixed her eyes on a shoal covered with birds. The birds were small with soft gray bodies that tapered to white around their bellies. Their black masks scooped over their skulls, and their slender bills were the deepest red, tipped with black.

“What are they?” Roo asked, grateful to be able to change the subject.

“Terns. They’re nesting.”

Roo squinted against the sun and searched the shoal.

“But I don’t see any nests,” Roo said.

“That’s because terns are terrible parents,” Jack said, an unusual edge of irritation in his voice. “They put their nests any old place and don’t even bother to make them well. Just a few twigs and leaves. Then the gulls come along and bully them, and off the terns fly, leaving their eggs for the gulls to eat or smash. Or sometimes the terns stick it out long enough for the eggs to hatch, but then the gulls swoop down and carry the chicks off. The adult terns barely even put up a fight.” He turned his head suddenly and stared at a craggy section of the shoal.

“I see you,” he whispered.

“Who is it?” Roo asked.

But Jack just held his finger to his lips. Spinning the canoe around, he began paddling close to the bank until he crept alongside a low outcropping by the shoal’s edge. He leapt out, then held the canoe steady for Roo. She stepped onto the shoal and looked around, trying to find whoever had caught Jack’s attention. All she saw were birds, though, scampering around in panic at the sight of them.

“This way,” Jack whispered, and in a flash he was bounding easily across the rocks.

The shoal was wet and slick, and though she was naturally sure-footed, Roo slipped several times. Up ahead, Jack stopped abruptly. He held out his hand for Roo to stop too. Then he did the oddest thing. Shoving his hands in his pockets, his body seemed to go slack. He cocked one leg and his shoulders slumped. All his muscles seemed to loosen and relax. He stood like this for a moment, just as though he were waiting for a bus, before squatting down and smoothly scooping something up in his hands. When he stood, he was holding a slender, dark brown thing that squirmed in his grip like a fish.

“What is it?” Roo asked.

“Come look.”

As Roo came closer she saw that the creature had already begun to settle down in Jack’s hands. Now she could see that it had damp, sleek fur and a pointed, ferretlike snout. Jack brought the snout close to his face.

“I’m on to you,” he said to the animal.

“Won’t he bite you?” Roo said.

“She,” he corrected. “And she won’t. We’re old friends.”

He loosened his grip, and the lithe animal crawled up Jack’s arm and settled on his shoulder.

“She’s a mink,” Jack said. “And a pig for tern eggs. I keep taking her off the shoal, but she keeps swimming back. I’ll find a smashed shell on the rocks, the insides gone, and there she is, skulking away. Between the gulls and this one, it’s pretty bleak for the tern eggs. I patrol this shoal a few times a day. It’s sort of hopeless. But still, I can’t help myself, you know?”

She did know! Before she could stop herself, Roo blurted out, “I found a garden. It’s been kept a secret for so long that everything in it is dead. I’ve been watering it and watering it, but it’s so big, and it’s so hot in there that the soil doesn’t stay damp for long. I can’t keep up, but how can I stop? It’s like you and the tern eggs.”

Jack nodded. He thought for a moment.

“The garden must have a sprinkler system, though,” he said.

“There’s a panel of switches and timers in the basement. That might be for the sprinklers, but all the wires are cut. I think my uncle must have done it.” And she told him what Phillip had said about the garden and his mother’s death. Jack listened carefully. The mink took the opportunity to scamper down his arm and try to escape, but Jack caught her and held her to his chest.

“If you want,” Jack said when she was finished, “I could help you. The garden might stand a better chance if there were two of us working in it.”

When Roo hesitated, Jack lowered his head and whispered to the mink, “She doesn’t trust me.”

It made Roo smile.

“I do,” she said. “I think I do.”

They took the mink to a wooded island far from the tern’s nesting place. Clearly it was a ride the mink had taken often. She stayed by Jack’s feet in the canoe, occasionally stretching herself out across his shoes. Once she even approached Roo, nuzzling at her ankles. Roo kept perfectly still, delighted, her eyes darting between Jack and the mink. Slowly, very slowly, Roo bent down and with the tip of her forefinger she touched the mink’s silky head. The mink tensed for a second, but when she didn’t dart away, Roo let her finger slide down the mink’s neck and along her back.

“You’re good with animals,” Jack said, surprised.

Roo nodded. “I’m just not good with people.”

As Jack neared the shore, the mink seemed to know when they had arrived at her new home. She leapt onto his seat and then dove off the edge of the canoe. She swam the short distance to the bank and scrambled onto land, her wet coat now inky black, and then disappeared into the woods.

“Do you think she’ll go back to the shoal?” Roo asked.

“I know she will. But so will I.”

They had only been gone for a little over an hour, but when they returned to Cough Rock, a faint rosy light was already simmering in the sky beneath the blue. By dusk it would burn flamingo pink, and then night would shut it down completely and the stars would push through. There had never been skies like this in Limpette. For the first time in her life, Roo felt at home in the bigness of things; in the river that she could not see the end of and the sky that held both stars and herons.

Jack wedged his paddle in the shallow rocks, and Roo leapt out before he could offer her a hand.

“Now she’s jumping off canoes like a mink,” he said.

“Like a rat,” Roo corrected. “Like a River Rat.”

Chapter 15

The screaming started in the middle of the night. The long eventful day had plunged Roo into a deep sleep, and the screaming had wormed its way into her dreams as a shrieking red bird caught in a tremendous, ropy spiderweb. The bird twisted and thrashed, struggling to free itself from the web’s hold without success. When a giant spider began to climb up the web toward the bird, the screaming became unbearable and Roo woke with a gasp.

Standing over her bed was Ms. Valentine, barefoot and dressed in a robe that hung askew. It seemed as if she too had woken suddenly. Her face, scrubbed of makeup, was tinged pink around the rims of her eyes and the wings of her nostrils, and her dark hair was disheveled.

“Get up, Roo,” she said. It was less an order than a plea.

That was when Roo realized the screaming was real and not just in her dreams. It pierced the walls, hysterical and ragged, and was accompanied by a furious thumping.

“What’s he screaming about now?” Roo grumbled.

“This is the worst we’ve ever seen him,” Ms. Valentine said. To Roo’s amazement she actually sounded frightened. “He’s punching the walls, just…wild. Violet can hardly restrain him. Please, can you see what you can do—”

Roo groaned, but she got out of bed and started down the stairs. The screaming pounded through the house, echoing off the walls. It made Roo mad to hear it. She began to run, anxious to make it stop. The shrieks grew more and more hysterical, so that by the time Roo flung open Phillip’s door, her face was flushed with her own fury.

Tangled in sheets and blankets, Phillip was screaming and tossing in his bed while Violet attempted to hold him down. When she lost her grip on one of his hands, it flew to her face and clawed at it.

“Stop it!” Roo screamed at him. “Stop it right now!”

But the attack did not let up—Phillip seemed beyond hearing—and he slapped at Violet as she tried to grab hold of his wrist again. Enraged, Roo ran across the room, grabbed the Gila monster from the shelf and threw it against the wall as hard as she could. It made an awful cracking sound and the bones clattered to the ground.

“That’s one!” Roo called to him. “If you don’t stop screaming, I’ll smash them all!”

“No, Roo!” Violet cried. “You’ll make him worse.” Her face was badly scratched and her lower lip was bleeding.

“I hate you!” Roo shrieked at Phillip.

She picked up another skeleton and smashed it. Then another and another until finally she realized that the screaming had stopped. The only noise left was the cracking of bones and her own cries of rage.

She looked over at the bed. Phillip now lay quietly in Violet’s arms, and they were both watching her, shocked, their faces still damp with perspiration from their struggle.

The door opened and Ms. Valentine stood at the threshold. For a moment she was silent, aghast at the wreckage of bones strewn across the floor, with Roo in the center of it.

“What have you done?” she demanded of Roo.

“She’s stopped him, is what,” Violet said, tipping her head toward Phillip. He was pale and his eyes were glassy but he was calm.

Violet settled Phillip back into bed. He lay as docile as an infant, as she untangled and straightened the sheets and blankets and arranged them neatly over him. It infuriated Roo that Violet could be so kind to him after what he’d done. The scratches on her face were raised and pink now, and blood had dried on her lip, forming a small, dark blotch.

“Shut your eyes,” Violet crooned at him. He shut them obediently, but when she stood up to leave, he opened them again.

“Roo will stay,” he murmured.

“Of course she will,” Ms. Valentine said stiffly.

“No, I won’t,” Roo said.

Ms. Valentine shot a warning glance at her.

“I don’t care. I won’t,” Roo insisted. “He’s repulsive.”

“He can’t help it when he gets into fits like this,” Violet said gently.

“He can help it!” Roo said. “He’s just used to doing whatever he likes.”

Phillip was watching her from his bed, and now she glared at him.

“You can help it,” she insisted to him, her voice raw. They stared at each other for a moment. Phillip looked away, then back at her.

“Please stay,” he said.

“There,” Violet said, getting up and walking over to Roo to give her shoulder a squeeze. “That’s as nice as anyone could ask.”

She guided Roo over to the bed, and Roo let her, but she would not sit down next to Phillip. Arms crossed against her chest, she stood there as Violet and Ms. Valentine left the room.

“Are you cold?” Phillip asked. “You look cold in that nightgown.”

“I’m fine,” she replied stonily.

“Here.” With some difficulty he peeled back one of the covers. “Put this around you.”

It was the way he struggled to maneuver the blanket—so weak and fumbling. It made her feel a little less furious at him. She reached out and snatched the blanket, wrapping it around her shoulders—she was cold in the thin nightgown.

“Why did you hurt Violet?” she asked him, her voice still harsh.

“Why do you care so much about her?” he said, suddenly peevish.

“Why does she care so much about you?” Roo shot back.

“Because my father feels guilty, so he pays people to care about me,” Phillip said.

“Violet would be nice to you no matter what,” Roo insisted. “That’s just how she is. And anyway, what does your father have to feel guilty about?”

After a moment, he said, “Because he can’t stand to be around me. That’s why he’s never here. He really only wanted my mother, not me, and now that she’s gone, he hires people to be with me since he doesn’t want to.”

Roo would have liked to contradict this. She would have liked to accuse her cousin of feeling sorry for himself. Yet she couldn’t help but admit that it might be true.

“Well, maybe if you didn’t bite him, he’d want to be around you more,” Roo countered.

“He deserved it,” Phillip said, his expression hardening.

“Why?”

“He told me he might send me away to Dr. Oulette’s clinic in Rochester. He said that I would have to live there while they treated me for depression.”

“Maybe it would be a good thing,” Roo said.

“It would be a terrible thing!” Phillip pulled his legs up and wrapped his arms around them like he was already trying to root himself in the room. “She won’t be at some clinic!”

“Who won’t?”

“My mother.”

“Phillip—”

“I know what you think. You think I’m crazy. So does my father. Violet says that I’m dreaming when I hear her, but it’s not a dream and I’m not crazy. I hear her calling for me through the walls. I heard her tonight, clearer than ever.”

Roo opened her mouth to tell him that his mother was gone, just like her father was. But then she remembered when she had first seen her uncle; how he had looked so much like her father, she thought it was him—though it made no sense—and how her whole body had filled with happiness at the sight of him.

“Lie back on your pillow,” she told him, and sat beside him.

“Why?”

“Just do it,” she said.

Once he lay back, Roo started, “There once was a little red-and-yellow boat called Pendragon—”

“I don’t want to hear stories,” he complained.

“Shut up,” Roo said. “And instead of sailing in the water it flew above the treetops in the sky.”

She told him the story about when Vincent landed on the island of Malta, and after some initial squirming Phillip lay still and listened. Before long he closed his eyes. His breathing gradually slowed, and when she stopped talking to check, she saw that her cousin had fallen asleep. She pulled the cover up over his shoulders. He turned toward her in his sleep, and tucked his legs up. For a while she stared at him. Sleep softened his face. It was a solemn face, like her own. She reached out and lightly touched his hair, so dark and thick. Like his mother’s hair, she guessed.

The door opened a crack and Violet peered into the room. She glanced between Phillip and Roo, shaking her head in wonder.

“Well, look at this,” she whispered. “Two waves, smooth as glass. An old Donkey granny could sail across the two of you in a pie pan and never feel a bump.”

Chapter 16

Roo spotted the heron first. He pushed through the pink and blue early-morning sky then circled back and disappeared behind the tall pines of a distant island.

He’s coming, Roo thought. She felt the excitement climbing in her chest but sternly pushed it back down.

Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. He’s just a boy.

A few moments later Jack’s canoe appeared in the distance. The heron, Sir, flew above it. At one point Sir swooped so low that it seemed as if he were about to fly right into Jack. Roo ducked reflexively as Sir just cleared Jack’s head, and Roo thought she could hear Jack laughing, although it might simply have been the call of a far-off gull.

As the canoe rounded an island and entered the seaway, heading toward Cough Rock, the currents seemed to push against it. Jack paddled and paddled but the going was slow. Roo paced along the rocks that formed a tiny cove, watching as Jack struggled against the river’s mighty shoves. It seemed like he would never reach her. Sir, too, seemed to grow impatient. He flew to the canoe, landing awkwardly on its edge, and rested there while Jack paddled on.

It took nearly a half an hour for the canoe to fight its way to the island. As Jack maneuvered into the little cove, Roo reached out and grabbed the canoe to help pull it in. Jack’s face was pink and damp with exertion as he stepped onto land, but he was laughing too.

“I think she’s jealous,” he said breathlessly.

“Who is?”

“The river,” Jack replied. “Look at her, pretending not to notice us.”

Roo looked at the water, flushed purple beneath the surface. Yes, the waves did hold themselves stiffly now, moving past briskly but occasionally serving Cough Rock with indignant little slaps.

He belongs to the river, Roo thought.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked uncertainly.

“Of course I’m sure. Come on. Let’s see your garden.”

Roo led him over the rocks and around the back of the house to the basement door. At first she felt a rush of excitement at Jack seeing the garden. But as they climbed up the trapdoor stairs, she began to have misgivings. What if he thought the garden was hopeless? What if all he could see was a tumbledown graveyard of brittle, brown plants and dead trees?

At the top of the stairs she paused and looked down at him.

“Close your eyes,” she ordered.

He closed them, and she scrambled up into the garden, and then squatted down beside the trapdoor.

“Okay, take another step up,” she said.

He did. She had him take two more until his head was poking out of the trapdoor.

“Now give me your hand,” she ordered.

He put out his hand and she took it. The skin felt rough and warm. She held his hand loosely, but his hand tightened around hers. She led him up the final stairs until he was standing inside the garden, his eyes still faithfully shut.

“Listen,” she told him, “you have to love this garden. No matter what it looks like. Okay?”

“Okay,” Jack said easily.

“It’s not green like other gardens,” she warned.

“I know. You told me. Can I open my eyes?”

Roo took a deep breath and released his hand. “Go on.”

She watched as his eyes opened and he looked around. He took in the broken branches hanging off the trees, the limp foliage matted on the ground, the tangle of vines drooping from the treetops. After a moment, he began to wander through the garden, stopping to touch the trunk of a tree or reaching up to let his fingers brush against the tips of hanging vines. Roo stayed back and said nothing. She remembered how she had felt when she first saw the garden—the peculiar feeling of sadness and wonder.

“Do you think it has a chance?” she asked finally, her voice sounding rough to her own ears.

“It’s hard to tell with wild things,” Jack said, crouching down by the stump of a tree. “This winter I found a half-starved coyote pup. I took care of him till he started to look good and sturdy. It seemed like he’d be just fine. But then he died suddenly in the night. I don’t know why. Then a week later, on Sawdust Island, I saw something strange hanging from the branch of a tree. Turned out it was a rabbit, all torn up. I figured a hawk had grabbed it and started flying off with it, then dropped it by accident. There wasn’t much rabbit left. His leg was busted and his skin was ripped to shreds. I patched him up the best I could and figured he wouldn’t make it through the day. But he did. And the next day he ate out of my hand and each day he got stronger until finally he was good as new, except he hopped sort of lopsided. It seems like there’s something mysterious about what lives and what dies.” He saw that Roo’s face had gone grim, and he added, “But each time I find an animal that needs help, I help it as though I’m sure it will live.”

So that is exactly what they did. All morning they worked hard, hauling buckets of water from the river. They found a pair of old rubber boots in the basement and they poked holes in the soles and used them as watering cans. Roo was getting stronger. She found she could hold fuller buckets of water and that she no longer tired so quickly. Again and again, she paused to check on the bare patches of soil, hoping to see something green appear, even though she knew it was silly, that it was too soon.

When they had finished watering the garden, Roo snuck some food out of the kitchen for their lunch. They ate beneath one of the dead trees—cheese sandwiches and purple grapes and a jug of lemonade. The black squirrel stopped by to ask for a bit of their lunch. Roo gave him some bread and he ate it at a distance of a few feet away, watching Jack circumspectly. Roo watched Jack too, noticing the way he ate, focused and silent, like a person used to eating alone.

“Don’t you get lonely out on the river?” she asked.

Jack laughed. “How could I get lonely when the river never stops talking?”

“Lonely for people, I mean.”

Jack took a bite of his sandwich and considered this, as though it were a new idea. “At night sounds carry across the water. I’ll hear people talking and laughing. Sometimes I wonder how it would be to live like everyone else. I guess it would be nice for a while, but in the end I’d wind up running right back to the river. Honestly, I don’t know how people can think without a river. Sometimes I’ll be in my canoe, mulling things over, and my brain will leap right into the water and travel with it to where the perch are biting or where the raspberries just went ripe along the shore or to where there’s a warm empty house. I don’t know where I stop and the river starts, do you know what I mean? If we were separated, I think I would just…I would just unravel.”

Suddenly, Jack’s head whipped around toward the back of the garden.

“What is it?” she asked, following his gaze.

He didn’t reply at first, while his gray eyes scanned the garden intently. After a minute, he looked back at her, his face perplexed.

“I thought I saw something,” he said.

“The squirrel?”

Jack shook his head. “Definitely not the squirrel. It was a shadow. Up there.” He pointed at the boulder. “It’s gone now.”

Roo bit her lip and hesitated before she confessed, “I saw it, too, the other day.”

They were quiet, but they were both thinking of Ana because Jack suddenly said, “I saw her once when she was still alive, about four years ago.”

“Where?” Roo asked.

“She was by the stone arch on Cough Rock, right at the spot where I first saw you. She had this long black hair and it was windy that day, so her hair was whipping all around. It reminded me of a flock of cormorants, just as they are about to take flight. She was pacing back and forth. Then he came out, your uncle, and he wrapped his arms around her and they went back inside.” Jack looked at Roo, his eyes steady on hers, and said, “What if she’s here? In her garden? Watching us?”

Roo thought of what Phillip had said, but she quickly shook this off.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Roo said.

“Really? That’s funny. I believe in almost anything.”

“He’s crying for you.”

Violet woke Roo in the very early hours of the morning. Even in the darkened room, Roo could see that her face was pinched tight with worry. “His heart is thumping so loud, you can hear it through the bedsheets.”

Indeed, when Roo opened Phillip’s door, she was shocked at how pitiful he looked. His head was thrown back against his pillow and his face was damp with sweat and tears. In a way it was worse than seeing him flailing around, slapping and clawing. Now he just looked ill.

Roo sat beside him on his bed, not knowing how to comfort him. For a while they sat together in silence. She tried to catch his eye but he would only look down at his blankets, which he twisted in his hands. Roo noticed that the veins on his thin hands were raised, like a snarl of electric cords.

“Tomorrow we can try and fix the skeletons I broke,” Roo offered.

“I had Violet throw them all out,” he replied.

Roo glanced over at the far end of the room. The shelves that had once been filled with skeletons were now bare. Even the coyote was gone, and the desk was cleared of glue and wire.

“But why?” Roo asked. Although she hadn’t liked them, this seemed like a bad omen.

“I got tired of them,” Phillip murmured, then looked away.

Roo sighed.

“You heard her again tonight, didn’t you?” she said.

Phillip nodded.

“Maybe it was the river,” Roo said. “Or the wind.”

He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, then let them drop to the sides of his face. His dark eyes looked flat, deadened, like his father’s eyes.

“Maybe,” he conceded.

His quietness alarmed her. She wished he would scream and she could scream back at him. Instead, he turned over in bed with his back to her and tucked his legs to his chest.

“Do you want me to stay?” Roo asked. She watched one narrow shoulder rise and fall in a listless shrug.

Roo lay down beside him. It wasn’t long before Phillip fell back to sleep, but Roo remained awake. She was turning things over in her mind, feeling the tug of a decision that she didn’t want to make. She had found the garden, yes, but it wasn’t hers. Not really. It was Ana’s and so it was Phillip’s too. Maybe Ana was waiting for him, down in the garden. Maybe the garden was waiting for him too.

Chapter 17

Dressed in regular clothes, Phillip looked even more fragile than he had in his pajamas. His spindly arms poked out of his short-sleeved shirt and a belt was cinched tightly around his pants.

“He won’t like me,” Phillip said.

“He might if you don’t act like a monster,” Roo replied. She reached over and adjusted his shirt collar so that his jutting collarbone didn’t show.

“I don’t see why he won’t just come up here to meet me.” His voice turned peevish.

“He’s shy of people,” Roo explained.

She had told Phillip only that she was going to take him to meet Jack. She hadn’t mentioned the garden at all. Phillip’s moods were so unpredictable that she worried he would throw a fit when he learned that the garden had been there all along, abandoned and left to die. It would be safer, she reasoned, for him to see it for himself, out of earshot.

“Do you remember what to say to Ms. Valentine?”

“I think so.”

He pressed the buzzer on his nightstand. Ms. Valentine was at the door so quickly that Roo worried she had been just outside the whole time, listening. Her face revealed nothing, though, as Phillip gave her instructions: “I’m teaching Roo how to play chess today, and we are not to be disturbed.”

“You’re dressed,” Ms. Valentine said with surprise.

“I made him get dressed,” Roo cut in quickly. “I was sick of seeing him in his pajamas.”

Ms. Valentine ignored her and studied Phillip’s face. “Shouldn’t you rest? You’ve had a difficult night.”

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Your eyes look a little bloodshot.”

“My eyes are my business,” he snapped at her. “Now leave us alone. If you bother us again, you’ll make me mad, and I’ll tell my father when he gets back.”

Ms. Valentine hesitated, then glanced at Roo suspiciously before she left the room.

“She won’t bother us now,” he told Roo.

“I don’t know how she doesn’t hate you,” Roo said, half marveling. “I would.”

“My father pays her not to hate me,” he said simply. He started for the door, but Roo stopped him.

“Not that way,” she said. “We’re going through here.”

Roo led him through the door that opened out to the secret passageway, stopping by the chute. With the toe of her sneaker she gave it a little tap.

“That’s our way down,” she told him.

Phillip looked at the dark chute apprehensively. “I used to throw candy wrappers down it. Where does it go?”

“All the way to the basement.”

Roo got down on the floor and went into the chute, feet first, careful this time to brace her legs against the edges to keep herself from sliding down. She looked up at Phillip. “Come on. I’ll hold on to you.”

Phillip crouched down and adjusted his legs so that they were resting over her shoulders. She wrapped her arms around his calves, then she pulled them both forward into the mouth of the chute.

“Ready?” she asked.

“I guess so,” Phillip said, his voice faltering.

Relaxing her legs, Roo let herself slide with Phillip sliding behind her. When they began to pick up speed, Roo heard him make a small sound, as if he were trying to stifle a scream. Quickly she pressed her legs against the side again to stop them.

“All right up there?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You sound funny.” She tried to twist her head to look up at him, but in that small space, it was close to impossible.

“It’s just that…,” Phillip said, “it feels…I’ve never moved so fast.”

“Do you want me slow down?”

“No. I want you to go faster.”

Roo laughed, then wrapped her arms around his legs more tightly. “You asked for it.”

She let go and they sped downward at full speed, their backs skimming across the cool metal. It was nearly as thrilling as Dumbfounder’s Current, and the two of them laughed helplessly the whole way down, right up until they reached the bottom. And there was Jack, waiting there, looking bemused.

“It sounded like the walls were laughing,” he said.

Roo shimmied to the floor so fast that Phillip slid onto the platform awkwardly, his legs strangely splayed. The smile left his face and his eyes darted toward Jack ruefully, as if he were waiting for an insult. But Jack had experience with creatures that were mistrustful of him.

“I’m Jack.” He put out his hand for Phillip to shake. Phillip took it, and Jack gave him a discreet tug, just enough so that Phillip could ease himself into a sitting position and then slip off the platform.

His dignity recouped, Phillip now looked at Jack carefully, taking in the odd clothes, the pale hair in its short ponytail.

“Where is Sir?” Phillip asked.

“Just outside.” Jack nodded his head toward the basement door.

“I’d like to see him,” Phillip said, and started for the door, but Roo grabbed him by the wrist.

“Not yet. We wanted to show you something else first,” she said.

She led him past the wired panel and he followed her up the narrow stairs with Jack behind him. Roo pushed open the trapdoor and they all scrambled up into the garden.

“It’s still here,” Phillip murmured as he looked around.

Roo braced herself for an outburst. Jack moved up beside him, hands in his pocket, his body looking deliberately relaxed.

He’s trying to keep him calm, Roo realized. Like he did with the mink on the shoal.

But the crying and shrieking that Roo had expected never came. Instead, Phillip began to walk through the garden, looking up at the towering trees and the lacy brown creepers clinging to the glass panes; at the bare patches of earth and the small hummocks of leaf litter that Roo and Jack had piled in the corner.

“It used to be all green,” he said finally, “with flowers everywhere.”

He stepped onto the stone path and began to walk along it. “This was a stream.”

“We thought it was a footpath,” Roo said.

“No, a stream…there were berry bushes that grew along here.” He paused to run his hands over a skeletal bush, then followed the stream to its end at the base of the rocky ledge, below the boulder. Gazing up, he said, “And this was where the waterfall was. There are pipes in the stones.”

“I didn’t see them,” Roo said.

“They’re hidden. Look.” He hopped out of the streambed and scrambled up the slope, his spidery body clambering over the rocks. When he got to the top, he pointed to the tiny metal pipes embedded in the stone. He showed them other things too, like the fissures in the rocks where flowers grew from and where the banana tree once stood, parsing it all out, just as he’d done with his skeletons. And in a way, Roo thought, all that was left of the garden was its bones—and a bat squeak of life beneath the soil.

Phillip stopped talking suddenly. His head lifted as though he were listening. Then he turned to them, smiling. A small, quiet smile of relief.

“What is it?” Roo asked.

“She’s here,” he said.

They found another bucket for Phillip, though he wasn’t strong enough to carry it full. At first, Sir startled at the sight of Phillip. He spread his wings and scrambled into the air, flying to a nearby tree. But soon he grew used to him. As the stately bird patrolled the shallow waters for fish, he ventured closer. Once, Phillip reached out very quickly and let his fingertips brush against the bird’s wing while Sir kept perfectly still, his round yellow eyes fixed on Jack.

After an hour of watering, Phillip grew tired. He stretched out on the boulder above the waterfall and rested his head on his flung-out arm while Roo and Jack kept working. Soon he lay so still that Roo went up to the boulder to check on him. Phillip’s body had shifted so that it fit against the contours of the rock more comfortably. His right hip had found a depression to lean into and his right foot had slipped into a narrow crack in the lowest part of the rock. Roo put a hand to his cheek. His skin was cool and dry. He was breathing peacefully. Fast asleep.

Satisfied that he was okay, they left him so they could cool off in the river. They went down into the hidden cove and poured bucketfuls of water over each other’s heads, while Sir paced the banks, watching them skeptically.

Even before they reentered the garden, Roo knew something was wrong. The door to the basement was slightly ajar, when she was sure she had shut it tightly. As she and Jack climbed the ladder to the trapdoor, a sickish feeling began to fill her belly.

“Someone’s here,” she whispered to Jack.

A shadow passed across the open trapdoor and they heard footsteps above them.

“Maybe Phillip’s awake,” Jack said.

Slowly Roo climbed to the top of the stairs and peered into the garden to see a pair of long, jean-clad legs.

“Oh, Roo,” Violet murmured. She glanced over at Phillip, still asleep on the boulder. “What were you thinking?”

“He wanted to come,” Roo cried. “He was happy. He was laughing! I’ve never heard him laugh like that.”

“Yes, I heard him too. I heard the both of you, though for the life of me I couldn’t figure out where the laughter was coming from. It was when I poked around outside and saw the trampled grass by the basement door that I put it together.” Violet shook her head. “What have you done, Roo?”

“I’ve been trying to make things better.”

“Better? What you’ve made is a colossal mess. Can’t you see the harm you’ve done? Your uncle shut the garden up for a reason.”

“What reason?” Roo countered combatively. “Because he killed his wife? Mrs. Wixton said people think he did.”

“I know what people think, and I know the people who think it. They have all sorts of other nonsense to say too. If they had to mind their own business for a full week, they would give themselves hernias, every last one of them.”

“Then why did he shut the garden up?” Roo demanded.

“I don’t know. But that’s not our concern, is it? What you should be concerned about is what will happen when your uncle comes back to find that you’ve opened the garden up and brought Phillip down here too…I wouldn’t be surprised if he tossed us all out.”

“Then you can’t tell him,” Jack said.

He had been hidden from Violet’s view, behind Roo on the stairs. At the sound of this unfamiliar voice Violet’s eyes narrowed.

“Who’s with you?” she asked.

Roo said nothing, but an urgent tap on her back persuaded her to climb up into the garden so that Jack could do the same.

At the sight of him, Violet caught her breath. She looked at Roo, then at Jack, then back at Roo. “It is him, isn’t it?”

Roo nodded.

Violet smiled, then put the back of her hand against her mouth as though to hide it. She shook her head. “If the Donkey grannies could see this…” Violet glanced back and forth at the two of them. “Even if I keep your secret—and I’m not saying I will—you’ll be caught sooner or later. Ms. Valentine doesn’t miss much. And if she doesn’t guess, Phillip is bound to spill the beans during some tantrum. Incidentally, how were you planning to sneak Phillip back in the house?”

“I was going to wait until eleven when Ms. Valentine goes to Choke Cherry for the mail, and then tell you that Phillip wanted his lunch.”

“And while I’m fixing it, you sneak him back upstairs.”

Roo nodded.

“The nerve of you two!” But she seemed more amused than angry. Her eyes returned to Jack and she shook her head. “The Faigne, here in our house! The Donkey grannies would keel over! They’d never believe me, even if I swore up, down, and round the bend…”

Then Jack did the most astonishing thing. From his back pocket he pulled out a knife and opened it. Grabbing the top of his ponytail, he sawed at the hair above the rubber band, and in a minute he held out his blond ponytail toward Violet.

“Show them this,” Jack said. His hair was now short and jaggedy. It made him look more like a regular sort of boy—the kind that Roo might have seen on the streets in Limpette.

Violet stared down at the flaxen thing.

“Is this a bribe?” she asked, raising her eyebrow at Jack.

“Yes,” he answered, smiling. And to Roo’s relief, she could see the Faigne again in his smile, and so apparently did Violet.

“All right.” Violet reached out and took the ponytail. “I’ll keep your secret.”

“Thank you, Violet,” Roo said.

Violet nodded, her eyes still on Jack.

“You look real enough,” she mused.

“You can squeeze me if you want,” he said.

“Well then, I think I will.” And she gave him a hug. When she let him go, she said, “Mind you, that was for my mother’s sake. She thinks you’re nothing but a boy who needs a home, and she’d plunk me on the head if I didn’t say, Patty McPhail, Donkey Island, first house on the left on Quarry Street. Done.”

With that, she walked up the garden’s incline to fetch Phillip. But as she bent to wake him, she paused, her head tipped to one side as she stared at the boulder.

“How pretty,” she said.

“What is?” Roo asked, hurrying over with Jack behind her.

“That little red flower,” Violet said. “I didn’t know flowers could grow on rocks like that.”

Indeed, growing out of a narrow crack in the boulder, by Phillip’s foot, was a spiky red flower where, Roo was quite sure, there hadn’t been one before.

Chapter 18

Every morning, Roo and Phillip did schoolwork in Phillip’s room, with Violet watching over. In her own way, she was as stern a teacher as Mrs. Wixton; but when the sound of Ms. Valentine’s boat motor started up to make its mail run to Choke Cherry, Violet set them free. They hurried into the passageway and slid down the chute to the garden, though Violet said it was bad luck for live children to go down it.

The garden was changing slowly. One morning Roo noticed a patch of pale green near one of the walls of the atrium. To her delight she found several tiny new shoots, filament thin, pushing out of the earth.

“Look!” She called Jack and Phillip over to show them.

As they kneeled by the young shoots, marveling, Roo stretched herself out against the ground and put her ear to the earth.

“What are you doing?” Phillip asked.

“Shhh,” she told him.

The boys waited in silence as Roo listened.

“I can hear it,” she said. “It’s louder now.”

“What is?” asked Phillip.

“The earth.”

“You can hear the earth?” Jack asked.

“Of course. Can’t you?”

Jack and Phillip shook their heads.

“That’s funny,” Roo said. “I thought everyone could.”

“What does it sound like?” Phillip asked.

No one had ever asked her that before. She listened again. It was like a long fluttering sigh made between closed lips. It rose and fell in pitch, and there seemed to be a song woven through it that never repeated itself. Roo took a breath and tested out a sound. She stopped and shook her head.

“It’s not exactly right,” she said.

“Do that again,” Phillip told her.

Roo gave it another try. She struggled to mimic the lilting rhythm, the way it snaked under and over itself.

When she stopped, Phillip was staring at her, his dark eyes so wide and bewildered that Roo sat up, alarmed.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“That was how it sounded,” he said. “Exactly how it sounded.”

“What?”

“My mother’s humming.”

Day by day, the garden’s ashy haze became interspersed with patches of fresh green. The first plants to bloom were the fragile shoots by the wall—with the most delicate yet complicated flowers Roo had ever seen. They had a slender bell-shaped center, ringed yellow on the inside, and lavender petals with gently fluted edges, like the sleeves of a small girl’s nightgown.

Every day they found new things pushing out of the soil. It felt as if each new flower had convinced yet another one to bloom. Tall spikes of red flowers that looked like Aladdin’s slippers attached to each other at the heel. Slender red-and-yellow flowers that flared out like torches and great papery white flowers with long necks that bent as elegantly as Sir’s; and all around the boulder, forming a crooked wreath, spiked flowers of purple, blue, and yellow grew within the cracks. Bromeliads, Phillip called them. He knew what all the flowers were called, and as they bloomed he greeted them by name, like old friends—blue passion flower, goat’s milk, parrot’s tongue.

Other living things began to find their way into the garden too. Bees hovered over the flowers and ladybugs examined new leaves. Once they found a green snake—exactly like Roo’s glass one—sunning itself on a rock.

“Yesterday, after you left, I noticed a little shoot growing up by the stump of one of the banana trees,” Roo said one morning, as they were waiting for Jack to arrive. “Jack thinks it might be a new tree beginning to grow.”

“Maybe the whole garden will be full of live trees one day, years and years from now,” Phillip said.

Roo had never heard her cousin talk about the future before. She looked at him, noticing that he had lost that withered, pinched look. There was a new quickness in his eyes and the purple smudges beneath them had faded.

“It might,” Roo said.

“How does it sound now?” Phillip asked.

“What?”

“The earth.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

She got down on her belly and pressed her ear to the ground. She had never listened to a garden in full bloom before. There were layers of sound threading out in all directions.

“The whole garden is humming!” Roo cried. “The earth is humming to the seeds and the seeds are humming to the roots and the roots are humming to the leaves and each part is telling another part to stay alive.”

One afternoon, after they had put it in a morning’s work on the garden and Phillip was back in his room, Jack and Roo took the canoe out to see the terns’ shoal. The snowy terns shrieked in protest as Roo and Jack approached the shoal, and others flew into the air and circled above them. Some of the nests had been plundered, with bits of shell littering the dried grass, but a few had clutches of beautiful brown-speckled eggs lying in the patchy nests.

“Who knows? Maybe some of them might make it,” Jack said.

They checked the shoal for the mink, and when they were satisfied that she was not there, they hopped back into the canoe and headed for Cough Rock.

The day had been warm and clear, with thin-skinned clouds raking across the sky. But as they entered the seaway, the air suddenly cooled.

Jack tipped his head back and looked up at the sky.

“Storm’s coming,” he said.

Not a moment later a dark purple cloud swept in above them, low in the sky, and as it unfurled the rain began to fall. It was a hard, furious rain. It whipped the river into confusion. Jack began to paddle hard, though Roo could not imagine how he could see where he was going. A tricky vapor hovered just over the river’s surface, and they sailed blindly into it. Each time the canoe pitched up, Roo sucked in her breath and held it until they crashed down again. She felt a rush of panic, certain that even if the frenzied water didn’t flip the canoe, they would certainly ram it into an island or shoal. The canoe’s bottom was filling—the tops of Roo’s sneakers were underwater. Squinting to keep the driving rain out of her eyes, she looked at Jack. His expression was grim but focused on a shadowy mass a few yards in front of them. It might have been land but it was impossible to be sure. Still, Jack tried to paddle toward it, fighting the currents. Each time the canoe was thrust aside by a wave, Jack maneuvered it back into line with the shadow, closer and closer until Roo was certain that it was an island. A wave sideswiped them and the canoe tilted so sharply that Roo let out a sharp yelp and a second later she felt the canoe’s bottom rubbing against land. Quickly Jack leapt out and held the canoe while Roo scrambled out after him, her legs shaking so badly that she stumbled.

“You all right?” Jack called to her over the sound of the thrashing rain.

Roo nodded.

“Do you know where we are?” she asked as they carried the canoe onto the island and set it down on the bank.

“I have an idea. I’ll tell you for sure in a minute,” he said.

They headed into a thicket of woods that flanked the shore and rose high above the river on a sharp incline. The canopy of leaves helped shield them from the rain and muffled its roar. Bit by bit, Roo could feel her muscles unravel as they hiked up the hill, the smell of pine growing sharper as they went. Quite suddenly the trees gave way and they stepped out into a grassy clearing, in the center of which was a large red boat. It was such an unexpected sight—a boat roosting on top of a hill in the middle of the woods—that Roo stood in the rain, just staring at it.

“Come on!” Jack said, and they both ran toward the boat’s set of makeshift stairs onto its deck and through a metal door that led inside.

“What is this place?” Roo asked, looking around at the paneled walls painted bright yellow, the rows of slatted wood benches, and the wide windows with the arched tops. A hammock hung from the ceiling in the front of the ship, just behind the captain’s wheel.

“It’s an old tour boat,” Jack said, collapsing into one of the bench seats. “No one’s lived in it since forever.”

“Do you stay here?” she asked, eyeing the hammock as she sat down on the bench in front of his.

“Sometimes. I’m careful though. Other people know about it too.” He lay down on one of the benches, his head below the window, and put his hands behind his head. “Want to know my favorite thing about this place?”

“Okay.”

“Lie down.”

She lay down on her seat and turned her head to look at Jack. Between the slats she could see the top of his flaxen head, then his eyes, then his mouth with its scrolled upper lip.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Now look out the window,” he said.

She twisted her head back a little to see out the arched window. The view was of the smoke-colored sky and, around the edges, the tops of the trees rocking in the wind. The dark clouds slowly slid past, making Roo feel like the boat was sailing in the opposite direction. Not sailing, really, but flying in the sky, just above the treetops.

Roo laughed.

“You see it?” he said, one delighted gray eye staring at her through the slat.

“Yes!” But she stopped laughing suddenly and sat up. “Pendragon.”

“What’s Pendragon?” Jack sat up too.

“A flying boat. It’s a story my father told me. The boat was red and yellow and it flew above the treetops….” She stared at Jack.

“Do you think he was here?” he asked.

Roo imagined her father winding through the river in his skiff, restless, fearless. His pale eyes always searching for something new. He would have found this place somehow. In his own way he was as wild as Jack.

“I’m sure he was.”

They both lay back down. Jack slipped his hand between a slat and held it out for her. She slid her hand out and took his, then turned back to the sky. The darkness was lifting. Bands of distilled sunlight were touching down on the wet pine needles, making them gleam silver.

“The rain’s stopping,” Roo said, turning back to Jack. He had been watching her, and now, caught, he blinked and his cheeks turned a deeper red. He looked upward at the thinning clouds.

“Not yet,” he said. But it was unclear if he was talking to Roo or to the sky.

The wind shifted and a purple-gray cloud, thick and mottled, moved across the sky. The light inside the boat dimmed, and Roo and Jack watched as Pendragon flew back into the storm, its hull just clearing the tops of the trees.

Chapter 19

Late in the afternoon, the clouds began to thin, finally vanishing altogether. In their place was a placid blue sky. Heavy with rainwater, the river was dark and thick, and it moved so slowly that the little canoe had a quiet trip back. But as they approached Cough Rock, Roo lifted her chin and stared at the island with a quizzical look on her face.

The great house seemed to stand out awkwardly against the sky, and when the canoe angled around the island toward the cove she noticed that the Whaler was missing.

Something’s happened, she thought.

Jack stopped paddling and tipped his head to the side, watching her carefully.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

At the sound of his voice, the dark feeling left. She smiled at him and nodded. But once she was inside the house, the apprehensive mood returned. She paused in the lobby, listening. The house was quiet, but that was not unusual. She sniffed the air, the way she used to when she found herself in uncertain situations. She smelled the scent of wood polish and damp air and beneath that something else too—a frenzied whipped-up residue.

She rushed across the lobby to the east wing and hurried up the stairs, then down the hall to Phillip’s room, where she burst through the open door. The room was in chaos. The floor was strewn with books and games that appeared to have been flung from all the shelves, and in the center of it all was Violet kneeling on the ground. Her back was to Roo, though she turned at the sound of Roo’s entrance. Roo thought that her eyes looked odd—pink and swollen. But Violet quickly looked away again and resumed picking up the pieces of a chess game. Roo watched in confusion as Violet carefully nestled each piece in the velvet-lined wooden box, twisting them so they faced outward.

“Where’s Phillip?” Roo asked, her voice rigid.

Violet said nothing at first. Then, “I swear that man washes in with the storms.”

“Who?” Roo asked. “Where’s Phillip?”

“He’s gone,” she said. She put the last chess piece in the box, then shut the lid and snapped the latch. “Dr. Oulette’s taken him.”

Violet turned now and looked at Roo. Her eyes were raw-lidded and bloodshot and she was clearly struggling to keep from crying again.

“Took him? Where?”

“To his clinic. In Rochester.”

“And Ms. Valentine let him?” Roo cried, appalled.

“She had no choice, Roo.”

“But Phillip was getting better,” Roo protested.

“That’s what Ms. Valentine told Mr. Fanshaw on the phone—even she saw it.”

“Then why would he have sent Phillip away?” Roo asked.

“It was Dr. Oulette’s doing. He’s been pressuring Mr. Fanshaw to send Phillip to his clinic for months now. The biting incident nearly sealed it, but your uncle kept putting off the decision. Then Dr. Oulette showed up this afternoon. He checks in on Phillip every few weeks. I don’t know what was said, but Phillip went into a rage. It was awful—as you can see.” She waved her arm around the room. “So the doctor called Mr. Fanshaw, and Mr. Fanshaw told us to pack Phillip’s bags, that he’d made his decision. He wouldn’t budge on it, no matter what Ms. Valentine said. I even took the phone myself, snatched it right out of Ms. Valentine’s hand, and I told him Phillip’s change was nothing short of a miracle. He said miracles were nothing short of hogwash. And that was that. Well, you know how willful Phillip is, and where do you think he gets it from?”

“But if my uncle just came back, if he just saw Phillip—”

Violet shook her head. “He told Ms. Valentine that he won’t be back in the States for another few months at least.”

“But Phillip will be a wreck by then! He’ll start wasting away just like before, worse than before because he’ll be away from the garden!” Roo felt her throat clench. “I didn’t even get to say good-bye to him.”

“It’s better that way, Roo. Really. It would have been worse for him if you were there, and it would have broken your heart. I nearly scooped him up and ran away with him myself, I felt so bad for him. My only consolation was that he scratched some lovely stripes into the doctor’s face.” Violet’s brown eyes narrowed. “I hope they leave a scar.”

The next morning the overcast sky turned the garden’s ceiling panes into dusky gray diamonds. Jack would not come for another hour. He would be crushed too when he heard the news.

Roo watched as the black squirrel climbed up the garden’s tallest tree, running along the ropy liana that coiled around it. He stopped, flipped himself around and stared down at her. It was just the same way he had looked on those stairs up to the trapdoor the first time she found the garden.

“I can’t follow you up there,” Roo said.

The squirrel turned and continued up the tree, higher and higher until he reached the very top. The uppermost tip of the liana hung off the highest limb. It was slender and tapered, bent like the tongue in the mask that hung in the east wing’s lobby. It was right then that Roo remembered what Phillip’s mother had told him about the liana. That they are the tongues of jungle spirits. And that if you want to summon someone, you hold the tip of a liana on a treetop and called the person’s name three times and they have to come.

Roo walked up to the tree and looked at it speculatively. She was not afraid of heights, but she had never scaled a tree before; she had spent so much time finding places that were small and hidden, it never occurred to her to try it. This was a straight-up climb with few branches along the way, but the liana was so thick it formed a sort of rough ladder.

She put her hand on one of the coils and tested it. It was dry and hard, rough against her skin. She pulled herself up and wedged her foot on the edge of the vine. It held her weight easily, so she took another step upward. Bit by bit she climbed as the black squirrel watched her from above. When she was up high enough she found that she was able to see the river through the glass-dome roof, stretching out in all directions. It made her dizzy so she looked up again and focused on the tip of the liana.

The tree’s trunk began to narrow, the branches growing precariously thin as she approached the top. The squirrel was perched on the branch just to her left, his eyes on her.

Almost there, almost there, she thought.

She grabbed the slender branch above her head. The liana coiled around it like a snake, narrowing. The tongue-like tip quivered as she pulled herself up. Leaning her body across the branch, barely breathing, she stretched farther and farther until her fingers touched the end of the liana. She closed her hand around it and shut her eyes.

“Emmett Fanshaw, Emmett Fanshaw, Emmett Fanshaw.”

Chapter 20

Mr. Fanshaw did not come home. One week passed. Then another. The sky turned hot and white. Outside the air grew thick and the sun beat down on the river so that it burned silver at midday. The fish plunged deeper in the water, trying to escape the heat.

In the garden, Jack and Roo continued to tend the newest green shoots. They grew more thickly every day. The weeds did too. Jack and Roo tugged at them day in and day out, though the heat in the garden bore down on them mercilessly. The soil could not drink enough. They had no sooner poured out their bucket loads than the earth turned ashen again.

“The flowers look feverish,” Jack said.

Roo knew what he meant. Their colors were almost too bright, like skin that was flushed. If the heat kept up, she doubted they could keep them alive.

Outside, Sir was croaking. He had staked out his hunting grounds by the cove, and now he often chased off ducks or loons that came too close, charging at them with his rasping call. But when the croaking didn’t stop, Jack frowned.

“What is it?” Roo asked.

“I don’t know.” Jack started for the trapdoor, but it was too late. Ms. Valentine’s head appeared, then her body. In a moment she was standing in the garden, her face pale with outrage, and beside her stood Mr. Fanshaw.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” Ms. Valentine demanded.

Roo’s attention was on her uncle though. His brow was cinched as his eyes drifted across the stretch of flowers blooming wildly everywhere.

“How is this possible?” he muttered.

“It’s the girl,” Ms. Valentine said. “I told you she has been a problem from the start. But this is beyond everything…I had no idea, Mr. Fanshaw.” She glared at Roo and demanded, “Who is the boy there? How did he get into the house? Does Violet know what you’ve been up to?”

“You can go, Ms. Valentine,” Mr. Fanshaw said. “Leave my bags in the boat, I’ll get them later.”

She left reluctantly, showering a withering look on both Roo and Jack before she went. For a moment, Mr. Fanshaw stood quite still, looking at the flourishing blooms tumbling across the garden. Curling petals dripping from tall stems nudged against wild bursts of orange and purple threadlike petals that reached out like sea anemones. And rising up out of the waxy green leaves, growing in the soil and on the rocks, were the brilliant spiked flames of the flower that had grown by Phillip’s foot. In her uncle’s face Roo recognized the look of wonder mixed with something else, something more tangled.

“How did you do this?” he asked in a faraway voice. “The garden was dead.”

“It was dying, but it wasn’t dead,” Roo told him.

“We watered it from the river,” Jack said.

“Phillip helped,” Roo added defiantly.

Mr. Fanshaw looked at her full-on, and once again Roo felt a lurch of emotion at how like her father he was. But then his expression hardened and her father vanished.

“You brought my son here? You had no right,” he reproached. “I shut the garden up for a reason.”

“For what reason?” Roo demanded.

“If you plan on living in this house, Roo, there’s one thing you’ll have to learn,” he said coldly. “The Fanshaws are private people. We keep our troubles to ourselves.”

“You keep things hidden. There’s a difference,” Roo shot back. “There were living things in this garden when you shut it up. You nearly killed them. And you’ve done the same thing to Phillip. You walled him up in this house, and now you’ve walled him up in some clinic! Everything is a secret here. Everything is hidden. I hate it! I don’t blame my father for running away!”

Mr. Fanshaw flinched at this. Then he looked around the garden again, his eyes settling for a moment on the boulder.

“You want to know why I shut up the garden?” he said.

Roo nodded.

“I suppose he’s told you the local gossip?” Mr. Fanshaw’s eyes flitted toward Jack. “About how my wife died?”

“I heard it, but not from Jack.”

“And do you believe it?” Mr. Fanshaw asked, as if he already knew the answer.

“No,” Roo answered.

“Well, you should. The gossip is right. Right on the whole.”

“What do you mean?” Roo asked.

“When I first saw Ana, she was sitting on a rock by a waterfall. I had gone in the waterfall to cool off, and when I came out, she was there, above me, watching. I’ve never felt easy around people, not like your father. But with Ana, it was different. It was effortless. She was—” He faltered, shook his head. “I couldn’t believe she loved me too. But she also loved the jungle, and she left it to be with me. So I built her a garden. I brought in the best landscapers from all over the country and they filled the garden with the same trees and plants and flowers that grew by that waterfall, where I first met her. I wanted the garden to be a living poem to her. Everything needed to be exactly the same. I insisted on it. But there was one plant that the landscapers couldn’t find—a type of bromeliad. It had a beautiful red bloom and had grown out of the rock that Ana was sitting on when I first saw her. The landscapers brought in plants that were like it, but they couldn’t find the exact one. Ana said she didn’t care, but I couldn’t rest until it was perfect. That’s how I’d always been. It was a point of pride for me. I went back to Brazil, back to the waterfall, and I found the plant. I hid it in a mask that was specially made with a false front and smuggled it back into the country—I was that obsessed—and I planted it there.” He pointed to the boulder. “What I didn’t know was that something was hidden in the plant. I found it later, after Ana became sick, when I realized what I should be looking for. A brown spider, very poisonous, hidden in the leaves. But it was already too late. Ana died just a week after the thing had bit her on the leg. I had the garden fumigated and then I shut it up. I just couldn’t bear to look at it again. It reminded me that I had been the cause of her death. And Phillip…” He sighed and shook his head. “I took his mother from him. And I’m a poor substitute. I couldn’t do anything to help him either, so I’ve just…stayed away.”

“Then why did you come back here now?” Roo asked. “Why did you come into the garden?”

“For the past two weeks I kept seeing Ana everywhere. I would see her standing beside a tree or moving through a marketplace. I’d even hear her voice calling my name. But when I’d come close she was never there. I had pushed her out of my mind for so long. Now it felt like she was insisting that I think of her, that I pay attention. I felt like she was calling me back to Cough Rock, back to her.”

“Phillip thought he heard her too,” Roo reminded him.

“I know. And now that I’m here, I think I was wrong. Ana wasn’t calling me back to her at all. She was calling me back to Phillip.”

Chapter 21

Draped across a branch, high up on the black squirrel’s tree, Roo looked down at the lianas that canopied the greens and pinks and reds of the garden. The view reminded Roo of the Lucite domes of flowers she used to place around the crawlspace under the trailer. How funny to see things from above when she had spent so much of her life burrowing into things, watching people’s feet pass by.

Down below she could see Phillip standing with his back pressed against the tall sheer rock, dressed only in shorts and no shirt. He was still thin but his shoulders were no longer hunched and his chest had filled out in the past few weeks. He was smiling and his eyes were squeezed shut as he called out, “Not yet!”

She turned away and looked through the garden’s domed glass roof. The St. Lawrence stretched in all directions, blue and burnished. Roo traced the white scars on the surface—one to a wooden boat, another, a frantic ringlet—to a Jet Ski. And then she saw what she was looking for: an angular gray-blue silhouette of a bird slicing through the sky, then circling back.

She climbed down the tree, using the thick, twisting lianas as steps. These days she scaled the tallest garden trees nimbly and with no fear. She passed the black squirrel on her way down just as he was climbing up. They glanced at each other quickly—the amiable greeting of two wild creatures with many things to do—then continued on their way.

There was a sudden loud hiss and Phillip yelled out, “It’s working!”

Roo looked down to see a curtain of water tumbling over the top of the sheer rock, splashing down into the once-empty pool and coursing through the streambed, filling it. Phillip was completely concealed behind the waterfall, except for his arms, which poked through the falls and waved at Roo. She could hear him laughing and laughing, the way he had laughed when he slid down the chute.

In a moment she saw her uncle climb up into the garden from the trapdoor, smiling at the rush of water, and at his son behind the waterfall, and finally at Roo, who jumped down from the tree.

“Going in, Roo?” He nodded toward the waterfall.

She smiled and shook her head. “Later.”

Outside, the day was clear and bright. She sat on the rocky ledge above the little cave where she had once hidden, and she watched the canoe approach the island. The river was unnaturally calm. Its surface was laid out like a fresh sheet snapped smooth, and the canoe slid across it effortlessly.

The sun caught on her silver ring and made it gleam white. Roo traced her finger over the two hearts. Had a friend of the girl from long-ago given it to her as a gift—the two hearts being each of them, fused together forever? On an impulse, Roo hopped off the ledge and scrambled into the cave. It had been so long since she’d been inside it. For a moment she remembered the comfort of crouching in tiny places and looking out at the world, watching it without being part of it. But it wasn’t long before her legs felt cramped and she began to crave the movement of the air outside. With her pointer finger she dug a hole into the soil. Then she removed the ring from her finger, dropped it in the hole, and covered it over with earth before scrambling back outside.

“Where are you off to?” Violet called, half her body leaning out of the first-floor window.

“To visit the tern chicks,” Roo called back.

“Good day for it,” Violet said. “I’ve hardly ever seen the river this quiet. The Donkey grannies must have left Jack a very generous offering this morning.”

The little canoe pulled up to the island. Jack steadied the canoe as Roo climbed in and raised the paddle in greeting toward Violet, flashing her a smile.

“Yes, yes, you’re very charming! Just remember to bring her back to us,” Violet called to him.

They skirted the islands, which seemed like old friends now. Roo knew the secret coves and the places where the deer swam from one island to another. She knew where a toppled pine served as a diving board for the ducks and where the crows had hidden their nests in the bluffs. Yet just when she thought she knew the St. Lawrence, the river showed her something new and mystifying. Just like Jack. Sometimes when they were in the garden she would look at him and wonder: When the trees grow tall, years and years from now, will we still know each other? Or will you just drift away one day, like the ice floes during spring melt?

“Hey.” Jack stretched his legs out and captured her ankle between his bare feet and held it there. “What are you thinking about?”

“I’m thinking…I’m thinking that I might like to learn how to swim.”

Jack’s face brightened. “Really?”

Roo nodded.

“I’ll teach you,” Jack said. “You’ll see. By the end of the summer, you’ll be swimming like a dolphin.”

Sir swooped down over them, then rose again and headed off toward Eel Bay to find some lunch. I think we’ll go with him now. The day is so clear, we’ll have a fine view of the islands below—green puzzle pieces flung across the water, waiting for someone to fit them back together again. If we follow Sir, we’ll pass directly over Cough Rock. Look down. There is the great stone house, so formidable even from above. You can see the garden’s glass dome in its center, cradled like a secret jewel.

A huge flock of cormorants has gathered beneath the island’s stone arch, stretching out their sleek black wings in the sun. It’s a strange sight. Cormorants have never collected on Cough Rock before, and Sir circles back to get a better look. All at once the cormorants take flight. Their bodies rise in a single black mass that billows out and twists, undulating like a woman’s long black mane of hair, whipping in the wind.

Acknowledgments

Sometimes it takes a village to write a book. In the case of The Humming Room, it was the village of Clayton, New York. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Star Carter, naturalist and Director of Land Conservation at Thousand Islands Land Trust, for connecting me to so many river folk, both human and otherwise. Thanks to Brian Parker, island mail carrier, who kindly let me hitch a ride on his green Starcraft. Thanks to the gracious Skip and Joan Tolette for introducing me to the beauty of Grindstone Island. Thanks are also due to Sue-Ryn Burns Hildebrand, wildlife rehabilitator and local heroine.

Many thanks to Neil Mattson, Assistant Professor of Horticulture at Cornell University, for his patient explanation of how an almost-dead garden could be resuscitated.

I am especially grateful to my editor, Jean Feiwel, who consistently knocks me out with her astute editorial suggestions and her faith in me. I appreciate it more than I can say. Thanks also to the wonderful Feiwel and Friends posse, Holly West, Rich Deas, and Jason Chan, whose cover art never fails to make me swoon with delight.

As always, I am forever and endlessly grateful to my extraordinary agent, Alice Tasman.

Special thanks to my dear friend Anne Mazer. This book could not have been written without her wise counsel. Thanks also to friends Megan Shull, Mollie Futterman, and Mary Waterman, and to my two favorite guys, Adam and Ian.

And of course, the greatest debt of gratitude belongs to Frances Hodgson Burnett, whose garden continues to bloom in readers’ hearts one hundred years later.

Thank you for reading this FEIWEL AND FRIENDS book.

The Friends who made

Jean Feiwel
publisher

Liz Szabla
editor-in-chief

Rich Deas
creative director

Elizabeth Fithian
marketing director

Holly West
assistant to the publisher

Dave Barrett
managing editor

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production manager

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publishing associate

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editorial assistant

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designer

Find out more about our authors and artists and our future publishing at macteenbooks.com.

OUR BOOKS ARE FRIENDS FOR LIFE

A FEIWEL AND FRIENDS BOOK

THE HUMMING ROOM. Copyright © 2012 by Ellen Potter. All rights reserved. For information, address Feiwel and Friends, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Potter, Ellen,
The humming room / Ellen Potter.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: Twelve-year-old orphan Roo Fanshaw is sent to live with an uncle she never knew in a largely uninhabited mansion on Cough Rock Island and discovers a wild river boy, an invalid cousin, and the mysteries of a hidden garden.

ISBN: 978-1-4668-0275-9

[1. Orphans—Fiction. 2. Gardens—Fiction. 3. Islands—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.P8518Hum 2012

[Fic]—dc23

2011033583

Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto
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Table of Contents

Title Page
Foreword

1 - There Is No One Left
2 - Mistress Mary Quite Contrary
3 - Across the Moor
4 - Martha
5 - The Cry In The Corridor
6 - “There Was Someone Crying—There Was!”
7 - The Key Of The Garden
8 - The Robin Who Showed the Way
9 - The Strangest House Any One Ever Lived In
10 - Dickon
11 - The Nest Of The Missel Thrush
12 - “Might I Have A Bit Of Earth?”
13 - “I Am Colin”
14 - A Young Rajah
15 - Nest Building
16 - “I Won’t!” said Mary
17 - A Tantrum
18 - “Tha Munnot Waste No Time”
19 - “It Has Come!”
20 - “I Shall Live for Ever—and Ever—and Ever!”
21 - Ben Weatherstaff
22 - When the Sun Went Down
23 - Magic
24 - “Let Them Laugh”
25 - The Curtain
26 - “It’s Mother!”
27 - In The Garden

The Life of Frances Hodgson Burnett
Afterword
Copyright Page

Foreword

THERE ARE TWO STORIES TOLD ABOUT FRANCES HODGSON Burnett’s original garden.

The first is about a dreamy little girl whose father dies suddenly. The family is forced to move into a shabbier neighborhood. One afternoon little Frances leans out of the window in this new home and spies a deserted garden in an unoccupied house next door. At once her imagination goes to work making up stories.

The second, which her son Lionel Burnett told, is about the mature Frances, now an established writer, who briefly owns an estate in Kent. The estate, Maytham Hall, has a walled and private garden which Frances uses as a retreat. Every lovely day, she takes her pen and a tablet of paper and sits in the garden, which is planted round with roses, writing the romantic novels for which she is famous.

Whether the original garden was in a shabby Manchester neighborhood or in a manor house in Kent does not matter. The garden that Frances Hodgson Burnett transplanted to the colder, windier Yorkshire moors was a literary garden that can blossom in any weather.

English book gardens have a hardy tradition of their own. Before Mrs. Burnett’s famous garden, there were such wonderful flowery enchantments as the garden in Through the Looking Glass with the talking flowers Tiger-lily, Daisy, and Rose. And the very real vegetable garden in Peter Rabbit.

But there is a special mythic quality in The Secret Garden, in which Mrs. Sowerby, mother of twelve children, is a kind of Earth Mother. And her son Dickon, whom we first see sitting under a tree, playing on a rude pipe and surrounded by animals, is a kind of Pan. And old Ben, the keeper of the garden, is an intermediary between the old gods and the new.

Mrs. Burnett loved gardens. In her autobiography, The One I Knew Best of All, she remembers several beloved edens where she played as a child and planted as an adult. She wrote a book In the Garden just before she died describing her experience as a gardener. Her son Vivian called her “the Passionate Gardener,” especially in the years from 1898 to her death.

There are a number of fascinating characters in The Secret Garden: cantankerous Mary, sickly Colin, the sprightly Dickon, the unhappy Mr. Craven, crabby Mrs. Medlock, nurturing Mrs. Sowerby, and the rest. But the most fascinating of all is neither human nor animal. It is the garden itself. It is as sick as Colin, as closed-in as Mary. It is as dormant and in need of reinvigoration as they. As surely as Mary is an orphan, that garden is orphaned. And it blossoms with care and love as does Mary, as does Colin. It quickens and it wakens along with the children. The garden, like Colin, like this wonderful, satisfying book itself will, in Colin’s words, “live for ever and ever and ever!”

—JANE YOLEN

1

There Is No One Left

WHEN MARY LENNOX WAS SENT TO MISSELTHWAITE MANOR to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too. She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another. Her father had held a position under the English Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself with gay people. She had not wanted a little girl at all, and when Mary was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah, who was made to understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib she must keep the child out of sight as much as possible. So when she was a sickly, fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and when she became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the way also. She never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the dark faces of her Ayah and the other native servants, and as they always obeyed her and gave her her own way in everything, because the Mem Sahib would be angry if she was disturbed by her crying, by the time she was six years old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived. The young English governess who came to teach her to read and write disliked her so much that she gave up her place in three months, and when other governesses came to try to fill it they always went away in a shorter time than the first one. So if Mary had not chosen to really want to know how to read books she would never have learned her letters at all.

One frightfully hot morning, when she was about nine years old, she awakened feeling very cross, and she became crosser still when she saw that the servant who stood by her bedside was not her Ayah.

“Why did you come?” she said to the strange woman. “I will not let you stay. Send my Ayah to me.”

The woman looked frightened, but she only stammered that the Ayah could not come, and when Mary threw herself into a passion and beat and kicked her, she looked only more frightened and repeated that it was not possible for the Ayah to come to Missie Sahib.

There was something mysterious in the air that morning. Nothing was done in its regular order and several of the native servants seemed missing, while those whom Mary saw slunk or hurried about with ashy and scared faces. But no one would tell her anything, and her Ayah did not come. She was actually left alone as the morning went on, and at last she wandered out into the garden and began to play by herself under a tree near the veranda. She pretended that she was making a flower-bed, and she stuck big scarlet hibiscus blossoms into little heaps of earth, all the time growing more and more angry and muttering to herself the things she would say and the names she would call Saidie when she returned.

“Pig! Pig! Daughter of Pigs!” she said, because to call a native a pig is the worst insult of all.

She was grinding her teeth and saying this over and over again when she heard her mother come out on the veranda with someone. She was with a fair young man and they stood talking together in low strange voices. Mary knew the fair young man who looked like a boy. She had heard that he was a very young officer who had just come from England. The child stared at him, but she stared most at her mother. She always did this when she had a chance to see her, because the Mem Sahib—Mary used to call her that oftener than anything else—was such a tall, slim, pretty person and wore such lovely clothes. Her hair was like curly silk and she had a delicate little nose which seemed to be disdaining things, and she had large laughing eyes. All her clothes were thin and floating, and Mary said they were “full of lace.” They looked fuller of lace than ever this morning, but her eyes were not laughing at all. They were large and scared and lifted imploringly to the fair boy officer’s face.

“Is it so very bad? Oh, is it?” Mary heard her say.

“Awfully,” the young man answered in a trembling voice. “Awfully, Mrs. Lennox. You ought to have gone to the hills two weeks ago.”

The Mem Sahib wrung her hands.

“Oh, I know I ought!” she cried. “I only stayed to go to that silly dinner party. What a fool I was!”

At that very moment such a loud sound of wailing broke out from the servants’ quarters that she clutched the young man’s arm, and Mary stood shivering from head to foot. The wailing grew wilder and wilder.

“What is it? What is it?” Mrs. Lennox gasped.

“Someone has died,” answered the boy officer. “You did not say it had broken out among your servants.”

“I did not know!” the Mem Sahib cried. “Come with me! Come with me!” and she turned and ran into the house.

After that, appalling things happened, and the mysteriousness of the morning was explained to Mary. The cholera had broken out in its most fatal form and people were dying like flies. The Ayah had been taken ill in the night, and it was because she had just died that the servants had wailed in the huts. Before the next day three other servants were dead and others had run away in terror. There was panic on every side, and dying people in all the bungalows.

During the confusion and bewilderment of the second day Mary hid herself in the nursery and was forgotten by everyone. Nobody thought of her, nobody wanted her, and strange things happened of which she knew nothing. Mary alternately cried and slept through the hours. She only knew that people were ill and that she heard mysterious and frightening sounds. Once she crept into the dining-room and found it empty, though a partly finished meal was on the table and chairs and plates looked as if they had been hastily pushed back when the diners rose suddenly for some reason. The child ate some fruit and biscuits, and being thirsty she drank a glass of wine which stood nearly filled. It was sweet, and she did not know how strong it was. Very soon it made her intensely drowsy, and she went back to her nursery and shut herself in again, frightened by cries she heard in the huts and by the hurrying sound of feet. The wine made her so sleepy that she could scarcely keep her eyes open and she lay down on her bed and knew nothing more for a long time.

Many things happened during the hours in which she slept so heavily, but she was not disturbed by the wails and the sound of things being carried in and out of the bungalow.

When she awakened she lay and stared at the wall. The house was perfectly still. She had never known it to be so silent before. She heard neither voices nor footsteps, and wondered if everybody had got well of the cholera and all the trouble was over. She wondered also who would take care of her now her Ayah was dead. There would be a new Ayah, and perhaps she would know some new stories. Mary had been rather tired of the old ones. She did not cry because her nurse had died. She was not an affectionate child and had never cared much for anyone. The noise and hurrying about and wailing over the cholera had frightened her, and she had been angry because no one seemed to remember that she was alive. Everyone was too panic-stricken to think of a little girl no one was fond of. When people had the cholera it seemed that they remembered nothing but themselves. But if everyone had got well again, surely someone would remember and come to look for her.

But no one came, and as she lay waiting the house seemed to grow more and more silent. She heard something rustling on the matting and when she looked down she saw a little snake gliding along and watching her with eyes like jewels. She was not frightened, because he was a harmless little thing who would not hurt her and he seemed in a hurry to get out of the room. He slipped under the door as she watched him.

“How queer and quiet it is,” she said. “It sounds as if there was no one in the bungalow but me and the snake.”

Almost the next minute she heard footsteps in the compound, and then on the veranda. They were men’s footsteps, and the men entered the bungalow and talked in low voices. No one went to meet or speak to them and they seemed to open doors and look into rooms.

“What desolation!” she heard one voice say. “That pretty, pretty woman! I suppose the child, too. I heard there was a child, though no one ever saw her.”

Mary was standing in the middle of the nursery when they opened the door a few minutes later. She looked an ugly, cross little thing and was frowning because she was beginning to be hungry and feel disgracefully neglected. The first man who came in was a large officer she had once seen talking to her father. He looked tired and troubled, but when he saw her he was so startled that he almost jumped back.

“Barney!” he cried out. “There is a child here! A child alone! In a place like this! Mercy on us, who is she?”

“I am Mary Lennox,” the little girl said, drawing herself up stiffly. She thought the man was very rude to call her father’s bungalow “A place like this!” “I fell asleep when everyone had the cholera and I have only just wakened up. Why does nobody come?”

“It is the child no one ever saw!” exclaimed the man, turning to his companions. “She has actually been forgotten!”

“Why was I forgotten?” Mary said, stamping her foot. “Why does nobody come?”

The young man whose name was Barney looked at her very sadly. Mary even thought she saw him wink his eyes as if to wink tears away.

“Poor little kid!” he said. “There is nobody left to come.”

It was in that strange and sudden way that Mary found out that she had neither father nor mother left; that they had died and been carried away in the night, and that the few native servants who had not died also had left the house as quickly as they could get out of it, none of them even remembering that there was a Missie Sahib. That was why the place was so quiet. It was true that there was no one in the bungalow but herself and the little rustling snake.

2

Mistress Mary Quite Contrary

MARY HAD LIKED TO LOOK AT HER MOTHER FROM A DISTANCE and she had thought her very pretty, but as she knew very little of her she could scarcely have been expected to love her or to miss her very much when she was gone. She did not miss her at all, in fact, and as she was a self-absorbed child she gave her entire thought to herself, as she had always done. If she had been older she would no doubt have been very anxious at being left alone in the world, but she was very young, and as she had always been taken care of, she supposed she always would be. What she thought was that she would like to know if she was going to nice people, who would be polite to her and give her her own way as her Ayah and the other native servants had done.

She knew that she was not going to stay at the English clergyman’s house where she was taken at first. She did not want to stay. The English clergyman was poor and he had five children nearly all the same age and they wore shabby clothes and were always quarrelling and snatching toys from each other. Mary hated their untidy bungalow and was so disagreeable to them that after the first day or two nobody would play with her. By the second day they had given her a nickname which made her furious.

It was Basil who thought of it first. Basil was a little boy with impudent blue eyes and a turned-up nose, and Mary hated him. She was playing by herself under a tree, just as she had been playing the day the cholera broke out. She was making heaps of earth and paths for a garden and Basil came and stood near to watch her. Presently he got rather interested and suddenly made a suggestion.

“Why don’t you put a heap of stones there and pretend it is a rockery?” he said. “There in the middle,” and he leaned over her to point.

“Go away!” cried Mary. “I don’t want boys. Go away!”

For a moment Basil looked angry, and then he began to tease. He was always teasing his sisters. He danced round and round her and made faces and sang and laughed.

“Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And marigolds all in a row.”

He sang it until the other children heard and laughed, too; and the crosser Mary got, the more they sang “Mistress Mary Quite Contrary”; and after that as long as she stayed with them they called her “Mistress Mary Quite Contrary” when they spoke of her to each other, and often when they spoke to her.

“You are going to be sent home,” Basil said to her, “at the end of the week. And we’re glad of it.”

“I am glad of it, too,” answered Mary. “Where is home?”

“She doesn’t know where home is!” said Basil, with seven-year-old scorn. “It’s England, of course. Our grandmama lives there and our sister Mabel was sent to her last year. You are not going to your grandmama. You have none. You are going to your uncle. His name is Mr. Archibald Craven.”

“I don’t know anything about him,” snapped Mary.

“I know you don’t,” Basil answered. “You don’t know anything. Girls never do. I heard Father and Mother talking about him. He lives in a great, big, desolate old house in the country and no one goes near him. He’s so cross he won’t let them, and they wouldn’t come if he would let them. He’s a hunchback, and he’s horrid.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Mary; and she turned her back and stuck her fingers in her ears, because she would not listen any more.

But she thought over it a great deal afterward; and when Mrs. Crawford told her that night that she was going to sail away to England in a few days and going to her uncle, Mr. Archibald Craven, who lived at Misselthwaite Manor, she looked so stony and stubbornly uninterested that they did not know what to think about her. They tried to be kind to her, but she only turned her face away when Mrs. Crawford attempted to kiss her, and held herself stiffly when Mr. Crawford patted her shoulder.

“She is such a plain child,” Mrs. Crawford said pityingly, afterward. “And her mother was such a pretty creature. She had a very pretty manner, too, and Mary has the most unattractive ways I ever saw in a child. The children call her ‘Mistress Mary Quite Contrary,’ and though it’s naughty of them, one can’t help understanding it.”

“Perhaps if her mother had carried her pretty face and her pretty manners oftener into the nursery Mary might have learned some pretty ways too. It is very sad, now the poor beautiful thing is gone, to remember that many people never even knew that she had a child at all.”

“I believe she scarcely ever looked at her,” sighed Mrs. Crawford. “When her Ayah was dead there was no one to give a thought to the little thing. Think of the servants running away and leaving her all alone in that deserted bungalow. Colonel McGrew said he nearly jumped out of his skin when he opened the door and found her standing by herself in the middle of the room.”

Mary made the long voyage to England under the care of an officer’s wife, who was taking her children to leave them in a boarding-school. She was very much absorbed in her own little boy and girl, and was rather glad to hand the child over to the woman Mr. Archibald Craven sent to meet her, in London. The woman was his housekeeper at Misselthwaite Manor, and her name was Mrs. Medlock. She was a stout woman, with very red cheeks and sharp black eyes. She wore a very pretty purple dress, a black silk mantle with jet fringe on it and a black bonnet with purple velvet flowers which stuck up and trembled when she moved her head. Mary did not like her at all, but as she very seldom liked people there was nothing remarkable in that; besides which it was very evident Mrs. Medlock did not think much of her.

“My word! she’s a plain little piece of goods!” she said. “And we’d heard that her mother was a beauty. She hasn’t handed much of it down, has she, ma’am?”

“Perhaps she will improve as she grows older,” the officer’s wife said good-naturedly. “If she were not so sallow and had a nicer expression, her features are rather good. Children alter so much.”

“She’ll have to alter a good deal,” answered Mrs. Medlock. “And there’s nothing likely to improve children at Misselthwaite—if you ask me!”

They thought Mary was not listening because she was standing a little apart from them at the window of the private hotel they had gone to. She was watching the passing buses and cabs, and people, but she heard quite well and was made very curious about her uncle and the place he lived in. What sort of a place was it, and what would he be like? What was a hunchback? She had never seen one. Perhaps there were none in India.

Since she had been living in other people’s houses and had had no Ayah, she had begun to feel lonely and to think queer thoughts which were new to her. She had begun to wonder why she had never seemed to belong to anyone even when her father and mother had been alive. Other children seemed to belong to their fathers and mothers, but she had never seemed to really be anyone’s little girl. She had had servants, and food and clothes, but no one had taken any notice of her. She did not know that this was because she was a disagreeable child; but then, of course, she did not know she was disagreeable. She often thought that other people were, but she did not know that she was so herself.

She thought Mrs. Medlock the most disagreeable person she had ever seen, with her common, highly coloured face and her common fine bonnet. When the next day they set out on their journey to Yorkshire, she walked through the station to the railway carriage with her head up and trying to keep as far away from her as she could, because she did not want to seem to belong to her. It would have made her very angry to think people imagined she was her little girl.

But Mrs. Medlock was not in the least disturbed by her and her thoughts. She was the kind of woman who would “stand no nonsense from young ones.” At least, that is what she would have said if she had been asked. She had not wanted to go to London just when her sister Maria’s daughter was going to be married, but she had a comfortable, well-paid place as housekeeper at Misselthwaite Manor and the only way in which she could keep it was to do at once what Mr. Archibald Craven told her to do. She never dared even to ask a question.

“Captain Lennox and his wife died of the cholera,” Mr. Craven had said in his short, cold way. “Captain Lennox was my wife’s brother and I am their daughter’s guardian. The child is to be brought here. You must go to London and bring her yourself.”

So she packed her small trunk and made the journey.

Mary sat in her corner of the railway carriage and looked plain and fretful. She had nothing to read or look at, and she had folded her thin little black-gloved hands in her lap. Her black dress made her look yellower than ever, and her limp light hair straggled from under her black crêpe hat.

“A more marred-looking young one I never saw in my life,” Mrs. Medlock thought. (Marred is a Yorkshire word that means spoiled and pettish.) She had never seen a child who sat so still without doing anything; and at last she got tired of watching her and began to talk in a brisk, hard voice.

“I suppose I may as well tell you something about where you are going to,” she said. “Do you know anything about your uncle?”

“No,” said Mary.

“Never heard your father and mother talk about him?”

“No,” said Mary, frowning. She frowned because she remembered that her father and mother had never talked to her about anything in particular. Certainly they had never told her things.

“Humph,” muttered Mrs. Medlock, staring at her queer, unresponsive little face. She did not say any more for a few moments and then she began again.

“I suppose you might as well be told something—to prepare you. You are going to a queer place.”

Mary said nothing at all, and Mrs. Medlock looked rather discomfited by her apparent indifference, but, after taking a breath, she went on.

“Not but that it’s a grand big place in a gloomy way, and Mr. Craven’s proud of it in his way—and that’s gloomy enough, too. The house is six hundred years old, and it’s on the edge of the moor, and there’s near a hundred rooms in it, though most of them’s shut up and locked. And there’s pictures and fine old furniture and things that’s been there for ages, and there’s a big park round it and gardens and trees with branches trailing to the ground—some of them.” She paused and took another breath. “But there’s nothing else,” she ended suddenly.

Mary had begun to listen in spite of herself. It all sounded so unlike India, and anything new rather attracted her. But she did not intend to look as if she were interested. That was one of her unhappy, disagreeable ways. So she sat still.

“Well,” said Mrs. Medlock. “What do you think of it?”

“Nothing,” she answered. “I know nothing about such places.”

That made Mrs. Medlock laugh a short sort of laugh.

“Eh!” she said, “but you are like an old woman. Don’t you care?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Mary, “whether I care or not.”

“You are right enough there,” said Mrs. Medlock. “It doesn’t. What you’re to be kept at Misselthwaite Manor for I don’t know, unless because it’s the easiest way. He’s not going to trouble himself about you, that’s sure and certain. He never troubles himself about no one.”

She stopped herself as if she had just remembered something in time.

“He’s got a crooked back,” she said. “That set him wrong. He was a sour young man and got no good of all his money and big place till he was married.”

Mary’s eyes turned toward her in spite of her intention not to seem to care. She had never thought of the hunchback’s being married and she was a trifle surprised. Mrs. Medlock saw this, and as she was a talkative woman she continued with more interest. This was one way of passing some of the time, at any rate.

“She was a sweet, pretty thing and he’d have walked the world over to get her a blade o’ grass she wanted. Nobody thought she’d marry him, but she did, and people said she married him for his money. But she didn’t—she didn’t,” positively. “When she died—”

Mary gave a little involuntary jump.

“Oh! did she die?” she exclaimed, quite without meaning to. She had just remembered a French fairy story she had once read called “Riquet à la Houppe.” It had been about a poor hunchback and a beautiful princess and it had made her suddenly sorry for Mr. Archibald Craven.

“Yes, she died,” Mrs. Medlock answered. “And it made him queerer than ever. He cares about nobody. He won’t see people. Most of the time he goes away, and when he is at Misselthwaite he shuts himself up in the West Wing and won’t let anyone but Pitcher see him. Pitcher’s an old fellow, but he took care of him when he was a child and he knows his ways.”

It sounded like something in a book and it did not make Mary feel cheerful. A house with a hundred rooms, nearly all shut up and with their doors locked—a house on the edge of a moor—whatsoever a moor was—sounded dreary. A man with a crooked back who shut himself up also! She stared out of the window with her lips pinched together, and it seemed quite natural that the rain should have begun to pour down in grey slanting lines and splash and stream down the window-panes. If the pretty wife had been alive she might have made things cheerful by being something like her own mother and by running in and out and going to parties as she had done in frocks “full of lace.” But she was not there any more.

“You needn’t expect to see him, because ten to one you won’t,” said Mrs. Medlock. “And you mustn’t expect that there will be people to talk to you. You’ll have to play about and look after yourself. You’ll be told what rooms you can go into and what rooms you’re to keep out of. There’s gardens enough. But when you’re in the house don’t go wandering and poking about. Mr. Craven won’t have it.”

“I shall not want to go poking about,” said sour little Mary; and just as suddenly as she had begun to be rather sorry for Mr. Archibald Craven she began to cease to be sorry and to think he was unpleasant enough to deserve all that had happened to him.

And she turned her face toward the streaming panes of the window of the railway carriage and gazed out at the grey rainstorm which looked as if it would go on for ever and ever. She watched it so long and steadily that the greyness grew heavier and heavier before her eyes and she fell asleep.

3

Across the Moor

SHE SLEPT A LONG TIME, AND WHEN SHE AWAKENED MRS. Medlock had bought a lunch-basket at one of the stations and they had some chicken and cold beef and bread-and-butter and some hot tea. The rain seemed to be streaming down more heavily than ever, and everybody in the station wore wet and glistening waterproofs. The guard lighted the lamps in the carriage, and Mrs. Medlock cheered up very much over her tea and chicken and beef. She ate a great deal and afterward fell asleep herself, and Mary sat and stared at her and watched her fine bonnet slip on one side until she herself fell asleep once more in the corner of the carriage, lulled by the splashing of the rain against the windows. It was quite dark when she awakened again. The train had stopped at a station and Mrs. Medlock was shaking her.

“You have had a sleep!” she said. “It’s time to open your eyes! We’re at Thwaite Station and we’ve got a long drive before us.”

Mary stood up and tried to keep her eyes open while Mrs. Medlock collected her parcels. The little girl did not offer to help her, because in India native servants always picked up or carried things, and it seemed quite proper that other people should wait on one.

The station was a small one and nobody but themselves seemed to be getting out of the train. The stationmaster spoke to Mrs. Medlock in a rough good-natured way, pronouncing his words in a queer broad fashion which Mary found out afterward was Yorkshire.

“I see tha’s got back,” he said. “An’ tha’s browt th’ young ’un with thee.”

“Aye, that’s her,” answered Mrs. Medlock, speaking with a Yorkshire accent herself and jerking her head over her shoulder toward Mary. “How’s thy missus?”

“Well enow. Th’ carriage is waitin’ outside for thee.”

A brougham stood on the road before the little outside platform. Mary saw that it was a smart carriage and that it was a smart footman who helped her in. His long waterproof coat and the waterproof covering of his hat were shining and dripping with rain as everything was, the burly stationmaster included.

When he shut the door, mounted the box with the coachman, and they drove off, the little girl found herself seated in a comfortably cushioned corner, but she was not inclined to go to sleep again. She sat and looked out of the window, curious to see something of the road over which she was being driven to the queer place Mrs. Medlock had spoken of. She was not at all a timid child and she was not exactly frightened, but she felt that there was no knowing what might happen in a house with a hundred rooms nearly all shut up—a house standing on the edge of a moor.

“What is a moor?” she said suddenly to Mrs. Medlock.

“Look out of the window in about ten minutes and you’ll see,” the woman answered. “We’ve got to drive five miles across Missel Moor before we get to the Manor. You won’t see much because it’s a dark night, but you can see something.”

Mary asked no more questions, but waited in the darkness of her corner, keeping her eyes on the window. The carriage lamps cast rays of light a little distance ahead of them and she caught glimpses of the things they passed. After they had left the station they had driven through a tiny village and she had seen whitewashed cottages and the lights of a public-house. Then they had passed a church and a vicarage and a little shop-window or so in a cottage with toys and sweets and odd things set out for sale. Then they were on the high road and she saw hedges and trees. After that there seemed nothing different for a long time—or at least it seemed a long time to her.

At last the horses began to go more slowly, as if they were climbing uphill, and presently there seemed to be no more hedges and no more trees. She could see nothing, in fact, but a dense darkness on either side. She leaned forward and pressed her face against the window just as the carriage gave a big jolt.

“Eh! We’re on the moor now sure enough,” said Mrs. Medlock.

The carriage lamps shed a yellow light on a rough-looking road which seemed to be cut through bushes and low-growing things which ended in the great expanse of dark apparently spread out before and around them. A wind was rising and making a singular, wild, low, rushing sound.

“It’s—it’s not the sea, is it?” said Mary, looking round at her companion.

“No, not it,” answered Mrs. Medlock. “Nor it isn’t fields nor mountains, it’s just miles and miles and miles of wild land that nothing grows on but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing lives on but wild ponies and sheep.”

“I feel as if it might be the sea, if there were water on it,” said Mary. “It sounds like the sea just now.”

“That’s the wind blowing through the bushes,” Mrs. Medlock said. “It’s a wild, dreary enough place to my mind, though there’s plenty that likes it—particularly when the heather’s in bloom.”

On and on they drove through the darkness, and though the rain stopped, the wind rushed by and whistled and made strange sounds. The road went up and down, and several times the carriage passed over a little bridge beneath which water rushed very fast with a great deal of noise. Mary felt as if the drive would never come to an end, and that the wide, bleak moor was a wide expanse of black ocean through which she was passing on a strip of dry land.

“I don’t like it,” she said to herself. “I don’t like it,” and she pinched her thin lips more tightly together.

The horses were climbing up a hilly piece of road when she first caught sight of a light. Mrs. Medlock saw it as soon as she did and drew a long sigh of relief.

“Eh, I am glad to see that bit o’ light twinkling,” she exclaimed. “It’s the light in the lodge window. We shall get a good cup of tea after a bit, at all events.”

It was “after a bit,” as she said, for when the carriage passed through the park gates there was still two miles of avenue to drive through, and the trees (which nearly met overhead) made it seem as if they were driving through a long dark vault.

They drove out of the vault into a clear space and stopped before an immensely long but low-built house which seemed to ramble round a stone court. At first Mary thought that there were no lights at all in the windows, but as she got out of the carriage she saw that one room in a corner upstairs showed a dull glow.

The entrance door was a huge one made of massive, curiously shaped panels of oak studded with big iron nails and bound with great iron bars. It opened into an enormous hall, which was so dimly lighted that the faces in the portraits on the walls and the figures in the suits of armour made Mary feel that she did not want to look at them. As she stood on the stone floor she looked a very small, odd little black figure, and she felt as small and lost and odd as she looked.

A neat, thin old man stood near the manservant who opened the door for them.

“You are to take her to her room,” he said in a husky voice. “He doesn’t want to see her. He’s going to London in the morning.”

“Very well, Mr. Pitcher,” Mrs. Medlock answered. “So long as I know what’s expected of me, I can manage.”

“What’s expected of you, Mrs. Medlock,” Mr. Pitcher said, “is that you make sure that he’s not disturbed and that he doesn’t see what he doesn’t want to see.”

And then Mary Lennox was led up a broad staircase and down a long corridor and up a short flight of steps and through another corridor and another, until a door opened in a wall and she found herself in a room with a fire in it and a supper on a table.

Mrs. Medlock said unceremoniously:

“Well, here you are! This room and the next are where you’ll live—and you must keep to them. Don’t you forget that!”

It was in this way Mistress Mary arrived at Misselthwaite Manor, and she had perhaps never felt quite so contrary in all her life.

4

Martha

WHEN SHE OPENED HER EYES IN THE MORNING IT WAS BECAUSE a young housemaid had come into her room to light the fire and was kneeling on the hearth-rug raking out the cinders noisily. Mary lay and watched her for a few moments and then began to look about the room. She had never seen a room at all like it and thought it curious and gloomy. The walls were covered with tapestry with a forest scene embroidered on it. There were fantastically dressed people under the trees, and in the distance there was a glimpse of the turrets of a castle. There were hunters and horses and dogs and ladies. Mary felt as if she were in the forest with them. Out of a deep window she could see a great climbing stretch of land which seemed to have no trees on it, and to look rather like an endless, dull, purplish sea.

“What is that?” she said, pointing out of the window.

Martha, the young housemaid, who had just risen to her feet, looked and pointed also.

“That there?” she said.

“Yes.”

“That’s th’ moor,” with a good-natured grin. “Does tha’ like it?”

“No,” answered Mary. “I hate it.”

“That’s because tha‘rt not used to it,” Martha said, going back to her hearth. “Tha’ thinks it’s too big an’ bare now. But tha’ will like it.”

“Do you?” inquired Mary.

“Aye, that I do,” answered Martha, cheerfully polishing away at the grate. “I just love it. It’s none bare. It’s covered wi’ growin’ things as smells sweet. It’s fair lovely in spring an’ summer when th’ gorse an’ broom an’ heather’s in flower. It smells o’ honey an’ there’s such a lot o’ fresh air—an’ th’ sky looks so high an’ th’ bees an’ skylarks makes such a nice noise hummin’ an’ singin’. Eh! I wouldn’t live away from th’ moor for anythin’.”

Mary listened to her with a grave, puzzled expression. The native servants she had been used to in India were not in the least like this. They were obsequious and servile and did not presume to talk to their masters as if they were their equals. They made salaams and called them “protector of the poor” and names of that sort. Indian servants were commanded to do things, not asked. It was not the custom to say “please” and “thank you,” and Mary had always slapped her Ayah in the face when she was angry. She wondered a little what this girl would do if one slapped her in the face. She was a round, rosy, good-natured-looking creature, but she had a sturdy way which made Mistress Mary wonder if she might not even slap back—if the person who slapped her was only a little girl.

“You are a strange servant,” she said from her pillows, rather haughtily.

Martha sat up on her heels, with her blacking-brush in her hand, and laughed, without seeming the least out of temper.

“Eh! I know that,” she said. “If there was a grand missus at Misselthwaite I should never have been even one of th’ under-housemaids. I might have been let to be scullery-maid, but I’d never have been let upstairs. I’m too common an’ I talk too much Yorkshire. But this is a funny house for all it’s so grand. Seems like there’s neither master nor mistress except Mr. Pitcher an’ Mrs. Medlock. Mr. Craven, he won’t be troubled about anythin’ when he’s here, an’ he’s nearly always away. Mrs. Medlock gave me th’ place out o’ kindness. She told me she could never have done it if Misselthwaite had been like other big houses.”

“Are you going to be my servant?” Mary asked, still in her imperious little Indian way.

Martha began to rub her grate again.

“I’m Mrs. Medlock’s servant,” she said stoutly. “An’ she’s Mr. Craven’s—but I’m to do the housemaid’s work up here an’ wait on you a bit. But you won’t need much waitin’ on.”

“Who is going to dress me?” demanded Mary.

Martha sat up on her heels again and started. She spoke in broad Yorkshire in her amazement.

“Canna’ tha’ dress thysen!” she said.

“What do you mean? I don’t understand your language,” said Mary.

“Eh! I forgot,” Martha said. “Mrs. Medlock told me I’d have to be careful or you wouldn’t know what I was sayin’. I mean can’t you put on your own clothes?”

“No,” answered Mary, quite indignantly. “I never did in my life. My Ayah dressed me, of course.”

“Well,” said Martha, evidently not in the least aware that she was impudent, “it’s time tha’ should learn. Tha’ cannot begin younger. It’ll do thee good to wait on thysen a bit. My mother always said she couldn’t see why grand people’s children didn’t turn out fair fools—what with nurses an’ bein’ washed an’ dressed an’ took out to walk as if they was puppies!”

“It is different in India,” said Mistress Mary disdainfully. She could scarcely stand this.

But Martha was not at all crushed.

“Eh! I can see it’s different,” she answered almost sympathetically. “I dare say it’s because there’s such a lot o’ blacks there instead o’ respectable white people. When I heard you was comin’ from India I thought you was a black too.”

Mary sat up in bed, furious.

“What!” she said. “What! You thought I was a native. You—you daughter of a pig!”

Martha stared and looked hot.

“Who are you callin’ names?” she said. “You needn’t be so vexed. That’s not th’ way for a young lady to talk. I’ve nothin’ against th’ blacks. When you read about ‘em in tracts they’re always very religious. You always read as a black’s a man an’ a brother. I’ve never seen a black, an’ I was fair pleased to think I was goin’ to see one close. When I come in to light your fire this mornin’ I crep’ up to your bed an’ pulled th’ cover back careful to look at you. An’ there you was,” disappointedly, “no more black than me—for all you’re so yeller.”

Mary did not even try to control her rage and humiliation.

“You thought I was a native! You dared! You don’t know anything about natives! They are not people—they’re servants who must salaam to you. You know nothing about India. You know nothing about anything!”

She was in such a rage and felt so helpless before the girl’s simple stare, and somehow she suddenly felt so horribly lonely and far away from everything she understood and which understood her, that she threw herself face downward on the pillows and burst into passionate sobbing. She sobbed so unrestrainedly that good-natured Yorkshire Martha was a little frightened and quite sorry for her. She went to the bed and bent over her.

“Eh! you mustn’t cry like that there!” she begged. “You mustn’t for sure. I didn’t know you’d be vexed. I don’t know anythin’ about anythin’—just like you said. I beg your pardon, miss. Do stop cryin’.”

There was something comforting and really friendly in her queer Yorkshire speech and sturdy way which had a good effect on Mary. She gradually ceased crying and became quiet. Martha looked relieved.

“It’s time for thee to get up now,” she said. “Mrs. Medlock said I was to carry tha’ breakfast an’ tea an’ dinner into th’ room next to this. It’s been made into a nursery for thee. I’ll help thee on with thy clothes if tha’ll get out o’ bed. If th’ buttons are at th’ back tha’ cannot button them up tha’self.”

When Mary at last decided to get up, the clothes Martha took from the wardrobe were not the ones she had worn when she arrived the night before with Mrs. Medlock.

“Those are not mine,” she said. “Mine are black.”

She looked the thick white wool coat and dress over, and added with cool approval:

“Those are nicer than mine.”

“These are th’ ones tha’ must put on,” Martha answered. “Mr. Craven ordered Mrs. Medlock to get ‘em in London. He said ‘I won’t have a child dressed in black wanderin’ about like a lost soul,’ he said. ‘It’d make the place sadder than it is. Put colour on her.’ Mother she said she knew what he meant. Mother always knows what a body means. She doesn’t hold with black hersel’.”

“I hate black things,” said Mary.

The dressing process was one which taught them both something. Martha had “buttoned up” her little sisters and brothers, but she had never seen a child who stood still and waited for another person to do things for her as if she had neither hands nor feet of her own.

“Why doesn’t tha’ put on tha’ own shoes?” she said when Mary quietly held out her foot.

“My Ayah did it,” answered Mary, staring. “It was the custom.”

She said that very often—“It was the custom.” The native servants were always saying it. If one told them to do a thing their ancestors had not done for a thousand years they gazed at one mildly and said, “It is not the custom” and one knew that was the end of the matter.

It had not been the custom that Mistress Mary should do anything but stand and allow herself to be dressed like a doll, but before she was ready for breakfast she began to suspect that her life at Misselthwaite Manor would end by teaching her a number of things quite new to her—things such as putting on her own shoes and stockings, and picking up things she let fall. If Martha had been a well-trained fine young lady’s-maid she would have been more subservient and respectful and would have known that it was her business to brush hair, and button boots, and pick things up and lay them away. She was, however, only an untrained Yorkshire rustic who had been brought up in a moorland cottage with a swarm of little brothers and sisters who had never dreamed of doing anything but waiting on themselves and on the younger ones who were either babies in arms or just learning to totter about and tumble over things.

If Mary Lennox had been a child who was ready to be amused she would perhaps have laughed at Martha’s readiness to talk, but Mary only listened to her coldly and wondered at her freedom of manner. At first she was not at all interested, but gradually, as the girl rattled on in her good-tempered, homely way, Mary began to notice what she was saying.

“Eh! you should see ‘em all,” she said. “There’s twelve of us an’ my father only gets sixteen shilling a week. I can tell you my mother’s put to it to get porridge for ‘em all. They tumble about on th’ moor an’ play there all day, an’ mother says th’ air of th’ moor fattens ‘em. She says she believes they eat th’ grass same as th’ wild ponies do. Our Dickon, he’s twelve years old and he’s got a young pony he calls his own.”

“Where did he get it?” asked Mary.

“He found it on th’ moor with its mother when it was a little one, an’ he began to make friends with it an’ give it bits o’ bread an’ pluck young grass for it. And it got to like him so it follows him about an’ it lets him get on its back. Dickon’s a kind lad an’ animals likes him.”

Mary had never possessed an animal pet of her own and had always thought she should like one. So she began to feel a slight interest in Dickon, and as she had never before been interested in anyone but herself, it was the dawning of a healthy sentiment. When she went into the room which had been made into a nursery for her, she found that it was rather like the one she had slept in. It was not a child’s room, but a grown-up person’s room, with gloomy old pictures on the walls and heavy old oak chairs. A table in the centre was set with a good substantial breakfast. But she had always had a very small appetite, and she looked with something more than indifference at the first plate Martha set before her.

“I don’t want it,” she said.

“Tha’ doesn’t want thy porridge!” Martha exclaimed incredulously.

“No.”

“Tha’ doesn’t know how good it is. Put a bit o’ treacle on it or a bit o’ sugar.”

“I don’t want it,” repeated Mary.

“Eh!” said Martha. “I can’t abide to see good victuals go to waste. If our children was at this table they’d clean it bare in five minutes.”

“Why?” said Mary coldly.

“Why!” echoed Martha. “Because they scarce ever had their stomachs full in their lives. They’re as hungry as young hawks an’ foxes.”

“I don’t know what it is to be hungry,” said Mary, with the indifference of ignorance.

Martha looked indignant.

“Well, it would do thee good to try it. I can see that plain enough,” she said outspokenly. “I’ve no patience with folk as sits an’ just stares at good bread an’ meat. My word! don’t I wish Dickon and Phil an’ Jane an’ th’ rest of ’em had what’s here under their pinafores.”

“Why don’t you take it to them?” suggested Mary.

“It’s not mine,” answered Martha stoutly. “An’ this isn’t my day out. I get my day out once a month same as th’ rest. Then I go home an’ clean up for mother an’ give her a day’s rest.”

Mary drank some tea and ate a little toast and some marmalade.

“You wrap up warm an’ run out an’ play you,” said Martha. “It’ll do you good and give you some stomach for your meat.”

Mary went to the window. There were gardens and paths and big trees, but everything looked dull and wintry.

“Out? Why should I go out on a day like this?”

“Well, if tha’ doesn’t go out tha’lt have to stay in, an’ what has tha’ got to do?”

Mary glanced about her. There was nothing to do. When Mrs. Medlock had prepared the nursery she had not thought of amusement. Perhaps it would be better to go and see what the gardens were like.

“Who will go with me?” she inquired.

Martha stared.

“You’ll go by yourself,” she answered. “You’ll have to learn to play like other children does when they haven’t got sisters and brothers. Our Dickon goes off on th’ moor by himself an’ plays for hours. That’s how he made friends with th’ pony. He’s got sheep on th’ moor that knows him, an’ birds as comes an’ eats out of his hand. However little there is to eat, he always saves a bit o’ his bread to coax his pets.”

It was really this mention of Dickon which made Mary decide to go out, though she was not aware of it. There would be birds outside, though there would not be ponies or sheep. They would be different from the birds in India, and it might amuse her to look at them.

Martha found her coat and hat for her and a pair of stout little boots and she showed her her way downstairs.

“If tha’ goes round that way tha’ll come to th’ gardens,” she said, pointing to a gate in a wall of shrubbery. “There’s lots o’ flowers in summer-time, but there’s nothin’ bloomin’ now.” She seemed to hesitate a second before she added, “One of th’ gardens is locked up. No one has been in it for ten years.”

“Why?” asked Mary in spite of herself. Here was another locked door added to the hundred in the strange house.

“Mr. Craven had it shut when his wife died so sudden. He won’t let no one go inside. It was her garden. He locked th’ door an’ dug a hole and buried th’ key.There’s Mrs. Medlock’s bell ringing—I must run.”

After she was gone Mary turned down the walk which led to the door in the shrubbery. She could not help thinking about the garden which no one had been into for ten years. She wondered what it would look like and whether there were any flowers still alive in it. When she had passed through the shrubbery gate she found herself in great gardens, with wide lawns and winding walks with clipped borders. There were trees, and flower-beds, and evergreens clipped into strange shapes, and a large pool with an old grey fountain in its midst. But the flower-beds were bare and wintry and the fountain was not playing. This was not the garden which was shut up. How could a garden be shut up? You could always walk into a garden.

She was just thinking this when she saw that, at the end of the path she was following, there seemed to be a long wall, with ivy growing over it. She was not familiar enough with England to know that she was coming upon the kitchen gardens where the vegetables and fruit were growing. She went toward the wall and found that there was a green door in the ivy, and that it stood open. This was not the closed garden, evidently, and she could go into it.

She went through the door and found that it was a garden with walls all round it and that it was only one of several walled gardens which seemed to open into one another. She saw another open green door, revealing bushes and pathways between beds containing winter vegetables. Fruit trees were trained flat against the wall, and over some of the beds there were glass frames. The place was bare and ugly enough, Mary thought, as she stood and stared about her. It might be nicer in summer when things were green, but there was nothing pretty about it now.

Presently an old man with a spade over his shoulder walked through the door leading from the second garden. He looked startled when he saw Mary, and then touched his cap. He had a surly old face, and did not seem at all pleased to see her—but then she was displeased with his garden and wore her “quite contrary” expression, and certainly did not seem at all pleased to see him.

“What is this place?” she asked.

“One o’ th’ kitchen gardens,” he answered.

“What is that?” said Mary, pointing through the other green door.

“Another of ‘em,” shortly. “There’s another on t’other side o’ th’ wall an’ there’s th’ orchard t‘other side o’ that.”

“Can I go in them?” asked Mary.

“If tha’ likes. But there’s nowt to see.”

Mary made no response. She went down the path and through the second green door. There she found more walls and winter vegetables and glass frames, but in the second wall there was another green door and it was not open. Perhaps it led into the garden which no one had seen for ten years. As she was not at all a timid child and always did what she wanted to do, Mary went to the green door and turned the handle. She hoped the door would not open because she wanted to be sure she had found the mysterious garden—but it did open quite easily and she walked through it and found herself in an orchard. There were walls all around it also and trees trained against them, and there were bare fruit trees growing in the winter-browned grass—but there was no green door to be seen anywhere. Mary looked for it, and yet when she had entered the upper end of the garden she had noticed that the wall did not seem to end with the orchard, but to extend beyond it as if it enclosed a place at the other side. She could see the tops of trees above the wall, and when she stood still she saw a bird with a bright red breast sitting on the topmost branch of one of them, and suddenly he burst into his winter song—almost as if he had caught sight of her and was calling to her.

She stopped and listened to him and somehow his cheerful, friendly little whistle gave her a pleased feeling—even a disagreeable little girl may be lonely, and the big closed house and big bare moor and big bare gardens had made this one feel as if there was no one left in the world but herself. If she had been an affectionate child, who had been used to being loved, she would have broken her heart, but even though she was “Mistress Mary Quite Contrary” she was desolate, and the bright-breasted little bird brought a look into her sour little face which was almost a smile. She listened to him until he flew away. He was not like an Indian bird and she liked him and wondered if she should ever see him again. Perhaps he lived in the mysterious garden and knew all about it.

Perhaps it was because she had nothing whatever to do that she thought so much of the deserted garden. She was curious about it, and wanted to see what it was like. Why had Mr. Archibald Craven buried the key? If he had liked his wife so much why did he hate her garden? She wondered if she should ever see him, but she knew that if she did she should not like him, and he would not like her, and that she should only stand and stare at him and say nothing, though she should be wanting dreadfully to ask him why he had done such a queer thing.

“People never like me and I never like people,” she thought. “And I never can talk as the Crawford children could. They were always talking and laughing and making noises.”

She thought of the robin and of the way he seemed to sing his song at her, and as she remembered the tree-top he perched on she stopped rather suddenly on the path.

“I believe that tree was in the secret garden—I feel sure it was,” she said. “There was a wall round the place and there was no door.”

She walked back into the first kitchen garden she had entered and found the old man digging there. She went and stood beside him and watched him a few moments in her cold little way. He took no notice of her and so at last she spoke to him.

“I have been into the other gardens,” she said.

“There was nothin’ to prevent thee,” he answered crustily.

“I went into the orchard.”

“There was no dog at th’ door to bite thee,” he answered.

“There was no door there into the other garden,” said Mary.

“What garden?” he said in a rough voice, stopping his digging for a moment.

“The one on the other side of the wall,” answered Mistress Mary. “There were trees there—I saw the tops of them. A bird with a red breast was sitting on one of them, and he sang.”

To her surprise the surly old weather-beaten face actually changed its expression. A slow smile spread over it and the gardener looked quite different. It made her think that it was curious how much nicer a person looked when he smiled. She had not thought of it before.

He turned about to the orchard side of his garden and began to whistle—a low soft whistle. She could not understand how such a surly man could make such a coaxing sound.

Almost the next moment a wonderful thing happened. She heard a soft little rushing flight through the air—and it was the bird with the red breast flying to them, and he actually alighted on the big clod of earth quite near to the gardener’s foot.

“Here he is,” chuckled the old man, and then he spoke to the bird as if he were speaking to a child.

“Where has tha’ been, tha’ cheeky little beggar?” he said. “I’ve not seen thee before today. Has tha’ begun tha’ courtin’ this early in th’ season? Tha‘rt too for’ard.”

The bird put his tiny head on one side and looked up at him with his soft bright eye which was like a black dewdrop. He seemed quite familiar and not the least afraid. He hopped about and pecked the earth briskly, looking for seeds and insects. It actually gave Mary a queer feeling in her heart, because he was so pretty and cheerful and seemed so like a person. He had a tiny plump body and a delicate beak, and slender delicate legs.

“Will he always come when you call him?” she asked almost in a whisper.

“Aye, that he will. I’ve knowed him ever since he was a fledgling. He come out of th’ nest in th’ other garden, an’ when first he flew over th’ wall he was too weak to fly back for a few days an’ we got friendly. When he went over th’ wall again th’ rest of th’ brood was gone an’ he was lonely an’ he come back to me.”

“What kind of a bird is he?” Mary asked.

“Doesn’t tha’ know? He’s a robin redbreast an’ they’re th’ friendliest, curiousest birds alive. They’re almost as friendly as dogs—if you know how to get on with ’em. Watch him peckin’ about there an’ lookin’ round at us now an’ again. He knows we’re talkin’ about him.”

It was the queerest thing in the world to see the old fellow. He looked at the plump little scarlet-waistcoated bird as if he were both proud and fond of him.

“He’s a conceited one,” he chuckled. “He likes to hear folk talk about him. An’ curious—bless me, there never was his like for curiosity an’ meddlin’. He’s always comin’ to see what I’m plantin’. He knows all th’ things Mester Craven never troubles hissel’ to find out. He’s th’ head gardener, he is.”

The robin hopped about busily pecking the soil, and now and then stopped and looked at them a little. Mary thought his black dewdrop eyes gazed at her with great curiosity. It really seemed as if he were finding out all about her. The queer feeling in her heart increased.

“Where did the rest of the brood fly to?” she asked.

“There’s no knowin’. The old ones turn ’em out o’ their nest an’ make ‘em fly, an’ they’re scattered before you know it. This one was a knowin’ one an’ he knew he was lonely.”

Mistress Mary went a step nearer to the robin and looked at him very hard.

“I’m lonely,” she said.

She had not known before that this was one of the things which made her feel sour and cross. She seemed to find it out when the robin looked at her and she looked at the robin.

The old gardener pushed his cap back on his bald head and stared at her a minute.

“Art tha’ th’ little wench from India?” he asked.

Mary nodded.

“Then no wonder tha‘rt lonely. Tha’lt be lonelier before tha’s done,” he said.

He began to dig again, driving his spade deep into the rich black garden soil while the robin hopped about very busily employed.

“What is your name?” Mary inquired.

He stood up to answer her.

“Ben Weatherstaff,” he answered, and then he added with a surly chuckle, “I’m lonely mysel’ except when he’s with me,” and he jerked his thumb toward the robin. “He’s th’ only friend I’ve got.”

“I have no friends at all,” said Mary. “I never had. My Ayah didn’t like me, and I never played with anyone.”

It is a Yorkshire habit to say what you think with blunt frankness, and old Ben Weatherstaff was a Yorkshire moor man.

“Tha’ an’ me are a good bit alike,” he said. “We was wove out of th’ same cloth. We’re neither of us good-lookin’ an’ we’re both of us as sour as we look. We’ve got the same nasty tempers, both of us, I’ll warrant.”

This was plain speaking, and Mary Lennox had never heard the truth about herself in her life. Native servants always salaamed and submitted to you, whatever you did. She had never thought much about her looks, but she wondered if she was as unattractive as Ben Weatherstaff, and she also wondered if she looked as sour as he had looked before the robin came. She actually began to wonder also if she was “nasty-tempered.” She felt uncomfortable.

Suddenly a clear rippling little sound broke out near her and she turned round. She was standing a few feet from a young apple tree, and the robin had flown on to one of its branches and had burst out into a scrap of a song. Ben Weatherstaff laughed outright.

“What did he do that for?” asked Mary.

“He’s made up his mind to make friends with thee,” replied Ben. “Dang me if he hasn’t took a fancy to thee.”

“To me?” said Mary, and she moved toward the little tree softly and looked up.

“Would you make friends with me?” she said to the robin just as if she were speaking to a person. “Would you?” And she did not say it either in her hard little voice or in her imperious Indian voice, but in a tone so soft and eager and coaxing that Ben Weatherstaff was as surprised as she had been when she heard him whistle.

“Why,” he cried out, “tha’ said that as nice an’ human as if tha’ was a real child instead of a sharp old woman. Tha’ said it almost like Dickon talks to his wild things on th’ moor.”

“Do you know Dickon?” Mary asked, turning round rather in a hurry.

“Everybody knows him. Dickon’s wanderin’ about everywhere. Th’ very blackberries an’ heather-bells knows him. I warrant th’ foxes shows him where their cubs lies an’ th’ skylarks doesn’t hide their nests from him.”

Mary would have liked to ask some more questions. She was almost as curious about Dickon as she was about the deserted garden. But just that moment the robin, who had ended his song, gave a little shake of his wings, spread them and flew away. He had made his visit and had other things to do.

“He has flown over the wall!” Mary cried out, watching him. “He has flown into the orchard—he has flown across the other wall—into the garden where there is no door!”

“He lives there,” said old Ben. “He came out o’ th’ egg there. If he’s courtin’, he’s makin’ up to some young madam of a robin that lives among t’ old rose trees there.”

“Rose trees,” said Mary. “Are there rose trees?”

Ben Weatherstaff took up his spade again and began to dig.

“There was ten year’ ago,” he mumbled.

“I should like to see them,” said Mary. “Where is the green door? There must be a door somewhere.”

Ben drove his spade deep and looked as uncompanion-able as he had looked when she first saw him.

“There was ten year’ ago, but there isn’t now,” he said.

“No door!” cried Mary. “There must be.”

“None as anyone can find, an’ none as is anyone’s business. Don’t you be a meddlesome wench an’ poke your nose where it’s no cause to go. Here, I must go on with my work. Get you gone an’ play you. I’ve no more time.”

And he actually stopped digging, threw his spade over his shoulder and walked off, without even glancing at her or saying good-bye.

5

The Cry In The Corridor

AT FIRST EACH DAY WHICH PASSED BY FOR MARY LENNOX was exactly like the others. Every morning she awoke in her tapestried room and found Martha kneeling upon the hearth building her fire; every morning she ate her breakfast in the nursery which had nothing amusing in it; and after each breakfast she gazed out of the window across the huge moor which seemed to spread out on all sides and climb up to the sky, and after she had stared for a while she realized that if she did not go out she would have to stay in and do nothing—and so she went out. She did not know that this was the best thing she could have done, and she did not know that, when she began to walk quickly or even run along the paths and down the avenue, she was stirring her slow blood and making herself stronger by fighting with the wind which swept down from the moor. She ran only to make herself warm, and she hated the wind which rushed at her face and roared and held her back as if it were some giant she could not see. But the big breaths of rough fresh air blown over the heather filled her lungs with something which was good for her whole thin body and whipped some red colour into her cheeks and brightened her dull eyes when she did not know anything about it.

But after a few days spent almost entirely out of doors she wakened one morning knowing what it was to be hungry, and when she sat down to her breakfast she did not glance disdainfully at her porridge and push it away, but took up her spoon and began to eat it and went on eating it until her bowl was empty.

“Tha’ got on well enough with that this mornin’, didn’t tha’?” said Martha.

“It tastes nice today,” said Mary, feeling a little surprised herself.

“It’s th’ air of th’ moor that’s givin’ thee stomach for tha’ victuals,” answered Martha. “It’s lucky for thee that tha’s got victuals as well as an appetite. There’s been twelve in our cottage as had th’ stomach an’ nothin’ to put in it. You go on playin’ you out o’ doors every day an’ you’ll get some flesh on your bones an’ you won’t be so yeller.”

“I don’t play,” said Mary. “I have nothing to play with.”

“Nothin’ to play with!” exclaimed Martha. “Our children plays with sticks and stones. They just runs about an’ shouts a’ looks at things.”

Mary did not shout, but she looked at things. There was nothing else to do. She walked round and round the gardens and wandered about the paths in the park. Sometimes she looked for Ben Weatherstaff, but though several times she saw him at work he was too busy to look at her or was too surly. Once when she was walking toward him he picked up his spade and turned away as if he did it on purpose.

One place she went to oftener than to any other. It was the long walk outside the gardens with the walls round them. There were bare flower-beds on either side of it and against the walls ivy grew thickly. There was one part of the wall where the creeping dark green leaves were more bushy than elsewhere. It seemed as if for a long time that part had been neglected. The rest of it had been clipped and made to look neat, but at this lower end of the walk it had not been trimmed at all.

A few days after she had talked to Ben Weatherstaff Mary stopped to notice this and wondered why it was so. She had just paused and was looking up at a long spray of ivy swinging in the wind when she saw a gleam of scarlet and heard a brilliant chirp, and there, on the top of the wall, perched Ben Weatherstaff’s robin redbreast, tilting forward to look at her with his small head on one side.

“Oh!” she cried out, “is it you—is it you?” And it did not seem at all queer to her that she spoke to him as if she was sure that he would understand and answer her.

He did answer. He twittered and chirped and hopped along the wall as if he were telling her all sorts of things. It seemed to Mistress Mary as if she understood him, too, though he was not speaking in words. It was as if he said:

“Good morning! Isn’t the wind nice? Isn’t the sun nice? Isn’t everything nice? Let us both chirp and hop and twitter. Come on! Come on!”

Mary began to laugh, and as he hopped and took little flights along the wall she ran after him. Poor little thin, sallow, ugly Mary—she actually looked almost pretty for a moment.

“I like you! I like you!” she cried out, pattering down the walk; and she chirped and tried to whistle, which last she did not know how to do in the least. But the robin seemed to be quite satisfied and chirped and whistled back at her. At last he spread his wings and made a darting flight to the top of a tree, where he perched and sang loudly.

That reminded Mary of the first time she had seen him. He had been swinging on a tree-top then and she had been standing in the orchard. Now she was on the other side of the orchard and standing in the path outside a wall—much lower down—and there was the same tree inside.

“It’s in the garden no one can go into,” she said to herself. “It’s the garden without a door. He lives in there. How I wish I could see what it is like!”

She ran up the walk to the green door she had entered the first morning. Then she ran down the path through the other door and then into the orchard, and when she stood and looked up there was the tree on the other side of the wall, and there was the robin just finishing his song and beginning to preen his feathers with his beak.

“It is the garden,” she said. “I am sure it is.”

She walked round and looked closely at that side of the orchard wall, but she only found what she had found before—that there was no door in it. Then she ran through the kitchen gardens again and out into the walk outside the long ivy-covered wall, and she walked to the end of it and looked at it, but there was no door; and then she walked to the other end, looking again, but there was no door.

“It’s very queer,” she said. “Ben Weatherstaff said there was no door and there is no door. But there must have been one ten years ago, because Mr. Craven buried the key.”

This gave her so much to think of that she began to be quite interested and feel that she was not sorry that she had come to Misselthwaite Manor. In India she had always felt hot and too languid to care much about anything. The fact was that the fresh wind from the moor had begun to blow the cobwebs out of her young brain and to waken her up a little.

She stayed out of doors nearly all day, and when she sat down to her supper at night she felt hungry and drowsy and comfortable. She did not feel cross when Martha chattered away. She felt as if she rather liked to hear her, and at last she thought she would ask her a question. She asked it after she had finished her supper and had sat down on the hearth-rug before the fire.

“Why did Mr. Craven hate the garden?” she said.

She had made Martha stay with her and Martha had not objected at all. She was very young, and used to a crowded cottage full of brothers and sisters, and she found it dull in the great servants’ hall downstairs where the footman and upper-housemaids made fun of her Yorkshire speech and looked upon her as a common little thing, and sat and whispered among themselves. Martha liked to talk, and the strange child who had lived in India, and been waited upon by “blacks,” was novelty enough to attract her.

She sat down on the hearth herself without waiting to be asked.

“Art tha’ thinkin’ about that garden yet?” she said. “I knew tha’ would. That was just the way with me when I first heard about it.”

“Why did he hate it?” Mary persisted.

Martha tucked her feet under her and made herself quite comfortable.

“Listen to th’ wind wutherin’ round the house,” she said. “You could bare stand up on the moor if you was out on it tonight.”

Mary did not know what “wutherin’” meant until she listened, and then she understood. It must mean that hollow shuddering sort of roar which rushed round and round the house as if the giant no one could see were buffeting it and beating at the walls and windows to try to break in. But one knew he could not get in, and somehow it made one feel very safe and warm inside a room with a red coal fire.

“But why did he hate it so?” she asked, after she had listened. She intended to know if Martha did.

Then Martha gave up her store of knowledge.

“Mind,” she said, “Mrs. Medlock said it’s not to be talked about. There’s lots o’ things in this place that’s not to be talked over. That’s Mr. Craven’s orders. His troubles are none servants’ business, he says. But for th’ garden he wouldn’t be like he is. It was Mrs. Craven’s garden that she had made when first they were married an’ she just loved it, an’ they used to ‘tend the flowers themselves. An’ none o’ th’ gardeners was ever let to go in. Him an’ her used to go in an’ shut th’ door an’ stay there hours an’ hours, readin’ an’ talkin’. An’ she was just a bit of a girl an’ there was an old tree with a branch bent like a seat on it. An’ she made roses grow over it an’ she used to sit there. But one day when she was sittin’ there th’ branch broke an’ she fell on th’ ground an’ was hurt so bad that next day she died. Th’ doctors thought he’d go out o’ his mind an’ die, too. That’s why he hates it. No one’s never gone in since, an’ he won’t let anyone talk about it.”

Mary did not ask any more questions. She looked at the red fire and listened to the wind “wutherin’.” It seemed to be “wutherin’” louder than ever.

At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for someone. She was getting on.

But as she was listening to the wind she began to listen to something else. She did not know what it was, because at first she could scarcely distinguish it from the wind itself. It was a curious sound—it seemed almost as if a child were crying somewhere. Sometimes the wind sounded rather like a child crying, but presently Mistress Mary felt quite sure that this sound was inside the house, not outside it. It was far away, but it was inside. She turned round and looked at Martha.

“Do you hear anyone crying?” she said.

Martha suddenly looked confused.

“No,” she answered. “It’s th’ wind. Sometimes it sounds like as if someone was lost on th’ moor an’ wailin’. It’s got all sorts o’ sounds.”

“But listen,” said Mary. “It’s in the house—down one of those long corridors.”

And at that very moment a door must have been opened somewhere downstairs; for a great rushing draught blew along the passage and the door of the room they sat in was blown open with a crash, and as they both jumped to their feet the light was blown out and the crying sound was swept down the far corridor so that it was to be heard more plainly than ever.

“There!” said Mary. “I told you so! It is someone crying—and it isn’t a grown-up person.”

Martha ran and shut the door and turned the key, but before she did it they both heard the sound of a door in some far passage shutting with a bang, and then everything was quiet, for even the wind ceased “wutherin’” for a few moments.

“It was th’ wind,” said Martha stubbornly. “An’ if it wasn’t, it was little Betty Butterworth, th’ scullery-maid. She’s had th’ toothache all day.”

But something troubled and awkward in her manner made Mistress Mary stare very hard at her. She did not believe she was speaking the truth.

6

“There Was Someone Crying—There Was!”

THE NEXT DAY THE RAIN POURED DOWN IN TORRENTS AGAIN, and when Mary looked out of her window the moor was almost hidden by grey mist and cloud. There could be no going out today.

“What do you do in your cottage when it rains like this?” she asked Martha.

“Try to keep from under each other’s feet mostly,” Martha answered. “Eh! there does seem a lot of us then. Mother’s a good-tempered woman but she gets fair moithered. The biggest ones goes out in th’ cowshed and plays there. Dickon he doesn’t mind th’ wet. He goes out just th’ same as if th’ sun was shinin’. He says he sees things on rainy days as doesn’t show when it’s fair weather. He once found a little fox cub half drowned in its hole and he brought it home in th’ bosom of his shirt to keep it warm. Its mother had been killed near by an’ th’ hole was swum out an’ th’ rest o’ th’ litter was dead. He’s got it at home now. He found a half-drowned young crow another time an’ he brought it home, too, an’ tamed it. It’s named Soot because it’s so black, an’ it hops an’ flies about with him everywhere.”

The time had come when Mary had forgotten to resent Martha’s familiar talk. She had even begun to find it interesting and to be sorry when she stopped or went away. The stories she had been told by her Ayah when she lived in India had been quite unlike those Martha had to tell about the moorland cottage which held fourteen people who lived in four little rooms and never had quite enough to eat. The children seemed to tumble about and amuse themselves like a litter of rough, good-natured collie puppies. Mary was most attracted by the mother and Dickon. When Martha told stories of what “mother” said or did they always sounded comfortable.

“If I had a raven or a fox cub I could play with it,” said Mary. “But I have nothing.”

Martha looked perplexed.

“Can tha’ knit?” she asked.

“No,” answered Mary.

“Can tha’ sew?”

“No.”

“Can tha’ read?”

“Yes.”

“Then why doesn’t tha’ read somethin’, or learn a bit o’ spellin’? Tha‘st old enough to be learnin’ thy book a good bit now.”

“I haven’t any books,” said Mary. “Those I had were left in India.”

“That’s a pity,” said Martha. “If Mrs. Medlock’d let thee go into th’ library, there’s thousands o’ books there.”

Mary did not ask where the library was, because she was suddenly inspired by a new idea. She made up her mind to go and find it herself. She was not troubled about Mrs. Medlock. Mrs. Medlock seemed always to be in her comfortable housekeeper’s sitting-room downstairs. In this queer place one scarcely ever saw anyone at all. In fact, there was no one to see but the servants, and when their master was away they lived a luxurious life below stairs, where there was a huge kitchen hung about with shining brass and pewter, and a large servants’ hall where there were four or five abundant meals eaten every day, and where a great deal of lively romping went on when Mrs. Medlock was out of the way.

Mary’s meals were served regularly, and Martha waited on her, but no one troubled themselves about her in the least. Mrs. Medlock came and looked at her every day or two, but no one inquired what she did or told her what to do. She supposed that perhaps this was the English way of treating children. In India she had always been attended by her Ayah, who had followed her about and waited on her, hand and foot. She had often been tired of her company. Now she was followed by nobody and was learning to dress herself because Martha looked as though she thought she was silly and stupid when she wanted to have things handed to her and put on.

“Hasn’t tha’ got good sense?” she said once, when Mary had stood waiting for her to put on her gloves for her. “Our Susan Ann is twice as sharp as thee an’ she’s only four year’ old. Sometimes tha’ looks fair soft in th’ head.”

Mary had worn her contrary scowl for an hour after that, but it made her think several entirely new things.

She stood at the window for about ten minutes this morning after Martha had swept up the hearth for the last time and gone downstairs. She was thinking over the new idea which had come to her when she heard of the library. She did not care very much about the library itself, because she had read very few books; but to hear of it brought back to her mind the hundred rooms with closed doors. She wondered if they were all really locked and what she would find if she could get into any of them. Were there a hundred really? Why shouldn’t she go and see how many doors she could count? It would be something to do on this morning when she could not go out. She had never been taught to ask permission to do things, and she knew nothing at all about authority, so she would not have thought it necessary to ask Mrs. Medlock if she might walk about the house, even if she had seen her.

She opened the door of the room and went into the corridor, and then she began her wanderings. It was a long corridor and it branched into other corridors and it led her up short flights of steps which mounted to others again. There were doors and doors, and there were pictures on the walls. Sometimes they were pictures of dark, curious landscapes, but oftenest they were portraits of men and women in queer, grand costumes made of satin and velvet. She found herself in one long gallery whose walls were covered with these portraits. She had never thought there could be so many in any house. She walked slowly down this place and stared at the faces which also seemed to stare at her. She felt as if they were wondering what a little girl from India was doing in their house. Some were pictures of children—little girls in thick satin frocks which reached to their feet and stood out about them, and boys with puffed sleeves and lace collars and long hair, or with big ruffs around their necks. She always stopped to look at the children, and wonder what their names were, and where they had gone, and why they wore such odd clothes. There was a stiff, plain little girl rather like herself. She wore a green brocade dress and held a green parrot on her finger. Her eyes had a sharp, curious look.

“Where do you live now?” said Mary aloud to her. “I wish you were here.”

Surely no other little girl ever spent such a queer morning. It seemed as if there was no one in all the huge rambling house but her own small self, wandering about upstairs and down, through narrow passages and wide ones, where it seemed to her that no one but herself had ever walked. Since so many rooms had been built, people must have lived in them, but it all seemed so empty that she could not quite believe it true.

It was not until she climbed to the second floor that she thought of turning the handle of a door. All the doors were shut, as Mrs. Medlock had said they were, but at last she put her hand on the handle of one of them and turned it. She was almost frightened for a moment when she felt that it turned without difficulty and that when she pushed upon the door itself it slowly and heavily opened. It was a massive door and opened into a big bedroom. There were embroidered hangings on the wall, and inlaid furniture such as she had seen in India stood about the room. A broad window with leaded panes looked out upon the moor; and over the mantel was another portrait of the stiff, plain little girl who seemed to stare at her more curiously than ever.

“Perhaps she slept here once,” said Mary. “She stares at me so that she makes me feel queer.”

After that she opened more doors and more. She saw so many rooms that she became quite tired and began to think that there must be a hundred, though she had not counted them. In all of them there were old pictures or old tapestries with strange scenes worked on them. There were curious pieces of furniture and curious ornaments in nearly all of them.

In one room, which looked like a lady’s sitting-room, the hangings were all embroidered velvet, and in a cabinet were about a hundred little elephants made of ivory. They were of different sizes, and some had their mahouts or palanquins on their backs. Some were much bigger than the others and some were so tiny that they seemed only babies. Mary had seen carved ivory in India and she knew all about elephants. She opened the door of the cabinet and stood on a footstool and played with these for quite a long time. When she got tired she set the elephants in order and shut the door of the cabinet.

In all her wanderings through the long corridors and the empty rooms she had seen nothing alive; but in this room she saw something. Just after she had closed the cabinet door she heard a tiny rustling sound. It made her jump and look around at the sofa by the fireplace, from which it seemed to come. In the corner of the sofa there was a cushion, and in the velvet which covered it there was a hole, and out of the hole peeped a tiny head with a pair of frightened eyes in it.

Mary crept softly across the room to look. The bright eyes belonged to a little grey mouse, and the mouse had eaten a hole into the cushion and made a comfortable nest there. Six baby mice were cuddled up asleep near her. If there was no one else alive in the hundred rooms there were seven mice who did not look lonely at all.

“If they wouldn’t be so frightened I would take them back with me,” said Mary.

She had wandered about long enough to feel too tired to wander any farther, and she turned back. Two or three times she lost her way by turning down the wrong corridor and was obliged to ramble up and down until she found the right one; but at last she reached her own floor again, though she was some distance from her own room and did not know exactly where she was.

“I believe I have taken a wrong turning again,” she said, standing still at what seemed the end of a short passage with tapestry on the wall. “I don’t know which way to go. How still everything is!”

It was while she was standing here and just after she had said this that the stillness was broken by a sound. It was another cry, but not quite like the one she had heard last night; it was only a short one, a fretful, childish whine muffled by passing through walls.

“It’s nearer than it was,” said Mary, her heart beating rather faster. “And it is crying.”

She put her hand accidentally upon the tapestry near her, and then sprang back, feeling quite startled. The tapestry was the covering of a door which fell open and showed her that there was another part of the corridor behind it, and Mrs. Medlock was coming up it with her bunch of keys in her hand and a very cross look on her face.

“What are you doing here?” she said, and she took Mary by the arm and pulled her away. “What did I tell you?”

“I turned round the wrong corner,” explained Mary. “I didn’t know which way to go and I heard someone crying.”

She quite hated Mrs. Medlock at the moment, but she hated her more the next.

“You didn’t hear anything of the sort,” said the housekeeper. “You come along back to your own nursery or I’ll box your ears.”

And she took her by the arm and half pushed, half pulled her up one passage and down another until she pushed her in at the door of her own room.

“Now,” she said, “you stay where you’re told to stay or you’ll find yourself locked up. The master had better get you a governess, same as he said he would. You’re one that needs someone to look sharp after you. I’ve got enough to do.”

She went out of the room and slammed the door after her, and Mary went and sat on the hearth-rug, pale with rage. She did not cry, but ground her teeth.

“There was someone crying—there was—there was!” she said to herself.

She had heard it twice now, and sometime she would find out. She had found out a great deal this morning. She felt as if she had been on a long journey, and at any rate she had had something to amuse her all the time, and she had played with the ivory elephants and had seen the grey mouse and its babies in their nest in the velvet cushion.

7

The Key Of The Garden

TWO DAYS AFTER THIS, WHEN MARY OPENED HER EYES SHE sat upright in bed immediately, and called to Martha.

“Look at the moor! Look at the moor!”

The rain-storm had ended and the grey mist and clouds had been swept away in the night by the wind. The wind itself had ceased and a brilliant, deep blue sky arched high over the moorland. Never, never had Mary dreamed of a sky so blue. In India skies were hot and blazing; this was of a deep cool blue which almost seemed to sparkle like the waters of some lovely bottomless lake, and here and there, high, high in the arched blueness floated small clouds of snow-white fleece. The far-reaching world of the moor itself looked softly blue instead of gloomy purple-black or awful dreary grey.

“Aye,” said Martha with a cheerful grin. “Th’ storm’s over for a bit. It does like this at this time o’ th’ year. It goes off in a night like it was pretendin’ it had never been here an’ never meant to come again. That’s because th’ springtime’s on its way. It’s a long way off yet, but it’s comin’.”

“I thought perhaps it always rained or looked dark in England,” Mary said.

“Eh! no!” said Martha, sitting up on her heels among her black-lead brushes. “Nowt o’ th’ soart!”

“What does that mean?” asked Mary seriously. In India the natives spoke different dialects which only a few people understood, so she was not surprised when Martha used words she did not know.

Martha laughed as she had done the first morning.

“There now,” she said. “I’ve talked broad Yorkshire again like Mrs. Medlock said I mustn’t. ‘Nowt o’ th’ soart’ means ‘nothin’-of-the-sort,’” slowly and carefully, “but it takes so long to say it. Yorkshire’s th’ sunniest place on earth when it is sunny. I told thee tha’d like th’ moor after a bit. Just you wait till you see th’ gold-coloured gorse blossoms an’ th’ blossoms o’ th’ broom, an’ th’ heather flowerin’, all purple bells, an’ hundreds o’ butterflies flutterin’ an’ bees hummin’ an’ skylarks soarin’ up an’ singin’. You’ll want to get out on it at sunrise an’ live out on it all day like Dickon does.”

“Could I ever get there?” asked Mary wistfully, looking through her window at the far-off blue. It was so new and big and wonderful and such a heavenly colour.

“I don’t know,” answered Martha. “Tha’s never used tha’ legs since tha’ was born, it seems to me. Tha’ couldn’t walk five mile. It’s five mile to our cottage.”

“I should like to see your cottage.”

Martha stared at her a moment curiously before she took up her polishing brush and began to rub the grate again. She was thinking that the small plain face did not look quite as sour at this moment as it had done the first morning she saw it. It looked just a trifle like little Susan Ann’s when she wanted something very much.

“I’ll ask my mother about it,” she said. “She’s one o’ them that nearly always sees a way to do things. It’s my day out today an’ I’m goin’ home. Eh! I am glad. Mrs. Medlock thinks a lot o’ mother. Perhaps she could talk to her.”

“I like your mother,” said Mary.

“I should think tha’ did,” agreed Martha, polishing away.

“I’ve never seen her,” said Mary.

“No, tha’ hasn’t,” replied Martha.

She sat up on her heels again and rubbed the end of her nose with the back of her hand as if puzzled for a moment, but she ended quite positively.

“Well, she’s that sensible an’ hard workin’ an’ good-natured an’ clean that no one could help likin’ her whether they’d seen her or not. When I’m goin’ home to her on my day out I just jump for joy when I’m crossin’ th’ moor.”

“I like Dickon,” added Mary. “And I’ve never seen him.”

“Well,” said Martha stoutly, “I’ve told thee that th’ very birds likes him an’ th’ rabbits an’ wild sheep an’ ponies, an’ th’ foxes themselves. I wonder,” staring at her reflectively, “what Dickon would think of thee?”

“He wouldn’t like me,” said Mary in her stiff, cold little way. “No one does.”

Martha looked reflective again.

“How does tha’ like thysel’?” she inquired, really quite as if she were curious to know.

Mary hesitated a moment and thought it over.

“Not at all—really,” she answered. “But I never thought of that before.”

Martha grinned a little as if at some homely recollection.

“Mother said that to me once,” she said. “She was at her wash-tub an’ I was in a bad temper an’ talkin’ ill of folk, an’ she turns round on me an’ says: ‘Tha’ young vixen, tha’! There tha’ stands sayin’ tha’ doesn’t like this one an’ tha’ doesn’t like that one. How does tha’ like thysel’?’ It made me laugh an’ it brought me to my senses in a minute.”

She went away in high spirits as soon as she had given Mary her breakfast. She was going to walk five miles across the moor to the cottage, and she was going to help her mother with the washing and do the week’s baking and enjoy herself thoroughly.

Mary felt lonelier than ever when she knew she was no longer in the house. She went out into the garden as quickly as possible, and the first thing she did was to run round and round the fountain flower garden ten times. She counted the times carefully and when she had finished she felt in better spirits. The sunshine made the whole place look different. The high, deep blue sky arched over Misselthwaite, as well as over the moor, and she kept lifting her face and looking up into it, trying to imagine what it would be like to lie down on one of the little snow-white clouds and float about. She went into the first kitchen garden and found Ben Weatherstaff working there with two other gardeners. The change in the weather seemed to have done him good. He spoke to her of his own accord.

“Springtime’s comin’,” he said. “Cannot tha’ smell it?”

Mary sniffed and thought she could.

“I smell something nice and fresh and damp,” she said.

“That’s th’ good rich earth,” he answered, digging away. “It’s in a good humour makin’ ready to grow things. It’s glad when plantin’ time comes. It’s dull in th’ winter when it’s got nowt to do. In th’ flower gardens out there things will be stirrin’ down below in th’ dark. Th’ sun’s warmin’ ’em. You’ll see bits o’ green spikes stickin’ out o’ th’ black earth after a bit.”

“What will they be?” asked Mary.

“Crocuses an’ snowdrops an’ daffydowndillys. Has tha’ never seen them?”

“No. Everything is hot, and wet, and green after the rains in India,” said Mary. “And I think things grow up in a night.”

“These won’t grow up in a night,” said Weatherstaff. “Tha’ll have to wait for ‘em. They’ll poke up a bit higher here, an’ push out a spike more there, an’ uncurl a leaf this day an’ another that. You watch ’em.”

“I am going to,” answered Mary.

Very soon she heard the soft rustling flight of wings again and she knew at once that the robin had come again. He was very pert and lively, and hopped about so close to her feet, and put his head on one side and looked at her so slyly that she asked Ben Weatherstaff a question.

“Do you think he remembers me?” she said.

“Remembers thee!” said Weatherstaff indignantly. “He knows every cabbage stump in th’ gardens, let alone th’ people. He’s never seen a little wench here before, an’ he’s bent on findin’ out all about thee. Tha’s no need to try to hide anything from him.”

“Are things stirring down below in the dark in that garden where he lives?” Mary inquired.

“What garden?” grunted Weatherstaff, becoming surly again.

“The one where the old rose trees are.” She could not help asking, because she wanted so much to know. “Are all the flowers dead, or do some of them come again in the summer? Are there ever any roses?”

“Ask him,” said Ben Weatherstaff, hunching his shoulders toward the robin. “He’s the only one as knows. No one else has been inside it for ten year’.”

Ten years was a long time, Mary thought. She had been born ten years ago.

She walked away, slowly thinking. She had begun to like the garden just as she had begun to like the robin and Dickon and Martha’s mother. She was beginning to like Martha, too. That seemed a good many people to like—when you were not used to liking. She thought of the robin as one of the people. She went to her walk outside the long, ivy-covered wall over which she could see the tree-tops; and the second time she walked up and down the most interesting and exciting thing happened to her, and it was all through Ben Weatherstaff’s robin.

She heard a chirp and a twitter, and when she looked at the bare flower-bed at her left side there he was hopping about and pretending to peck things out of the earth to persuade her that he had not followed her. But she knew he had followed her, and the surprise so filled her with delight that she almost trembled a little.

“You do remember me!” she cried out. “You do! You are prettier than anything else in the world!”

She chirped, and talked, and coaxed and he hopped and flirted his tail and twittered. It was as if he were talking. His red waistcoat was like satin and he puffed his tiny breast out and was so fine and so grand and so pretty that it was really as if he were showing her how important and like a human person a robin could be. Mistress Mary forgot that she had ever been contrary in her life when he allowed her to draw closer and closer to him, and bend down and talk and try to make something like robin sounds.

Oh! to think that he should actually let her come as near to him as that! He knew nothing in the world would make her put out her hand toward him or startle him in the least tiniest way. He knew it because he was a real person—only nicer than any other person in the world. She was so happy that she scarcely dared to breathe.

The flower-bed was not quite bare. It was bare of flowers because the perennial plants had been cut down for their winter rest, but there were tall shrubs and low ones which grew together at the back of the bed, and as the robin hopped about under them she saw him hop over a small pile of freshly turned-up earth. He stopped on it to look for a worm. The earth had been turned up because a dog had been trying to dig up a mole and he had scratched quite a deep hole.

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 near by 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!”

8

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 wall 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.

Mrs. Medlock had allowed Martha to sleep all night at the cottage, but she was back at her work in the morning with cheeks redder than ever and in the best of spirits.

“I got up at four o‘clock,” she said. “Eh! it was pretty on th’ moor with th’ birds gettin’ up an’ th’ rabbits scamperin’ about an’ th’ sun risin’. I didn’t walk all th’ way. A man gave me a ride in his cart an’ I can tell you I did enjoy myself.”

She was full of stories of the delights of her day out. Her mother had been glad to see her and they had got the baking and washing all out of the way. She had even made each of the children a dough-cake with a bit of brown sugar in it.

“I had ‘em all pipin’ hot when they came in from playin’ on th’ moor. An’ th’ cottage all smelt o’ nice, clean hot bakin’ an’ there was a good fire, an’ they just shouted for joy. Our Dickon he said our cottage was good enough for a king to live in.”

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 anyone 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 practise.”

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 practise 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! tha’ art a queer, old-womanish thing,” she said. “If tha’d been our ’Lizabeth Ellen tha’d have give 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 really 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 towards 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 some time 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 anyone 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.

9

The Strangest House Any One Ever Lived In

IT WAS THE SWEETEST, MOST MYSTERIOUS-LOOKING PLACE anyone 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 rose bushes 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 grey 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 tree-top, 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 someone. 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 grey 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 grey 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 anyone, 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 flower-bed 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 wall. 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 favourite 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 for evermore. 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’s boy to take it in his cart. He’s a great friend o’ Dickon’s,” said Martha.

“How shall I get the things when Dickon buys them?” asked Mary.

“He’ll bring ’em to you himself. He’ll like to walk over this way.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Mary, “then I shall see him! I never thought I should see Dickon.”

“Does tha’ want to see him?” asked Martha suddenly, she had looked so pleased.

“Yes, I do. I never saw a boy foxes and crows loved. I want to see him very much.”

Martha gave a little start, as if she remembered something.

“Now to think,” she broke out, “to think o’ me forgettin’ that there; an’ I thought I was goin’ to tell you first thing this mornin’. I asked Mother—and she said she’d ask Mrs. Medlock her own self.”

“Do you mean—” Mary began.

“What I said Tuesday. Ask her if you might be driven over to our cottage some day and have a bit o’ Mother’s hot oat cake, an’ butter, an’ a glass o’ milk.”

It seemed as if all the interesting things were happening in one day. To think of going over the moor in the daylight and when the sky was blue! To think of going into the cottage which held twelve children!

“Does she think Mrs. Medlock would let me go?” she asked, quite anxiously.

“Aye, she thinks she would. She knows what a tidy woman Mother is and how clean she keeps the cottage.”

“If I went I should see your mother as well as Dickon,” said Mary, thinking it over and liking the idea very much. “She doesn’t seem to be like the mothers in India.”

Her work in the garden and the excitement of the afternoon ended by making her feel quiet and thoughtful. Martha stayed with her until tea-time, but they sat in comfortable quiet and talked very little. But just before Martha went downstairs for the tea-tray, Mary asked a question.

“Martha,” she said, “has the scullery-maid had the toothache again today?”

Martha certainly started slightly.

“What makes thee ask that?” she said.

“Because when I waited so long for you to come back I opened the door and walked down the corridor to see if you were coming. And I heard that far-off crying again, just as we heard it the other night. There isn’t a wind today, so you see it couldn’t have been the wind.”

“Eh!” said Martha restlessly. “Tha’ mustn’t go walkin’ about in corridors an’ listenin’. Mr. Craven would be that there angry there’s no knowin’ what he’d do.”

“I wasn’t listening,” said Mary. “I was just waiting for you—and I heard it. That’s three times.”

“My word! There’s Mrs. Medlock’s bell,” said Martha, and she almost ran out of the room.

“It’s the strangest house anyone ever lived in,” said Mary drowsily, as she dropped her head on the cushioned seat of the armchair near her. Fresh air, and digging, and skipping-rope had made her feel so comfortably tired that she fell asleep.

10

Dickon

THE SUN SHONE DOWN FOR NEARLY A WEEK ON THE SECRET garden. The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place. The few books she had read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid. She had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming wider awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite. She was beginning to like to be out of doors; she no longer hated the wind, but enjoyed it. She could run faster, and longer, and she could skip up to a hundred. The bulbs in the secret garden must have been much astonished. Such nice clear places were made round them that they had all the breathing space they wanted, and really, if Mistress Mary had known it, they began to cheer up under the dark earth and work tremendously. The sun could get at them and warm them, and when the rain came down it could reach them at once, so they began to feel very much alive.

Mary was an odd, determined little person, and, now she had something interesting to be determined about, she was very much absorbed indeed. She worked and dug and pulled up weeds steadily, only becoming more pleased with her work every hour instead of tiring of it. It seemed to her like a fascinating sort of play. She found many more of the sprouting pale green points than she had ever hoped to find. They seemed to be starting up everywhere and each day she was sure she found tiny new ones, some so tiny that they barely peeped above the earth. There were so many that she remembered what Martha had said about the “snowdrops by the thousands,” and about bulbs spreading and making new ones. These had been left to themselves for ten years and perhaps they had spread, like the snowdrops, into thousands. She wondered how long it would be before they showed that they were flowers. Sometimes she stopped digging to look at the garden and try to imagine what it would be like when it was covered with thousands of lovely things in bloom.

During that week of sunshine, she became more intimate with Ben Weatherstaff. She surprised him several times by seeming to start up beside him as if she sprang out of the earth. The truth was that she was afraid that he would pick up his tools and go away if he saw her coming, so she always walked toward him as silently as possible. But, in fact, he did not object to her as strongly as he had at first. Perhaps he was secretly rather flattered by her evident desire for his elderly company. Then, also, she was more civil than she had been. He did not know that when she first saw him she spoke to him as she would have spoken to a native, and had not known that a cross, sturdy old Yorkshireman was not accustomed to salaam to his masters, and be merely commanded by them to do things.

“Tha‘rt like th’ robin,” he said to her one morning when he lifted his head and saw her standing by him. “I never knows when I shall see thee or which side tha’ll come from.”

“He’s friends with me now,” said Mary.

“That’s like him,” snapped Ben Weatherstaff. “Makin’ up to th’ women-folk just for vanity an’ flightiness. There’s nothin’ he wouldn’t do for th’ sake o’ showin’ off an’ flirtin’ his tail-feathers. He’s as full o’ pride as an egg’s full o’ meat.”

He very seldom talked much and sometimes did not even answer Mary’s questions except by a grunt, but this morning he said more than usual. He stood up and rested one hobnailed boot on the top of his spade while he looked her over.

“How long has tha’ been here?” he jerked out.

“I think it’s about a month,” she answered.

“Tha’s beginnin’ to do Misselthwaite credit,” he said. “Tha’s a bit fatter than tha’ was an’ tha’s not quite so yeller. Tha’ looked like a young plucked crow when tha’ first came into this garden. Thinks I to myself I never set eyes on an uglier, sourer-faced young ’un.”

Mary was not vain and as she had never thought much of her looks she was not greatly disturbed.

“I know I’m fatter,” she said. “My stockings are getting tighter. They used to make wrinkles. There’s the robin, Ben Weatherstaff.”

There, indeed, was the robin, and she thought he looked nicer than ever. His red waistcoat was as glossy as satin and he flirted his wings and tail and tilted his head and hopped about with all sorts of lively graces. He seemed determined to make Ben Weatherstaff admire him. But Ben was sarcastic.

“Aye, there tha’ art!” he said. “Tha’ can put up with me for a bit sometimes when tha’s got no one better. Tha’s been reddinin’ up thy waistcoat an’ polishin’ thy feathers this two weeks. I know what tha’s up to. Tha’s courtin’ some bold young madam somewhere, tellin’ thy lies to her about bein’ th’ finest cock robin on Missel Moor an’ ready to fight all th’ rest of ’em.”

“Oh! look at him!” exclaimed Mary.

The robin was evidently in a fascinating, bold mood. He hopped closer and closer and looked at Ben Weatherstaff more and more engagingly. He flew on to the nearest currant bush and tilted his head and sang a little song right at him.

“Tha’ thinks tha’ll get over me by doin’ that,” said Ben, wrinkling his face up in such a way that Mary felt sure he was trying not to look pleased. “Tha’ thinks no one can stand out against thee—that’s what tha’ thinks.”

The robin spread his wings—Mary could scarcely believe her eyes. He flew right up to the handle of Ben Weatherstaff’s spade and alighted on the top of it. Then the old man’s face wrinkled itself slowly into a new expression. He stood still as if he were afraid to breathe—as if he would not have stirred for the world, lest his robin should start away. He spoke quite in a whisper.

“Well, I’m danged!” he said as softly as if he were saying something quite different. “Tha’ does know how to get at a chap—tha’ does! Tha’s fair unearthly, tha’s so knowin’.”

And he stood without stirring—almost without drawing his breath—until the robin gave another flirt to his wings and flew away. Then he stood looking at the handle of the spade as if there might be Magic in it, and then he began to dig again and said nothing for several minutes.

But because he kept breaking into a slow grin now and then, Mary was not afraid to talk to him.

“Have you a garden of your own?” she asked.

“No. I’m bachelder an’ lodge with Martin at th’ gate.”

“If you had one,” said Mary, “what would you plant?”

“Cabbages an’ ’taters an’ onions.”

“But if you wanted to make a flower garden,” persisted Mary, “what would you plant?”

“Bulbs an‘’sweet-smellin’ things—but mostly roses.”

Mary’s face lighted up.

“Do you like roses?” she said.

Ben Weatherstaff rooted up a weed and threw it aside before he answered.

“Well, yes, I do. I was learned that by a young lady I was gardener to. She had a lot in a place she was fond of, an’ she loved ’em like they was children—or robins. I’ve seen her bend over an’ kiss ’em.” He dragged out another weed and scowled at it. “That were as much as ten year’ ago.”

“Where is she now?” asked Mary, much interested.

“Heaven,” he answered, and drove his spade deep into the soil, “’cording to what parson says.”

“What happened to the roses?” Mary asked again, more interested than ever.

“They was left to themselves.”

Mary was becoming quite excited.

“Did they quite die? Do roses quite die when they are left to themselves?” she ventured.

“Well, I’d got to like ‘em—an’ I liked her—an’ she liked ’em,” Ben Weatherstaff admitted reluctantly. “Once or twice a year I’d go an’ work at ’em a bit—prune ‘em an’ dig about th’ roots. They run wild, but they was in rich soil, so some of ’em lived.”

“When they have no leaves and look grey and brown and dry, how can you tell whether they are dead or alive?” inquired Mary.

“Wait till th’ spring gets at ’em—wait till th’ sun shines on th’ rain an’ th’ rain falls on th’ sunshine an’ then tha’ll find out.”

“How—how?” cried Mary, forgetting to be careful.

“Look along th’ twigs an’ branches an’ if tha’ see a bit of a brown lump swelling here an’ there, watch it after th’ warm rain an’ see what happens.” He stopped suddenly and looked curiously at her eager face. “Why does tha’ care so much about roses an’ such, all of a sudden?” he demanded.

Mistress Mary felt her face grow red. She was almost afraid to answer.

“I—I want to play that—that I have a garden of my own,” she stammered. “I—there is nothing for me to do. I have nothing—and no one.”

“Well,” said Ben Weatherstaff slowly, as he watched her, “that’s true. Tha’ hasn’t.”

He said it in such an odd way that Mary wondered if he was actually a little sorry for her. She had never felt sorry for herself; she had only felt tired and cross, because she disliked people and things so much. But now the world seemed to be changing and getting nicer. If no one found out about the secret garden, she should enjoy herself always.

She stayed with him for ten or fifteen minutes longer and asked him as many questions as she dared. He answered every one of them in his queer grunting way, and he did not seem really cross and did not pick up his spade and leave her. He said something about roses just as she was going away and it reminded her of the ones he had said he had been fond of.

“Do you go and see those other roses now?” she asked.

“Not been this year. My rheumatics has made me too stiff in th’ joints.”

He said it in his grumbling voice, and then quite suddenly he seemed to get angry with her, though she did not see why he should.

“Now look here!” he said sharply. “Don’t tha’ ask so many questions. Tha’rt th’ worst wench for askin’ questions I’ve ever come across. Get thee gone an’ play thee. I’ve done talkin’ for today.”

And he said it so crossly that she knew there was not the least use in staying another minute. She went skipping slowly down the outside walk, thinking him over and saying to herself that, queer as it was, here was another person whom she liked in spite of his crossness. She liked old Ben Weatherstaff. Yes, she did like him. She always wanted to try to make him talk to her. Also she began to believe that he knew everything in the world about flowers.

There was a laurel-hedged walk which curved round the secret garden and ended at a gate which opened into a wood, in the park. She thought she would skip round this walk and look into the wood and see if there were any rabbits hopping about. She enjoyed the skipping very much and when she reached the little gate she opened it and went through because she heard a low, peculiar whistling sound and wanted to find out what it was.

It was a very strange thing indeed. She quite caught her breath as she stopped to look at it. A boy was sitting under a tree, with his back against it, playing on a rough wooden pipe. He was a funny-looking boy about twelve. He looked very clean and his nose turned up and his cheeks were as red as poppies and never had Mistress Mary seen such round and such blue eyes in any boy’s face. And on the trunk of the tree he leaned against, a brown squirrel was clinging and watching him, and from behind a bush near by a cock pheasant was delicately stretching his neck to peep out, and quite near him were two rabbits sitting up and sniffing with tremulous noses—and actually it appeared as if they were all drawing near to watch him and listen to the strange low little call his pipe seemed to make.

When he saw Mary he held up his hand and spoke to her in a voice almost as low as and rather like his piping.

“Don’t tha’ move,” he said. “It’d flight ’em.”

Mary remained motionless. He stopped playing his pipe and began to rise from the ground. He moved so slowly that it scarcely seemed as though he were moving at all, but at last he stood on his feet and then the squirrel scampered back up into the branches of his tree, the pheasant withdrew his head and the rabbits dropped on all fours and began to hop away, though not at all as if they were frightened.

“I’m Dickon,” the boy said. “I know tha’rt Miss Mary.”

Then Mary realized that somehow she had known at first that he was Dickon. Who else could have been charming rabbits and pheasants as the natives charm snakes in India? He had a wide, red, curving mouth and his smile spread all over his face.

“I got up slow,” he explained, “because if tha’ makes a quick move it startles ’em. A body ‘as to move gentle an’ speak low when wild things is about.”

He did not speak to her as if they had never seen each other before but as if he knew her quite well. Mary knew nothing about boys and she spoke to him a little stiffly because she felt rather shy.

“Did you get Martha’s letter?” she asked.

He nodded his curly, rust-coloured head.

“That’s why I come.”

He stooped to pick up something which had been lying on the ground beside him when he piped.

“I’ve got th’ garden tools. There’s a little spade an’ rake an’ a fork an’ hoe. Eh! they are good ‘uns. There’s a trowel, too. An’ th’ woman in th’ shop threw in a packet o’ white poppy an’ one o’ blue larkspur when I bought th’ other seeds.”

“Will you show the seeds to me?” Mary said.

She wished she could talk as he did. His speech was so quick and easy. It sounded as if he liked her and was not the least afraid she would not like him, though he was only a common moor boy, in patched clothes and with a funny face and a rough, rusty-red head. As she came closer to him she noticed that there was a clean fresh scent of heather and grass and leaves about him, almost as if he were made of them. She liked it very much and when she looked into his funny face with the red cheeks and round blue eyes she forgot that she had felt shy.

“Let us sit down on this log and look at them,” she said.

They sat down and he took a clumsy little brown-paper package out of his coat pocket. He untied the string and inside there were ever so many neater and smaller packages with a picture of a flower on each one.

“There’s a lot o’ mignonette an’ poppies,” he said. “Mignonette’s th’ sweetest-smellin’ thing as grows an’ it’ll grow wherever you cast it, same as poppies will. Them as’ll come up an’ bloom if you just whistle to ‘em, them’s th’ nicest of all.”

He stopped and turned his head quickly, his poppy-cheeked face lighting up.

“Where’s that robin as is callin’ us?” he said.

The chirp came from a thick holly bush, bright with scarlet berries, and Mary thought she knew whose it was.

“Is it really calling us?” she asked.

“Aye,” said Dickon, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, “he’s callin’ someone he’s friends with. That’s same as sayin’ ‘Here I am. Look at me. I wants a bit of a chat.’ There he is in the bush. Whose is he?”

“He’s Ben Weatherstaff’s, but I think he knows me a little,” answered Mary.

“Aye, he knows thee,” said Dickon in his low voice again. “An’ he likes thee. He’s took thee on. He’ll tell me all about thee in a minute.”

He moved quite close to the bush with the slow movement Mary had noticed before, and then he made a sound almost like the robin’s own twitter. The robin listened a few seconds, intently, and then answered quite as if he were replying to a question.

“Aye, he’s a friend o’ yours,” chuckled Dickon.

“Do you think he is?” cried Mary, eagerly. She did so want to know. “Do you think he really likes me?”

“He wouldn’t come near thee if he didn’t,” answered Dickon. “Birds is rare choosers an’ a robin can flout a body worse than a man. See, he’s making up to thee now. ‘Cannot tha’ see a chap?’ he’s sayin’.”

And it really seemed as if it must be true. He so sidled and twittered and tilted as he hopped on his bush.

“Do you understand everything birds say?” said Mary.

Dickon’s grin spread until he seemed all wide, red, curving mouth, and he rubbed his rough head.

“I think I do, and they think I do,” he said. “I’ve lived on th’ moor with ’em so long. I’ve watched ‘em break shell an’ come out an’ fledge an’ learn to fly an’ begin to sing, till I think I’m one of ’em. Sometimes I think p‘raps I’m a bird, or a fox, or a rabbit, or a squirrel, or even a beetle, an’ I don’t know it.”

He laughed and came back to the log and began to talk about the flower seeds again. He told her what they looked like when they were flowers; he told her how to plant them, and watch them, and feed and water them.

“See here,” he said suddenly, turning round to look at her. “I’ll plant them for thee myself. Where is tha’ garden?”

Mary’s thin hands clutched each other as they lay on her lap. She did not know what to say, so for a whole minute she said nothing. She had never thought of this. She felt miserable. And she felt as if she went red and then pale.

“Tha’s got a bit o’ garden, hasn’t tha’?” Dickon said.

It was true that she had turned red and then pale. Dickon saw her do it, and as she still said nothing, he began to be puzzled.

“Wouldn’t they give thee a bit?” he asked. “Hasn’t tha’ got any yet?”

She held her hands tighter and turned her eyes toward him.

“I don’t know anything about boys,” she said slowly. “Could you keep a secret, if I told you one? It’s a great secret. I don’t know what I should do if anyone found it out. I believe I should die!” She said the last sentence quite fiercely.

Dickon looked more puzzled than ever and even rubbed his hand over his rough head again, but he answered good-humouredly.

“I’m keepin’ secrets all th’ time,” he said. “If I couldn’t keep secrets from th’ other lads, secrets about foxes’ cubs, an’ birds’ nests, an’ wild things’ holes, there’d be naught safe on th’ moor. Aye, I can keep secrets.”

Mistress Mary did not mean to put out her hand and clutch his sleeve, but she did it.

“I’ve stolen a garden,” she said very fast. “It isn’t mine. It isn’t anybody’s. Nobody wants it, nobody cares for it, nobody ever goes into it. Perhaps everything is dead in it already; I don’t know.”

She began to feel hot and as contrary as she had ever felt in her life.

“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.”

11

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 grey trees with the grey 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 someone’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 grey tangle about him, and his round eyes looked queerly happy.

“Eh! The nests as’ll be here come springtime,” he said. “It’d be th’ safest nestin’ place in England. No one never comin’ near an’ tangles o’ trees an’ roses to build in. I wonder all th’ birds on th’ moor don’t build here.”

Mistress Mary put her hand on his arm again without knowing it.

“Will there be roses?” she whispered. “Can you tell? I thought perhaps they were all dead.”

“Eh! No! Not them—not all of ’em!” he answered. “Look here!”

He stepped over to the nearest tree—an old, old one with grey lichen all over its bark, but upholding a curtain of tangled sprays and branches. He took a thick knife out of his pocket and opened one of its blades.

“There’s lots o’ dead wood as ought to be cut out,” he said. “An’ there’s a lot o’ old wood, but it made some new last year. This here’s a new bit,” and he touched a shoot which looked brownish-green instead of hard, dry grey.

Mary touched it herself in an eager, reverent way.

“That one?” she said. “Is that one quite alive—quite?”

Dickon curved his wide smiling mouth.

“It’s as wick as you or me,” he said; and Mary remembered that Martha had told her that “wick” meant “alive” or “lively.”

“I’m glad it’s wick!” she cried out in her whisper. “I want them all to be wick. Let us go round the garden and count how many wick ones there are.”

She quite panted with eagerness, and Dickon was as eager as she was. They went from tree to tree and from bush to bush. Dickon carried his knife in his hand and showed her things which she thought wonderful.

“They’ve run wild,” he said, “but th’ strongest ones has fair thrived on it. The delicatest ones has died out, but th’ others has growed an’ growed, an’ spread and spread, till they’s a wonder. See here!” and he pulled down a thick grey, dry-looking branch. “A body might think this was dead wood, but I don’t believe it is—down to th’ root. I’ll cut it low down an’ see.”

He knelt and with his knife cut the lifeless-looking branch through, not far above the earth.

“There!” he said exultantly. “I told thee so. There’s green in that wood yet. Look at it.”

Mary was down on her knees before he spoke, gazing with all her might.

“When it looks a bit greenish an’ juicy like that, it’s wick,” he explained. “When th’ inside is dry an’ breaks easy, like this here piece I’ve cut off, it’s done for. There’s a big root here as all this live wood sprung out of, an’ if th’ old wood’s cut off an’ it’s dug round, an’ took care of there’ll be”—he stopped and lifted his face to look up at the climbing and hanging sprays above him—“there’ll be a fountain o’ roses here this summer.”

They went from bush to bush and from tree to tree. He was very strong and clever with his knife and knew how to cut the dry and dead wood away, and could tell when an unpromising bough or twig had still green life in it. In the course of half an hour Mary thought she could tell too, and when he cut through a lifeless-looking branch she would cry out joyfully under her breath when she caught sight of the least shade of moist green. The spade, and hoe, and fork were very useful. He showed her how to use the fork while he dug about roots with the spade and stirred the earth and let the air in.

They were working industriously round one of the biggest standard roses when he caught sight of something which made him utter an exclamation of surprise.

“Why!” he cried, pointing to the grass a few feet away. “Who did that?”

It was one of Mary’s own little clearings round the pale green points.

“I did it,” said Mary.

“Why, I thought tha’ didn’t know nothin’ about gardenin’,” he exclaimed.

“I don’t,” she answered, “but they were so little, and the grass was so thick and strong, and they looked as if they had no room to breathe. So I made a place for them. I don’t even know what they are.”

Dickon went and knelt down by them, smiling his wide smile.

“Tha’ was right,” he said. “A gardener couldn’t have told thee better. They’ll grow now like Jack’s beanstalk. They’re crocuses an’ snowdrops, an’ these here is narcissuses,” turning to another patch, “an’ here’s daffydowndillys. Eh! They will be a sight.”

He ran from one clearing to another.

“Tha’ has done a lot o’ work for such a little wench,” he said, looking her over.

“I’m growing fatter,” said Mary, “and I’m growing stronger. I used always to be tired. When I dig I’m not tired at all. I like to smell the earth when it’s turned up.”

“It’s rare good for thee,” he said, nodding his head wisely. “There’s naught as nice as th’ smell o’ good clean earth, except th’ smell o’ fresh growin’ things when th’ rain falls on ‘em. I get out on th’ moor many a day when it’s rainin’ an’ I lie under a bush an’ listen to th’ soft swish o’ drops on th’ heather an’ I just sniff an’ sniff. My nose end fair quivers like a rabbit’s, Mother says.”

“Do you never catch cold?” inquired Mary, gazing at him wonderingly. She had never seen such a funny boy, or such a nice one.

“Not me,” he said, grinning. “I never ketched cold since I was born. I wasn’t brought up nesh enough. I’ve chased about th’ moor in all weathers, same as th’ rabbits does. Mother says I’ve sniffed up too much fresh air for twelve year’ to ever get to sniffin’ with cold. I’m as tough as a white-thorn knobstick.”

He was working all the time he was talking and Mary was following him and helping him with her fork or the trowel.

“There’s a lot of work to do here!” he said once, looking about quite exultantly.

“Will you come again and help me to do it?” Mary begged. “I’m sure I can help, too. I can dig and pull up weeds, and do whatever you tell me. Oh! do come, Dickon!”

“I’ll come every day if tha’ wants me, rain or shine,” he answered stoutly. “It’s th’ best fun I ever had in my life—shut in here an’ wakenin’ up a garden.”

“If you will come,” said Mary, “if you will help me to make it alive I’ll—I don’t know what I’ll do,” she ended helplessly. What could you do for a boy like that?

“I’ll tell thee what tha’ll do,” said Dickon, with his happy grin. “Tha’ll get fat an’ tha’ll get as hungry as a young fox an’ tha’ll learn how to talk to th’ robin same as I do. Eh! We’ll have a lot o’ fun.”

He began to walk about, looking up in the trees and at the walls and bushes with a thoughtful expression.

“I wouldn’t want to make it look like a gardener’s garden, all clipped an’ spick an’ span, would you?” he said. “It’s nicer like this with things runnin’ wild, an’ swingin’ an’ catchin’ hold of each other.”

“Don’t let us make it tidy,” said Mary anxiously. “It wouldn’t seem like a secret garden if it was tidy.”

Dickon stood rubbing his rusty-red head with a rather puzzled look.

“It’s a secret garden sure enough,” he said, “but seems like someone besides th’ robin must have been in it since it was shut up ten year’ ago.”

“But the door was locked and the key was buried,” said Mary. “No one could get in.”

“That’s true,” he answered. “It’s a queer place. Seems to me as if there’d been a bit o’ prunin’ done here an’ there, later than ten year’ ago.”

“But how could it have been done?” said Mary.

He was examining a branch of a standard rose and he shook his head.

“Aye! how could it!” he murmured. “With th’ door locked an’ th’ key buried.”

Mistress Mary always felt that however many years she lived she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow. Of course, it did seem to begin to grow for her that morning. When Dickon began to clear places to plant seeds, she remembered what Basil had sung at her when he wanted to tease her.

“Are there any flowers that look like bells?” she inquired.

“Lilies o’ th’ valley does,” he answered, digging away with the trowel, “an’ there’s Canterbury bells, an’ campanulas.”

“Let us plant some,” said Mary.

“There’s lilies o’ th’ valley here already; I saw ‘em. They’ll have growed too close an’ we’ll have to separate ‘em, but there’s plenty. Th’ other ones take two years to bloom from seed, but I can bring you some bits o’ plants from our cottage garden. Why does tha’ want ’em?”

Then Mary told him about Basil and his brothers and sisters in India and of how she had hated them and of their calling her “Mistress Mary Quite Contrary.”

“They used to dance round and sing at me. They sang:

‘Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle-shells,
And marigolds all in a row.’

I just remembered it and it made me wonder if there were really flowers like silver bells.”

She frowned a little and gave her trowel a rather spiteful dig into the earth.

“I wasn’t as contrary as they were.”

But Dickon laughed.

“Eh!” he said, and as he crumbled the rich black soil she saw he was sniffing up the scent of it, “there doesn’t seem to be no need for no one to be contrary when there’s flowers an’ such like, an’ such lots o’ friendly wild things runnin’ about makin’ homes for themselves, or buildin’ nests an’ singin’ an’ whistlin’, does there?”

Mary, kneeling by him holding the seeds, looked at him and stopped frowning.

“Dickon,” she said. “You are as nice as Martha said you were. I like you, and you make the fifth person. I never thought I should like five people.”

Dickon sat up on his heels as Martha did when she was polishing the grate. He did look funny and delightful, Mary thought, with his round blue eyes and red cheeks and happy-looking turned-up face.

“Only five folk as tha’ likes?” he said. “Who is th’ other four?”

“Your mother and Martha,” Mary checked them off on her fingers, “and the robin and Ben Weatherstaff.”

Dickon laughed so that he was obliged to stifle the sound by putting his arm over his mouth.

“I know tha’ thinks I’m a queer lad,” he said, “but I think tha’ art th’ queerest little lass I ever saw.”

Then Mary did a strange thing. She leaned forward and asked him a question she had never dreamed of asking anyone before. And she tried to ask it in Yorkshire because that was his language, and in India a native was always pleased if you knew his speech.

“Does tha’ like me?” she said.

“Eh!” he answered heartily, “that I does. I likes thee wonderful, an’ so does th’ robin, I do believe!”

“That’s two, then,” said Mary. “That’s two for me.”

And then they began to work harder than ever and more joyfully. Mary was startled and sorry when she heard the big clock in the courtyard strike the hour of her midday dinner.

“I shall have to go,” she said mournfully. “And you will have to go too, won’t you?”

Dickon grinned.

“My dinner’s easy to carry about with me,” he said. “Mother always lets me put a bit o’ somethin’ in my pocket.”

He picked up his coat from the grass and brought out of a pocket a lumpy little bundle tied up in a quite clean, coarse, blue and white handkerchief. It held two thick pieces of bread with a slice of something laid between them.

“It’s oftenest naught but bread,” he said, “but I’ve got a fine slice o’ fat bacon with it today.”

Mary thought it looked a queer dinner, but he seemed ready to enjoy it.

“Run on an’ get thy victuals,” he said. “I’ll be done with mine first. I’ll get some more work done before I start back home.”

He sat down with his back against a tree.

“I’ll call th’ robin up,” he said, “and give him th’ rind o’ th’ bacon to peck at. They likes a bit o’ fat wonderful.”

Mary could scarcely bear to leave him. Suddenly it seemed as if he might be a sort of wood fairy who might be gone when she came into the garden again. He seemed too good to be true. She went slowly half-way to the door in the wall and then she stopped and went back.

“Whatever happens, you—you never would tell?” she said.

His poppy-coloured cheeks were distended with his first big bite of bread and bacon, but he managed to smile encouragingly.

“If tha’ was a missel thrush an’ showed me where thy nest was, does tha’ think I’d tell anyone? Not me,” he said. “Tha’ art as safe as a missel thrush.”

And she was quite sure she was.

12

“Might I Have A Bit Of Earth?”

MARY RAN SO FAST THAT SHE WAS RATHER OUT OF BREATH when she reached her room. Her hair was ruffled on her forehead and her cheeks were bright pink. Her dinner was waiting on the table, and Martha was waiting near it.

“Tha’s a bit late,” she said. “Where has tha’ been?”

“I’ve seen Dickon!” said Mary. “I’ve seen Dickon!”

“I knew he’d come,” said Martha exultantly. “How does tha’ like him?”

“I think—I think he’s beautiful!” said Mary in a determined voice.

Martha looked rather taken aback, but she looked pleased, too.

“Well,” she said, “he’s th’ best lad as ever was born, but us never thought he was handsome. His nose turns up too much.”

“I like it to turn up,” said Mary.

“An’ his eyes is so round,” said Martha, a trifle doubtful. “Though they’re a nice colour.”

“I like them round,” said Mary. “And they are exactly the color of the sky over the moor.”

Martha beamed with satisfaction.

“Mother says he made ‘em that colour with always lookin’ up at th’ birds an’ th’ clouds. But he has got a big mouth, hasn’t he, now?”

“I love his big mouth,” said Mary obstinately. “I wish mine were just like it.”

Martha chuckled delightedly.

“It’d look rare an’ funny in thy bit of a face,” she said. “But I knowed it would be that way when tha’ saw him. How did tha’ like th’ seeds an’ th’ garden tools?”

“How did you know he brought them?” asked Mary.

“Eh! I never thought of him not bringin’ em. He’d be sure to bring ’em if they was in Yorkshire. He’s such a trusty lad.”

Mary was afraid that she might begin to ask difficult questions, but she did not. She was very much interested in the seeds and gardening tools, and there was only one moment when Mary was frightened. This was when she began to ask where the flowers were to be planted.

“Who did tha’ ask about it?” she inquired.

“I haven’t asked anybody yet,” said Mary, hesitating.

“Well, I wouldn’t ask th’ head gardener. He’s too grand, Mr. Roach is.”

“I’ve never seen him,” said Mary. “I’ve only seen undergardeners and Ben Weatherstaff.”

“If I was you, I’d ask Ben Weatherstaff,” advised Martha. “He’s not half as bad as he looks, for all he’s so crabbed. Mr. Craven lets him do what he likes because he was here when Mrs. Craven was alive, an’ he used to make her laugh. She liked him. Perhaps he’d find you a corner somewhere out o’ the way.”

“If it was out of the way and no one wanted it, no one could mind my having it, could they?” Mary said anxiously.

“There wouldn’t be no reason,” answered Martha. “You wouldn’t do no harm.”

Mary ate her dinner as quickly as she could, and when she rose from the table she was going to run to her room to put on her hat again, but Martha stopped her.

“I’ve got somethin’ to tell you,” she said. “I thought I’d let you eat your dinner first. Mr. Craven came back this mornin’ and I think he wants to see you.”

Mary turned quite pale.

“Oh!” she said. “Why! Why! He didn’t want to see me when I came. I heard Pitcher say he didn’t.”

“Well,” explained Martha, “Mrs. Medlock says it’s because o’ Mother. She was walkin’ to Thwaite village an’ she met him. She’d never spoke to him before, but Mrs. Craven had been to our cottage two or three times. He’d forgot, but Mother hadn’t, an’ she made bold to stop him. I don’t know what she said to him about you, but she said somethin’ as put him in th’ mind to see you before he goes away again, tomorrow.”

“Oh!” cried Mary, “is he going away tomorrow? I’m so glad!”

“He’s goin’ for a long time. He mayn’t come back till autumn or winter. He’s goin’ to travel in foreign places. He’s always doin’ it.”

“Oh! I’m so glad—so glad!” said Mary thankfully.

If he did not come back until winter, or even autumn, there would be time to watch the secret garden come alive. Even if he found out then and took it away from her she would have had that much at least.

“When do you think he will want to see—”

She did not finish the sentence, because the door opened, and Mrs. Medlock walked in. She had on her best black dress and cap, and her collar was fastened with a large brooch with a picture of a man’s face on it. It was a coloured photograph of Mr. Medlock, who had died years ago, and she always wore it when she was dressed up. She looked nervous and excited.

“Your hair’s rough,” she said quickly. “Go and brush it. Martha, help her to slip on her best dress. Mr. Craven sent me to bring her to him in his study.”

All the pink left Mary’s cheeks. Her heart began to thump and she felt herself changing into a stiff, plain, silent child again. She did not even answer Mrs. Medlock, but turned and walked into her bedroom, followed by Martha. She said nothing while her dress was changed, and her hair brushed, and after she was quite tidy she followed Mrs. Medlock down the corridors, in silence. What was there for her to say? She was obliged to go and see Mr. Craven, and he would not like her, and she would not like him. She knew what he would think of her.

She was taken to a part of the house she had not been into before. At last Mrs. Medlock knocked at a door, and when someone said, “Come in,” they entered the room together. A man was sitting in an armchair before the fire, and Mrs. Medlock spoke to him.

“This is Miss Mary, sir,” she said.

“You can go and leave her here. I will ring for you when I want you to take her away,” said Mr. Craven.

When she went out and closed the door, Mary could only stand waiting, a plain little thing, twisting her thin hands together. She could see that the man in the chair was not so much a hunchback as a man with high, rather crooked shoulders, and he had black hair streaked with white. He turned his head over his high shoulders and spoke to her.

“Come here!” he said.

Mary went to him.

He was not ugly. His face would have been handsome if it had not been so miserable. He looked as if the sight of her worried and fretted him and as if he did not know what in the world to do with her.

“Are you well?” he asked.

“Yes,” answered Mary.

“Do they take good care of you?”

“Yes.”

He rubbed his forehead fretfully as he looked her over.

“You are very thin,” he said.

“I am getting fatter,” Mary answered in what she knew was her stiffest way.

What an unhappy face he had! His black eyes seemed as if they scarcely saw her, as if they were seeing something else, and he could hardly keep his thoughts upon her.

“I forgot you,” he said. “How could I remember you? I intended to send you a governess or a nurse or someone of that sort, but I forgot.”

“Please,” began Mary. “Please—” and then the lump in her throat choked her.

“What do you want to say?” he inquired.

“I am—I am too big for a nurse,” said Mary. “And please—please don’t make me have a governess yet.”

He rubbed his forehead again and stared at her.

“That was what the Sowerby woman said,” he muttered absent-mindedly.

Then Mary gathered a scrap of courage.

“Is she—is she Martha’s mother?” she stammered.

“Yes, I think so,” he replied.

“She knows about children,” said Mary. “She has twelve. She knows.”

He seemed to rouse himself.

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to play out of doors,” Mary answered, hoping that her voice did not tremble. “I never liked it in India. It makes me hungry here, and I am getting fatter.”

He was watching her.

“Mrs. Sowerby said it would do you good. Perhaps it will,” he said. “She thought you had better get stronger before you had a governess.”

“It makes me feel strong when I play and the wind comes over the moor,” argued Mary.

“Where do you play?” he asked next.

“Everywhere,” gasped Mary. “Martha’s mother sent me a skipping-rope. I skip and run—and I look about to see if things are beginning to stick up out of the earth. I don’t do any harm.”

“Don’t look so frightened,” he said in a worried voice. “You could not do any harm, a child like you! You may do what you like.”

Mary put her hand up to her throat because she was afraid he might see the excited lump which she felt jump into it. She came a step nearer to him.

“May I?” she said tremulously.

Her anxious little face seemed to worry him more than ever.

“Don’t look so frightened,” he exclaimed. “Of course you may. I am your guardian, though I am a poor one for any child. I cannot give you time or attention. I am too ill, and wretched and distracted; but I wish you to be happy and comfortable. I don’t know anything about children, but Mrs. Medlock is to see that you have all you need. I sent for you today because Mrs. Sowerby said I ought to see you. Her daughter had talked about you. She thought you needed fresh air and freedom and running about.”

“She knows all about children,” Mary said again in spite of herself.

“She ought to,” said Mr. Craven. “I thought her rather bold to stop me on the moor, but she said—Mrs. Craven had been kind to her.” It seemed hard for him to speak his dead wife’s name. “She is a respectable woman. Now I have seen you I think she said sensible things. Play out of doors as much as you like. It’s a big place, and you may go where you like and amuse yourself as you like. Is there anything you want?” as if a sudden thought had struck him. “Do you want toys, books, dolls?”

“Might I,” quavered Mary, “might I have a bit of earth?”

In her eagerness she did not realize how queer the words would sound and that they were not the ones she had meant to say. Mr. Craven looked quite startled.

“Earth!” he repeated. “What do you mean?”

“To plant seeds in—to make things grow—to see them come alive,” Mary faltered.

He gazed at her a moment and then passed his hand quickly over his eyes.

“Do you—care about gardens so much?” he said slowly.

“I didn’t know about them in India,” said Mary. “I was always ill and tired, and it was too hot. I sometimes made little beds in the sand and stuck flowers in them. But here it is different.”

Mr. Craven got up and began to walk slowly across the room.

“A bit of earth,” he said to himself, and Mary thought that somehow she must have reminded him of something. When he stopped and spoke to her his dark eyes looked almost soft and kind.

“You can have as much earth as you want,” he said. “You remind me of someone else who loved the earth and things that grow. When you see a bit of earth you want,” with something like a smile, “take it, child, and make it come alive.”

“May I take it from anywhere—if it’s not wanted?”

“Anywhere,” he answered. “There! You must go now, I am tired.” He touched the bell to call Mrs. Medlock. “Good-bye. I shall be away all summer.”

Mrs. Medlock came so quickly that Mary thought she must have been waiting in the corridor.

“Mrs. Medlock,” Mr. Craven said to her, “now I have seen the child I understand what Mrs. Sowerby meant. She must be less delicate before she begins lessons. Give her simple, healthy food. Let her run wild in the garden. Don’t look after her too much. She needs liberty and fresh air and romping about. Mrs. Sowerby is to come and see her now and then, and she may sometimes go to the cottage.”

Mrs. Medlock looked pleased. She was relieved to hear that she need not “look after” Mary too much. She had felt her a tiresome charge, and had, indeed, seen as little of her as she dared. In addition to this she was fond of Martha’s mother.

“Thank you, sir,” she said. “Susan Sowerby and me went to school together, and she’s as sensible and good-hearted a woman as you’d find in a day’s walk. I never had any children myself and she’s had twelve, and there never was healthier or better ones. Miss Mary can get no harm from them. I’d always take Susan Sowerby’s advice about children myself. She’s what you might call healthy-minded—if you understand me.”

“I understand,” Mr. Craven answered. “Take Miss Mary away now and send Pitcher to me.”

When Mrs. Medlock left her at the end of her own corridor Mary flew back to her room. She found Martha waiting there. Martha had, in fact, hurried back after she had removed the dinner service.

“I can have my garden!” cried Mary. “I may have it where I like! I am not going to have a governess for a long time! Your mother is coming to see me and I may go to your cottage. He says a little girl like me could not do any harm and I may do what I like—anywhere!”

“Eh!” said Martha delighted, “that was nice of him, wasn’t it?”

“Martha,” said Mary solemnly, “he is really a nice man, only his face is so miserable and his forehead is all drawn together.”

She ran as quickly as she could to the garden. She had been away so much longer than she had thought she should, and she knew Dickon would have to set out early on his five-mile walk. When she slipped through the door under the ivy, she saw he was not working where she had left him. The gardening tools were laid together under a tree. She ran to them, looking all round the place, but there was no Dickon to be seen. He had gone away and the secret garden was empty—except for the robin, who had just flown across the wall and sat on a standard rosebush watching her.

“He’s gone,” she said woefully. “Oh! was he—was he—was he only a wood fairy?”

Something white fastened to the standard rosebush caught her eye. It was a piece of paper—in fact, it was a piece of the letter she had printed for Martha to send to Dickon. It was fastened on the bush with a long thorn, and in a minute she knew Dickon had left it there. There were some roughly printed letters on it and a sort of picture. At first she could not tell what it was. Then she saw it was meant for a nest with a bird sitting on it. Underneath were the printed letters, and they said:

“I will cum bak.”

13

“I Am Colin”

MARY TOOK THE PICTURE BACK TO THE HOUSE WHEN SHE went to her supper and she showed it to Martha.

“Eh!” said Martha with great pride. “I never knew our Dickon was as clever as that. That there’s a picture of a missel thrush on her nest, as large as life an’ twice as natural.”

Then Mary knew Dickon had meant the picture to be a message. He had meant that she might be sure he would keep her secret. Her garden was her nest and she was like a missel thrush. Oh, how she did like that queer, common boy!

She hoped he would come back the very next day and she fell asleep looking forward to the morning.

But you never know what the weather will do in Yorkshire, particularly in the springtime. She was awakened in the night by the sound of rain beating with heavy drops against her window. It was pouring down in torrents and the wind was “wuthering” round the corners and in the chimneys of the huge old house. Mary sat up in bed and felt miserable and angry.

“The rain is as contrary as I ever was,” she said. “It came because it knew I did not want it.”

She threw herself back on her pillow and buried her face. She did not cry, but she lay and hated the sound of the heavily beating rain, she hated the wind and its “wuthering.” She could not go to sleep again. The mournful sound kept her awake because she felt mournful herself. If she had felt happy it would probably have lulled her to sleep. How it “wuthered” and how the big raindrops poured down and beat against the pane!

“It sounds just like a person lost on the moor and wandering on and on crying,” she said.

She had been lying awake, turning from side to side for about an hour, when suddenly something made her sit up in bed and turn her head toward the door listening. She listened and she listened.

“It isn’t the wind now,” she said in a loud whisper. “That isn’t the wind. It is different. It is that crying I heard before.”

The door of her room was ajar and the sound came down the corridor, a far-off faint sound of fretful crying. She listened for a few minutes and each minute she became more and more sure. She felt as if she must find out what it was. It seemed even stranger than the secret garden and the buried key. Perhaps the fact that she was in a rebellious mood made her bold. She put her foot out of bed and stood on the floor.

“I am going to find out what it is,” she said. “Everybody is in bed and I don’t care about Mrs. Medlock—I don’t care!”

There was a candle by her bedside and she took it up and went softly out of the room. The corridor looked very long and dark, but she was too excited to mind that. She thought she remembered the corners she must turn to find the short corridor with the door covered with tapestry—the one Mrs. Medlock had come through the day she lost herself. The sound had come up that passage. So she went on with her dim light, almost feeling her way, her heart beating so loud that she fancied she could hear it. The far-off faint crying went on and led her. Sometimes it stopped for a moment or so and then began again. Was this the right corner to turn? She stopped and thought. Yes, it was. Down this passage and then to the left, and then up two broad steps, and then to the right again. Yes, there was the tapestry door.

She pushed it open very gently and closed it behind her, and she stood in the corridor and could hear the crying quite plainly, though it was not loud. It was on the other side of the wall at her left and a few yards farther on there was a door. She could see a glimmer of light coming from beneath it. The Someone was crying in that room, and it was quite a young Someone.

So she walked to the door and pushed it open, and there she was standing in the room!

It was a big room with ancient, handsome furniture in it. There was a low fire glowing faintly on the hearth and a nightlight burning by the side of a carved four-posted bed hung with brocade, and on the bed was lying a boy, crying fretfully.

Mary wondered if she was in a real place or if she had fallen asleep again and was dreaming without knowing it.

The boy had a sharp, delicate face the colour of ivory, and he seemed to have eyes too big for it. He had also a lot of hair which tumbled over his forehead in heavy locks and made his thin face seem smaller. He looked like a boy who had been ill, but he was crying more as if he were tired and cross than as if he were in pain.

Mary stood near the door with her candle in her hand, holding her breath. Then she crept across the room, and as she drew nearer the light attracted the boy’s attention and he turned his head on his pillow and stared at her, his grey eyes opening so wide that they seemed immense.

“Who are you?” he said at last in a half-frightened whisper. “Are you a ghost?”

“No, I am not,” Mary answered, her own whisper sounding half-frightened. “Are you one?”

He stared and stared and stared. Mary could not help noticing what strange eyes he had. They were agate-grey and they looked too big for his face because they had black lashes all round them.

“No,” he replied after waiting a moment or so. “I am Colin.”

“Who is Colin?” she faltered.

“I am Colin Craven. Who are you?”

“I am Mary Lennox. Mr. Craven is my uncle.”

“He is my father,” said the boy.

“Your father!” gasped Mary. “No one ever told me he had a boy! Why didn’t they?”

“Come here,” he said, still keeping his strange eyes fixed on her with an anxious expression.

She came close to the bed and he put out his hand and touched her.

“You are real, aren’t you?” he said. “I have such real dreams very often. You might be one of them.”

Mary had slipped on a woolen wrapper before she left her room and she put a piece of it between his fingers.

“Rub that and see how thick and warm it is,” she said. “I will pinch you a little if you like, to show you how real I am. For a minute I thought you might be a dream, too.”

“Where did you come from?” he asked.

“From my own room. The wind wuthered so I couldn’t go to sleep and I heard someone crying and wanted to find out who it was. What were you crying for?”

“Because I couldn’t go to sleep either and my head ached. Tell me your name again.”

“Mary Lennox. Did no one ever tell you I had come to live here?”

He was still fingering the fold of her wrapper, but he began to look a little more as if he believed in her reality.

“No,” he answered. “They daren’t.”

“Why?” asked Mary.

“Because I should have been afraid you would see me. I won’t let people see me and talk me over.”

“Why?” Mary asked again, feeling more mystified every moment.

“Because I am like this always, ill and having to lie down. My father won’t let people talk me over either. The servants are not allowed to speak about me. If I live I may be a hunchback, but I shan’t live. My father hates to think I may be like him.”

“Oh, what a queer house this is!” Mary said. “What a queer house! Everything is a kind of secret. Rooms are locked up and gardens are locked up—and you! Have you been locked up?”

“No. I stay in this room because I don’t want to be moved out of it. It tires me too much.”

“Does your father come and see you?” Mary ventured.

“Sometimes. Generally when I am asleep. He doesn’t want to see me.”

“Why?” Mary could not help asking again.

A sort of angry shadow passed over the boy’s face.

“My mother died when I was born and it makes him wretched to look at me. He thinks I don’t know, but I’ve heard people talking. He almost hates me.”

“He hates the garden, because she died,” said Mary, half speaking to herself.

“What garden?” the boy asked.

“Oh! Just—just a garden she used to like,” Mary stammered. “Have you been here always?”

“Nearly always. Sometimes I have been taken to places at the seaside, but I won’t stay because people stare at me. I used to wear an iron thing to keep my back straight, but a grand doctor came from London to see me and said it was stupid. He told them to take it off and keep me out in the fresh air. I hate fresh air and I don’t want to go out.”

“I didn’t when first I came here,” said Mary. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

“Because of the dreams that are so real,” he answered rather fretfully. “Sometimes when I open my eyes I don’t believe I’m awake.”

“We’re both awake,” said Mary. She glanced round the room with its high ceiling and shadowy corners and dim firelight. “It looks quite like a dream, and it’s the middle of the night, and everybody in the house is asleep—everybody but us. We are wide awake.”

“I don’t want it to be a dream,” the boy said restlessly.

Mary thought of something all at once.

“If you don’t like people to see you,” she began, “do you want me to go away?”

He still held the fold of her wrapper and he gave it a little pull.

“No,” he said. “I should be sure you were a dream if you went. If you are real, sit down on that big footstool and talk. I want to hear about you.”

Mary put down her candle on the table near the bed and sat down on the cushioned stool. She did not want to go away at all. She wanted to stay in the mysterious hidden-away room and talk to the mysterious boy.

“What do you want me to tell you?” she said.

He wanted to know how long she had been at Misselthwaite; he wanted to know which corridor her room was on; he wanted to know what she had been doing; if she disliked the moor as he disliked it; where she had lived before she came to Yorkshire. She answered all these questions and many more and he lay back on his pillow and listened. He made her tell him a great deal about India and about her voyage across the ocean. She found out that because he had been an invalid he had not learned things as other children had. One of his nurses had taught him to read when he was quite little and he was always reading and looking at pictures in splendid books.

Though his father rarely saw him when he was awake, he was given all sorts of wonderful things to amuse himself with. He never seemed to have been amused, however. He could have anything he asked for and was never made to do anything he did not like to do.

“Everyone is obliged to do what pleases me,” he said indifferently. “It makes me ill to be angry. No one believes I shall live to grow up.”

He said it as if he was so accustomed to the idea that it had ceased to matter to him at all. He seemed to like the sound of Mary’s voice. As she went on talking he listened in a drowsy interested way. Once or twice she wondered if he were not gradually falling into a doze. But at last he asked a question which opened up a new subject.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“I am ten,” answered Mary, forgetting herself for the moment, “and so are you.”

“How do you know that?” he demanded in a surprised voice.

“Because when you were born the garden door was locked and the key was buried. And it has been locked for ten years.”

Colin half sat up, turning toward her, leaning on his elbows.

“What garden door was locked? Who did it? Where was the key buried?” he exclaimed as if he were suddenly very much interested.

“It—it was the garden Mr. Craven hates,” said Mary nervously. “He locked the door. No one—no one knew where he buried the key.”

“What sort of a garden is it?” Colin persisted eagerly.

“No one has been allowed to go into it for ten years,” was Mary’s careful answer.

But it was too late to be careful. He was too much like herself. He too had had nothing to think about and the idea of a hidden garden attracted him as it had attracted her. He asked question after question. Where was it? Had she never looked for the door? Had she never asked the gardeners?

“They won’t talk about it,” said Mary. “I think they have been told not to answer questions.”

“I would make them,” said Colin.

“Could you?” Mary faltered, beginning to feel frightened. If he could make people answer questions, who knew what might happen!

“Everyone is obliged to please me. I told you that,” he said. “If I were to live, this place would some time belong to me. They all know that. I would make them tell me.”

Mary had not known that she herself had been spoiled, but she could see quite plainly that this mysterious boy had been. He thought that the whole world belonged to him. How peculiar he was and how coolly he spoke of not living.

“Do you think you won’t live?” she asked, partly because she was curious and partly in hope of making him forget the garden.

“I don’t suppose I shall,” he answered as indifferently as he had spoken before. “Ever since I remember anything I have heard people say I shan’t. At first they thought I was too little to understand and now they think I don’t hear. But I do. My doctor is my father’s cousin. He is quite poor and if I die he will have all Misselthwaite when my father is dead. I should think he wouldn’t want me to live.”

“Do you want to live?” inquired Mary.

“No,” he answered, in a cross, tired fashion. “But I don’t want to die. When I feel ill I lie here and think about it until I cry and cry.”

“I have heard you crying three times,” Mary said, “but I did not know who it was. Were you crying about that?” She did so want him to forget the garden.

“I dare say,” he answered. “Let us talk about something else. Talk about that garden. Don’t you want to see it?”

“Yes,” answered Mary, in quite a low voice.

“I do,” he went on persistently. “I don’t think I ever really wanted to see anything before, but I want to see that garden, I want the key dug up. I want the door unlocked. I would let them take me there in my chair. That would be getting fresh air. I am going to make them open the door.”

He had become quite excited and his strange eyes began to shine like stars and looked more immense than ever.

“They have to please me,” he said. “I will make them take me there and I will let you go, too.”

Mary’s hands clutched each other. Everything would be spoiled—everything. Dickon would never come back. She would never again feel like a missel thrush with a safe-hidden nest.

“Oh, don‘t—don’t—don’t—don’t do that!” she cried out.

He stared as if he thought she had gone crazy!

“Why?” he exclaimed. “You said you wanted to see it.”

“I do,” she answered, almost with a sob in her throat, “but if you make them open the door and take you in like that it will never be a secret again.”

He leaned still farther forward.

“A secret,” he said. “What do you mean? Tell me.”

Mary’s words almost tumbled over one another.

“You see—you see,” she panted, “if no one knows but ourselves—if there was a door, hidden somewhere under the ivy—if there was—and we could find it; and if we could slip through it together and shut it behind us, and no one knew anyone was inside and we called it our garden and pretended that—that we were missel thrushes and it was our nest, and if we played there almost every day and dug and planted seeds and made it all come alive—”

“Is it dead?” he interrupted her.

“It soon will be if no one cares for it,” she went on. “The bulbs will live but the roses—”

He stopped her again as excited as she was herself.

“What are bulbs?” he put in quickly.

“They are daffodils and lilies and snowdrops. They are working in the earth now—pushing up pale green points because the spring is coming.”

“Is the spring coming?” he said. “What is it like? You don’t see it in rooms if you are ill.”

“It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine, and things pushing up and working under the earth,” said Mary. “If the garden was a secret and we could get into it we could watch the things grow bigger every day, and see how many roses are alive. Don’t you see? Oh, don’t you see how much nicer it would be if it was a secret?”

He dropped back on his pillow and lay there with an odd expression on his face.

“I never had a secret,” he said, “except that one about not living to grow up. They don’t know I know that, so it is a sort of secret. But I like this kind better.”

“If you won’t make them take you to the garden,” pleaded Mary, “perhaps—I feel almost sure I can find out how to get in sometime. And then—if the doctor wants you to go out in your chair, and if you can always do what you want to do, perhaps—perhaps we might find some boy who would push you, and we could go alone and it would always be a secret garden.”

“I should—like—that,” he said very slowly, his eyes looking dreamy. “I should like that. I should not mind fresh air in a secret garden.”

Mary began to recover her breath and feel safer because the idea of keeping the secret seemed to please him. She felt almost sure that if she kept on talking and could make him see the garden in his mind as she had seen it he would like it so much that he could not bear to think that everybody might tramp into it when they chose.

“I’ll tell you what I think it would be like, if we could go into it,” she said. “It has been shut up so long, things have grown into a tangle perhaps.”

He lay quite still and listened while she went on talking about the roses which might have clambered from tree to tree and hung down—about the many birds which might have built their nests there because it was so safe. And then she told him about the robin and Ben Weatherstaff, and there was so much to tell about the robin and it was so easy and safe to talk about it that she ceased to feel afraid. The robin pleased him so much that he smiled until he looked almost beautiful, and at first Mary had thought that he was even plainer than herself, with his big eyes and heavy locks of hair.

“I did not know birds could be like that,” he said. “But if you stay in a room you never see things. What a lot of things you know. I feel as if you had been inside that garden.”

She did not know what to say, so she did not say anything. He evidently did not expect an answer and the next moment he gave her a surprise.

“I am going to let you look at something,” he said. “Do you see that rose-coloured silk curtain hanging on the wall over the mantelpiece?”

Mary had not noticed it before, but she looked up and saw it. It was a curtain of soft silk hanging over what seemed to be some picture.

“Yes,” she answered.

“There is a cord hanging from it,” said Colin. “Go and pull it.”

Mary got up, much mystified, and found the cord. When she pulled it the silk curtain ran back on rings and when it ran back it uncovered a picture. It was the picture of a girl with a laughing face. She had bright hair tied up with a blue ribbon and her gay, lovely eyes were exactly like Colin’s unhappy ones, agate-grey and looking twice as big as they really were because of the black lashes all round them.

“She is my mother,” said Colin complainingly. “I don’t see why she died. Sometimes I hate her for doing it.”

“How queer!” said Mary.

“If she had lived I believe I should not have been ill always,” he grumbled. “I dare say I should have lived, too. And my father would not have hated to look at me. I dare say I should have had a strong back. Draw the curtain again.”

Mary did as she was told and returned to her footstool.

“She is much prettier than you,” she said, “but her eyes are just like yours—at least they are the same shape and colour. Why is the curtain drawn over her?”

He moved uncomfortably.

“I made them do it,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t like to see her looking at me. She smiles too much when I am ill and miserable. Besides, she is mine and I don’t want everyone to see her.”

There were a few moments of silence and then Mary spoke.

“What would Mrs. Medlock do if she found out that I had been here?” she inquired.

“She would do as I told her to do,” he answered. “And I should tell her that I wanted you to come here and talk to me every day. I am glad you came.”

“So am I,” said Mary. “I will come as often as I can, but”—she hesitated—“I shall have to look every day for the garden door.”

“Yes, you must,” said Colin, “and you can tell me about it afterward.”

He lay thinking a few minutes, as he had done before, and then he spoke again.

“I think you shall be a secret, too,” he said. “I will not tell them until they find out. I can always send the nurse out of the room and say that I want to be by myself. Do you know Martha?”

“Yes, I know her very well,” said Mary. “She waits on me.”

He nodded his head toward the outer corridor.

“She is the one who is asleep in the other room. The nurse went away yesterday to stay all night with her sister and she always makes Martha attend to me when she wants to go out. Martha shall tell you when to come here.”

Then Mary understood Martha’s troubled look when she had asked questions about the crying.

“Martha knew about you all the time?” she said.

“Yes; she often attends to me. The nurse likes to get away from me and then Martha comes.”

“I have been here a long time,” said Mary. “Shall I go away now? Your eyes look sleepy.”

“I wish I could go to sleep before you leave me,” he said rather shyly.

“Shut your eyes,” said Mary, drawing her footstool closer, “and I will do what my Ayah used to do in India. I will pat your hand and stroke it and sing something quite low.”

“I should like that perhaps,” he said drowsily.

Somehow she was sorry for him and did not want him to lie awake, so she leaned against the bed and began to stroke and pat his hand and sing a very low little chanting song in Hindustani.

“That is nice,” he said more drowsily still, and she went on chanting and stroking, but when she looked at him again his black lashes were lying close against his cheeks, for his eyes were shut and he was fast asleep. So she got up softly, took her candle and crept away without making a sound.

14

A Young Rajah

THE MOOR WAS HIDDEN IN MIST WHEN THE MORNING CAME and the rain had not stopped pouring down. There could be no going out of doors. Martha was so busy that Mary had no opportunity of talking to her, but in the afternoon she asked her to come and sit with her in the nursery. She came, bringing the stocking she was always knitting when she was doing nothing else.

“What’s the matter with thee?” she asked as soon as they sat down. “Tha’ looks as if tha’d somethin’ to say.”

“I have. I have found out what the crying was,” said Mary.

Martha let her knitting drop on her knee and gazed at her with startled eyes.

“Tha’ hasn’t!” she exclaimed. “Never!”

“I heard it in the night,” Mary went on. “And I got up and went to see where it came from. It was Colin. I found him.”

Martha’s face became red with fright.

“Eh! Miss Mary!” she said half crying. “Tha’ shouldn’t have done it—tha’ shouldn’t! Tha’ll get me in trouble. I never told thee nothin’ about him—but tha’ll get me in trouble. I shall lose my place and what’ll Mother do!”

“You won’t lose your place,” said Mary. “He was glad I came. We talked and talked and he said he was glad I came.”

“Was he?” cried Martha. “Art tha’ sure? Tha’ doesn’t know what he’s like when anything vexes him. He’s a big lad to cry like a baby, but when he’s in a passion he’ll fair scream just to frighten us. He knows us daren’t call our souls our own.”

“He wasn’t vexed,” said Mary. “I asked him if I should go away and he made me stay. He asked me questions and I sat on a big footstool and talked to him about India and about the robin and gardens. He wouldn’t let me go. He let me see his mother’s picture. Before I left him I sang him to sleep.”

Martha fairly gasped with amazement.

“I can scarcely believe thee!” she protested. “It’s as if tha’d walked straight into a lion’s den. If he’d been like he is most times he’d have throwed himself into one of his tantrums and roused th’ house. He won’t let strangers look at him.”

“He let me look at him. I looked at him all the time and he looked at me. We stared!” said Mary.

“I don’t know what to do!” cried agitated Martha. “If Mrs. Medlock finds out, she’ll think I broke orders and told thee and I shall be packed back to Mother.”

“He is not going to tell Mrs. Medlock anything about it yet. It’s to be a sort of secret just at first,” said Mary firmly. “And he says everybody is obliged to do as he pleases.”

“Aye, that’s true enough—th’ bad lad!” sighed Martha, wiping her forehead with her apron.

“He says Mrs. Medlock must. And he wants me to come and talk to him every day. And you are to tell me when he wants me.”

“Me!” said Martha; “I shall lose my place—I shall for sure!”

“You can’t if you are doing what he wants you to do and everybody is ordered to obey him,” Mary argued.

“Does tha’ mean to say,” cried Martha with wide-open eyes, “that he was nice to thee!”

“I think he almost liked me,” Mary answered.

“Then tha’ must have bewitched him!” decided Martha, drawing a long breath.

“Do you mean Magic?” inquired Mary. “I’ve heard about Magic in India, but I can’t make it. I just went into his room and I was so surprised to see him I stood and stared. And then he turned round and stared at me. And he thought I was a ghost or a dream and I thought perhaps he was. And it was so queer being there alone together in the middle of the night and not knowing about each other. And we began to ask each other questions. And when I asked him if I must go away he said I must not.”

“Th’ world’s comin’ to a end!” gasped Martha.

“What is the matter with him?” asked Mary.

“Nobody knows for sure and certain,” said Martha. “Mr. Craven went off his head like when he was born. Th’ doctors thought he’d have to be put in a ’sylum. It was because Mrs. Craven died like I told you. He wouldn’t set eyes on th’ baby. He just raved and said it’d be another hunchback like him and it’d better die.”

“Is Colin a hunchback?” Mary asked. “He didn’t look like one.”

“He isn’t yet,” said Martha. “But he began all wrong. Mother said there was enough trouble and raging in th’ house to set any child wrong. They was afraid his back was weak an’ they’ve always been takin’ care of it—keepin’ him lyin’ down an’ not lettin’ him walk. Once they made him wear a brace, but he fretted so he was downright ill. Then a big doctor came to see him an’ made them take it off. He talked to th’ other doctor quite rough—in a polite way. He said there’d been too much medicine and too much lettin’ him have his own way.”

“I think he’s a very spoiled boy,” said Mary.

“He’s th’ worst young nowt as ever was!” said Martha. “I won’t say as he hasn’t been ill a good bit. He’s had coughs an’ colds that’s nearly killed him two or three times. Once he had rheumatic fever an’ once he had typhoid. Eh! Mrs. Medlock did get a fright then. He’d been out of his head an’ she was talkin’ to th’ nurse, thinkin’ he didn’t know nothin’, an’ she said: ‘He’ll die this time sure enough, an’ best thing for him an’ for everybody.’ An’ she looked at him an’ there he was with his big eyes open, starin’ at her as sensible as she was herself. She didn’t know what’d happen, but he just stared at her an’ says, ‘You give me some water an’ stop talkin’.’”

“Do you think he will die?” asked Mary.

“Mother says there’s no reason why any child should live that gets no fresh air an’ doesn’t do nothin’ but lie on his back an’ read picture-books an’ take medicine. He’s weak and hates th’ trouble o’ bein’ taken out o’ doors, an’ he gets cold so easy he says it makes him ill.”

Mary sat and looked at the fire.

“I wonder,” she said slowly, “if it would not do him good to go out into a garden and watch things growing. It did me good.”

“One of th’ worst fits he ever had,” said Martha, “was one time they took him out where the roses is by the fountain. He’d been readin’ in a paper about people gettin’ somethin’ he called ‘rose cold’ an’ he began to sneeze an’ said he’d got it, an’ then a new gardener as didn’t know th’ rules passed by an’ looked at him curious. He threw himself into a passion an’ he said he’d looked at him because he was going to be a hunchback. He cried himself into a fever an’ was ill all night.”

“If he ever gets angry at me, I’ll never go and see him again,” said Mary.

“He’ll have thee if he wants thee,” said Martha. “Tha’ may as well know that at th’ start.”

Very soon afterward a bell rang, and she rolled up her knitting.

“I dare say th’ nurse wants me to stay with him a bit,” she said. “I hope he’s in a good temper.”

She was out of the room about ten minutes and then she came back with a puzzled expression.

“Well, tha’ has bewitched him,” she said. “He’s up on his sofa with his picture-books. He’s told the nurse to stay away until six o’clock. I’m to wait in the next room. Th’ minute she was gone he called me to him an’ says, ‘I want Mary Lennox to come and talk to me, and remember you’re not to tell anyone.’ You’d better go as quick as you can.”

Mary was quite willing to go quickly. She did not want to see Colin as much as she wanted to see Dickon, but she wanted to see him very much.

There was a bright fire on the hearth when she entered his room, and in the daylight she saw it was a very beautiful room indeed. There were rich colours in the rugs and hangings and pictures and books on the walls, which made it look glowing and comfortable even in spite of the grey sky and falling rain. Colin looked rather like a picture himself. He was wrapped in a velvet dressing-gown and sat against a big brocaded cushion. He had a red spot on each cheek.

“Come in,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about you all the morning.”

“I’ve been thinking about you, too,” answered Mary. “You don’t know how frightened Martha is. She says Mrs. Medlock will think she told me about you and then she will be sent away.”

He frowned.

“Go and tell her to come here,” he said. “She is in the next room.”

Mary went and brought her back. Poor Martha was shaking in her shoes. Colin was still frowning.

“Have you to do what I please or have you not?” he demanded.

“I have to do what you please, sir,” Martha faltered, turning quite red.

“Has Medlock to do what I please?”

“Everybody has, sir,” said Martha.

“Well, then, if I order you to bring Miss Mary to me, how can Medlock send you away if she finds it out?”

“Please don’t let her, sir,” pleaded Martha.

“I’ll send her away if she dares to say a word about such a thing,” said Master Craven grandly. “She wouldn’t like that, I can tell you.”

“Thank you, sir,” bobbing a curtsy, “I want to do my duty, sir.”

“What I want is your duty,” said Colin more grandly still. “I’ll take care of you. Now go away.”

When the door closed behind Martha, Colin found Mistress Mary gazing at him as if he had set her wondering.

“Why do you look at me like that?” he asked her. “What are you thinking about?”

“I am thinking about two things.”

“What are they? Sit down and tell me.”

“This is the first one,” said Mary, seating herself on the big stool. “Once in India I saw a boy who was a rajah. He had rubies and emeralds and diamonds stuck all over him. He spoke to his people just as you spoke to Martha. Everybody had to do everything he told them—in a minute. I think they would have been killed if they hadn’t.”

“I shall make you tell me about rajahs presently,” he said, “but first tell me what the second thing was.”

“I was thinking,” said Mary, “how different you are from Dickon.”

“Who is Dickon?” he said. “What a queer name!”

She might as well tell him, she thought. She could talk about Dickon without mentioning the secret garden. She had liked to hear Martha talk about him. Besides, she longed to talk about him. It would seem to bring him nearer.

“He is Martha’s brother. He is twelve years old,” she explained. “He is not like anyone else in the world. He can charm foxes and squirrels and birds just as the natives in India charm snakes. He plays a very soft tune on a pipe and they come and listen.”

There were some big books on a table at his side, and he dragged one suddenly toward him.

“There is a picture of a snake-charmer in this,” he exclaimed. “Come and look at it.”

The book was a beautiful one with superb coloured illustrations, and he turned to one of them.

“Can he do that?” he asked eagerly.

“He played on his pipe and they listened,” Mary explained. “But he doesn’t call it Magic. He says it’s because he lives on the moor so much and he knows their ways. He says he feels sometimes as if he was a bird or a rabbit himself, he likes them so. I think he asked the robin questions. It seemed as if they talked to each other in soft chirps.”

Colin lay back on his cushion and his eyes grew larger and larger and the spots on his cheeks burned.

“Tell me some more about him,” he said.

“He knows all about eggs and nests,” Mary went on. “And he knows where foxes and badgers and otters live. He keeps them secret so that other boys won’t find their holes and frighten them. He knows about everything that grows or lives on the moor.”

“Does he like the moor?” said Colin. “How can he when it’s such a great, bare, dreary place?”

“It’s the most beautiful place,” protested Mary. “Thousands of lovely things grow on it, and there are thousands of little creatures all busy building nests and making holes and burrows and chippering or singing or squeaking to each other. They are so busy and having such fun under the earth or in the trees or heather. It’s their world.”

“How do you know all that?” said Colin, turning on his elbow to look at her.

“I have never been there once, really,” said Mary, suddenly remembering. “I only drove over it in the dark. I thought it was hideous. Martha told me about it first, and then Dickon. When Dickon talks about it you feel as if you saw things and heard them, and as if you were standing in the heather with the sun shining and the gorse smelling like honey—and all full of bees and butterflies.”

“You never see anything if you are ill,” said Colin restlessly. He looked like a person listening to a new sound in the distance and wondering what it was.

“You can’t if you stay in a room,” said Mary.

“I couldn’t go on the moor,” he said in a resentful tone.

Mary was silent for a minute and then she said something bold.

“You might—some time.”

He moved as if he were startled.

“Go on the moor! How could I? I am going to die.”

“How do you know?” said Mary unsympathetically. She didn’t like the way he had of talking about dying. She did not feel very sympathetic. She felt rather as if he almost boasted about it.

“Oh, I’ve heard it ever since I remember,” he answered crossly. “They are always whispering about it and thinking I don’t notice. They wish I would, too.”

Mistress Mary felt quite contrary. She pinched her lips together.

“If they wished I would,” she said, “I wouldn’t. Who wishes you would?”

“The servants—and of course Dr. Craven, because he would get Misselthwaite and be rich instead of poor. He daren’t say so, but he always looks cheerful when I am worse. When I had typhoid fever his face got quite fat. I think my father wishes it, too.”

“I don’t believe he does,” said Mary quite obstinately.

That made Colin turn and look at her again.

“Don’t you?” he said.

And then he lay back on his cushion and was still, as if he were thinking. And there was quite a long silence. Perhaps they were both of them thinking strange things children do not usually think of.

“I like the grand doctor from London, because he made them take the iron thing off,” said Mary at last. “Did he say you were going to die?”

“No.”

“What did he say?”

“He didn’t whisper,” Colin answered. “Perhaps he knew I hated whispering. I heard him say one thing quite aloud. He said, ‘The lad might live if he would make up his mind to it. Put him in the humour.’ It sounded as if he was in a temper.”

“I’ll tell you who would put you in the humour, perhaps,” said Mary, reflecting. She felt as if she would like this thing to be settled one way or the other. “I believe Dickon would. He’s always talking about live things. He never talks about dead things or things that are ill. He’s always looking up in the sky to watch birds flying—or looking down at the earth to see something growing. He has such round blue eyes and they are so wide open with looking about. And he laughs such a big laugh with his wide mouth—and his cheeks are as red—as red as cherries.”

She pulled her stool nearer to the sofa and her expression quite changed at the remembrance of the wide curving mouth and wide open eyes.

“See here,” she said. “Don’t let us talk about dying; I don’t like it. Let us talk about living. Let us talk and talk about Dickon. And then we will look at your pictures.”

It was the best thing she could have said. To talk about Dickon meant to talk about the moor and about the cottage and the fourteen people who lived in it on sixteen shillings a week—and the children who got fat on the moor grass like the wild ponies. And about Dickon’s mother—and the skipping-rope—and the moor with the sun on it—and about pale green points sticking up out of the black sod. And it was all so alive that Mary talked more than she had ever talked before—and Colin both talked and listened as he had never done either before. And they both began to laugh over nothings as children will when they are happy together. And they laughed so that in the end they were making as much noise as if they had been two ordinary healthy natural ten-year-old creatures—instead of a hard, little, unloving girl and a sickly boy who believed that he was going to die.

They enjoyed themselves so much that they forgot the pictures and they forgot about the time. They had been laughing quite loudly over Ben Weatherstaff and his robin, and Colin was actually sitting up as if he had forgotten about his weak back when he suddenly remembered something.

“Do you know there is one thing we have never once thought of?” he said. “We are cousins.”

It seemed so queer that they had talked so much and never remembered this simple thing that they laughed more than ever, because they had got into the humour to laugh at anything. And in the midst of the fun the door opened and in walked Dr. Craven and Mrs. Medlock.

Dr. Craven started in actual alarm and Mrs. Medlock almost fell back because he had accidentally bumped against her.

“Good Lord!” exclaimed poor Mrs. Medlock, with her eyes almost starting out of her head. “Good Lord!”

“What is this?” said Dr. Craven, coming forward. “What does it mean?”

Then Mary was reminded of the boy rajah again. Colin answered as if neither the doctor’s alarm nor Mrs. Medlock’s terror were of the slightest consequence. He was as little disturbed or frightened as if an elderly cat and dog had walked into the room.

“This is my cousin, Mary Lennox,” he said. “I asked her to come and talk to me. I like her. She must come and talk to me whenever I send for her.”

Dr. Craven turned reproachfully to Mrs. Medlock.

“Oh, sir,” she panted. “I don’t know how it’s happened. There’s not a servant on the place that’d dare to talk—they all have their orders.”

“Nobody told her anything,” said Colin. “She heard me crying and found me herself. I am glad she came. Don’t be silly, Medlock.”

Mary saw that Dr. Craven did not look pleased, but it was quite plain that he dare not oppose his patient. He sat down by Colin and felt his pulse.

“I am afraid there has been too much excitement. Excitement is not good for you, my boy,” he said.

“I should be excited if she kept away,” answered Colin, his eyes beginning to look dangerously sparkling. “I am better. She makes me better. The aurse must bring up her tea with mine. We will have tea together.”

Mrs. Medlock and Dr. Craven looked at each other in a troubled way, but there was evidently nothing to be done.

“He does look rather better, sir,” ventured Mrs. Medlock. “But”—thinking the matter over—“he looked better this morning before she came into the room.”

“She came into the room last night. She stayed with me a long time. She sang a Hindustani song to me and it made me go to sleep,” said Colin. “I was better when I wakened up. I wanted my breakfast. I want my tea now. Tell nurse, Medlock.”

Dr. Craven did not stay very long. He talked to the nurse for a few minutes when she came into the room and said a few words of warning to Colin. He must not talk too much; he must not forget that he was ill; he must not forget that he was very easily tired. Mary thought that there seemed to be a number of uncomfortable things he was not to forget.

Colin looked fretful and kept his strange black-lashed eyes fixed on Dr. Craven’s face.

“I want to forget it,” he said at last. “She makes me forget it. That is why I want her.”

Dr. Craven did not look happy when he left the room. He gave a puzzled glance at the little girl sitting on the large stool. She had become a stiff, silent child again as soon as he entered and he could not see what the attraction was. The boy actually did look brighter, however—and he sighed rather heavily as he went down the corridor.

“They are always wanting me to eat things when I don’t want to,” said Colin, as the nurse brought in the tea and put it on the table by the sofa. “Now, if you’ll eat I will. Those muffins look so nice and hot. Tell me about rajahs.”

15

Nest Building

AFTER ANOTHER WEEK OF RAIN THE HIGH ARCH OF BLUE sky appeared again and the sun which poured down was quite hot. Though there had been no chance to see either the secret garden or Dickon, Mistress Mary had enjoyed herself very much. The week had not seemed long. She had spent hours of every day with Colin in his room, talking about rajahs or gardens or Dickon and the cottage on the moor. They had looked at the splendid books and pictures and sometimes Mary had read things to Colin, and sometimes he had read a little to her. When he was amused and interested she thought he scarcely looked like an invalid at all, except that his face was so colourless and he was always on the sofa.

“You are a sly young one to listen and get out of your bed to go following things up like you did that night,” Mrs. Medlock said once. “But there’s no saying it’s not been a sort of blessing to the lot of us. He’s not had a tantrum or a whining fit since you made friends. The nurse was just going to give up the case because she was so sick of him, but she says she doesn’t mind staying now you’ve gone on duty with her,” laughing a little.

In her talks with Colin, Mary had tried to be very cautious about the secret garden. There were certain things she wanted to find out from him, but she felt that she must find them out without asking him direct questions. In the first place, as she began to like to be with him, she wanted to discover whether he was the kind of boy you could tell a secret to. He was not in the least like Dickon, but he was evidently so pleased with the idea of a garden no one knew anything about that she thought perhaps he could be trusted. But she had not known him long enough to be sure. The second thing she wanted to find out was this: If he could be trusted—if he really could—wouldn’t it be possible to take him to the garden without having anyone find it out? The grand doctor had said that he must have fresh air and Colin had said that he would not mind fresh air in a secret garden. Perhaps if he had a great deal of fresh air and knew Dickon and the robin and saw things growing he might not think so much about dying. Mary had seen herself in the glass sometimes lately when she had realized that she looked quite a different creature from the child she had seen when she arrived from India. This child looked nicer. Even Martha had seen a change in her.

“Th’ air from th’ moor has done thee good already,” she had said. “Tha‘rt not nigh so yeller and tha’rt not nigh so scrawny. Even tha’ hair doesn’t slamp down on tha’ head so flat. It’s got some life in it so as it sticks out a bit.”

“It’s like me,” said Mary. “It’s growing stronger and fatter. I’m sure there’s more of it.”

“It looks it, for sure,” said Martha, ruffling it up a little round her face. “Tha‘rt not half so ugly when it’s that way an’ there’s a bit o’ red in tha’ cheeks.”

If gardens and fresh air had been good for her perhaps they would be good for Colin. But then, if he hated people to look at him, perhaps he would not like to see Dickon.

“Why does it make you angry when you are looked at?” she inquired one day.

“I always hated it,” he answered, “even when I was very little. Then when they took me to the seaside and I used to lie in my carriage everybody used to stare and ladies would stop and talk to my nurse and then they would begin to whisper and I knew then they were saying I shouldn’t live to grow up. Then sometimes the ladies would pat my cheeks and say ‘Poor child!’ Once when a lady did that I screamed out loud and bit her hand. She was so frightened she ran away.”

“She thought you had gone mad like a dog,” said Mary, not at all admiringly.

“I don’t care what she thought,” said Colin, frowning.

“I wonder why you didn’t scream and bite me when I came into your room?” said Mary. Then she began to smile slowly.

“I thought you were a ghost or a dream,” he said. “You can’t bite a ghost or a dream, and if you scream they don’t care.”

“Would you hate it if—if a boy looked at you?” Mary asked uncertainly.

He lay back on his cushion and paused thoughtfully.

“There’s one boy,” he said quite slowly, as if he were thinking over every word, “there’s one boy I believe I shouldn’t mind. It’s that boy who knows where the foxes live—Dickon.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t mind him,” said Mary.

“The birds don’t and other animals,” he said, still thinking it over, “perhaps that’s why I shouldn’t. He’s a sort of animal-charmer and I am a boy animal.”

Then he laughed and she laughed too; in fact, it ended in their both laughing a great deal and finding the idea of a boy animal hiding in his hole very funny indeed.

What Mary felt afterward was that she need not fear about Dickon.

On that first morning when the sky was blue again Mary wakened very early. The sun was pouring in slanting rays through the blinds and there was something so joyous in the sight of it that she jumped out of bed and ran to the window. She drew up the blinds and opened the window itself and a great waft of fresh, scented air blew in upon her. The moor was blue and the whole world looked as if something Magic had happened to it. There were tender little fluting sounds here and there and everywhere, as if scores of birds were beginning to tune up for a concert. Mary put her hand out of the window and held it in the sun.

“It’s warm—warm!” she said. “It will make the green points push up and up and up, and it will make the bulbs and roots work and struggle with all their might under the earth.”

She kneeled down and leaned out of the window as far as she could, breathing big breaths and sniffing the air until she laughed because she remembered what Dickon’s mother had said about the end of his nose quivering like a rabbit’s.

“It must be very early,” she said. “The little clouds are all pink and I’ve never seen the sky look like this. No one is up. I don’t even hear the stable-boys.”

A sudden thought made her scramble to her feet.

“I can’t wait! I am going to see the garden!”

She had learnt to dress herself by this time and she put on her clothes in five minutes. She knew a small side door which she could unbolt herself and she flew downstairs in her stocking feet and put on her shoes in the hall. She unchained and unbolted and unlocked and when the door was open she sprang across the step with one bound, and there she was standing on the grass, which seemed to have turned green, and with the sun pouring down on her and warm sweet wafts about her and the fluting and twittering and singing coming from every bush and tree. She clasped her hands for pure joy and looked up in the sky and it was so blue and pink and pearly and white and flooded with springtime light that she felt as if she must flute and sing aloud herself and knew that thrushes and robins and skylarks could not possibly help it. She ran around the shrubs and paths towards the secret garden.

“It is all different already,” she said. “The grass is greener and things are sticking up everywhere and things are uncurling and green buds of leaves are showing. This afternoon I am sure Dickon will come.”

The long warm rain had done strange things to the herbaceous beds which bordered the walk by the lower wall. There were things sprouting and pushing out from the roots of clumps of plants and there were actually here and there glimpses of royal purple and yellow unfurling among the stems of crocuses. Six months before Mistress Mary would not have seen how the world was waking up, but now she missed nothing.

When she had reached the place where the door hid itself under the ivy, she was startled by a curious loud sound. It was the caw—caw of a crow and it came from the top of the wall, and when she looked up, there sat a big glossy-plumaged blue-black bird, looking down at her very wisely indeed. She had never seen a crow so close before and he made her a little nervous, but the next moment he spread his wings and flapped away across the garden. She hoped he was not going to stay inside and she pushed the door open wondering if he would. When she got fairly into the garden she saw that he probably did intend to stay because he had alighted on a dwarf apple tree, and under the apple tree was lying a little reddish animal with a bushy tail, and both of them were watching the stooping body and rust-red head of Dickon, who was kneeling on the grass working hard.

Mary flew across the grass to him.

“Oh, Dickon! Dickon!” she cried out. “How could you get here so early! How could you! The sun has only just got up!”

He got up himself, laughing and glowing, and tousled; his eyes like a bit of the sky.

“Eh!” he said. “I was up long before him. How could I have stayed abed! Th’ world’s all fair begun again this momin’, it has. An’ it’s workin’ an’ hummin’ an’ scratchin’ an’ pipin’ an’ nest-buildin’ an’ breathin’ out scents, till you’ve got to be out on it ‘stead o’ lyin’ on your back. When th’ sun did jump up, th’ moor went mad for joy, an’ I was in the midst of th’ heather, an’ I run like mad myself, shoutin’ an’ singin’. An’ I come straight here. I couldn’t have stayed away. Why, th’ garden was lyin’ here waitin’!”

Mary put her hands on her chest, panting, as if she had been running herself.

“Oh, Dickon! Dickon!” she said. “I’m so happy I can scarcely breathe!”

Seeing him talking to a stranger, the little bushy-tailed animal rose from its place under the tree and came to him, and the rook, cawing once, flew down from its branch and settled quietly on his shoulder.

“This is th’ little fox cub,” he said, rubbing the little reddish animal’s head. “It’s named Captain. An’ this here’s Soot. Soot he flew across th’ moor with me an’ Captain he run same as if th’ hounds had been after him. They both felt same as I did.”

Neither of the creatures looked as if he were the least afraid of Mary. When Dickon began to walk about, Soot stayed on his shoulder and Captain trotted quietly close to his side.

“See here!” said Dickon. “See how these has pushed up, an’ these an’ these! An’ eh! look at these here!”

He threw himself upon his knees and Mary went down beside him. They had come upon a whole clump of crocuses burst into purple and orange and gold. Mary bent her face down and kissed and kissed them.

“You never kiss a person in that way,” she said when she lifted her head. “Flowers are so different.”

He looked puzzled but smiled.

“Eh!” he said, “I’ve kissed Mother many a time that way when I come in from th’ moor after a day’s roamin’ an’ she stood there at th’ door in th’ sun, lookin’ so glad an’ comfortable.”

They ran from one part of the garden to another and found so many wonders that they were obliged to remind themselves that they must whisper or speak low. He showed her swelling leaf-buds on rose bushes which had seemed dead. He showed her ten thousand new green points pushing through the mould. They put their eager young noses close to the earth and sniffed its warmed springtime breathing; they dug and pulled and laughed low with rapture until Mistress Mary’s hair was as tumbled as Dickon’s and her cheeks were almost as poppy red as his.

There was every joy on earth in the secret garden that morning, and in the midst of them came a delight more delightful than all, because it was more wonderful. Swiftly something flew across the wall and darted through the trees to a close-grown corner, a little flare of red-breasted bird with something hanging from its beak. Dickon stood quite still and put his hand on Mary almost as if they had suddenly found themselves laughing in church.

“We munnot stir,” he whispered in broad Yorkshire. “We munnot scarce breathe. I knowed he was mate-huntin’ when I seed him last. It’s Ben Weatherstaff’s robin. He’s buildin’ his nest. He’ll stay here if us don’t flight him.”

They settled down softly upon the grass and sat there without moving.

“Us mustn’t seem as if us was watchin’ him too close,” said Dickon. “He’d be out with us for good if he got th’ notion us was interferin’ now. He’ll be a good bit different till all this is over. He’s settin’ up housekeepin’. He’ll be shyer an’ readier to take things ill. He’s got no time for visitin’ an’ gossipin’. Us must keep still a bit an’ try to look as if us was grass an’ trees an’ bushes. Then when he’s got used to seein’ us I’ll chirp a bit an’ he’ll know us’ll not be in his way.”

Mistress Mary was not at all sure that she knew, as Dickon seemed to, how to try to look like grass and trees and bushes. But he had said the queer thing as if it were the simplest and most natural thing in the world, and she felt it must be quite easy to him, and indeed she watched him for a few minutes carefully, wondering if it was possible for him to quietly turn green and put out branches and leaves. But he only sat wonderfully still, and when he spoke dropped his voice to such a softness that it was curious that she could hear him, but she could.

“It’s part o’ th’ springtime, this nest-buildin’ is,” he said. “I warrant it’s been goin’ on in th’ same way every year since th’ world was begun. They’ve got their way o’ thinkin’ and doin’ things an’ a body had better not meddle. You can lose a friend in springtime easier than any other season if you’re too curious.”

“If we talk about him I can’t help looking at him,” Mary said as softly as possible. “We must talk of something else. There is something I want to tell you.”

“He’ll like it better if us talks o’ somethin’ else,” said Dickon. “What is it tha’s got to tell me?”

“Well—do you know about Colin?” she whispered.

He turned his head to look at her.

“What does tha’ know about him?” he asked.

“I’ve seen him. I have been to talk to him every day this week. He wants me to come. He says I’m making him forget about being ill and dying,” answered Mary.

Dickon looked actually relieved as soon as the surprise died away from his round face.

“I am glad o’ that,” he exclaimed. “I’m right down glad. It makes me easier. I knowed I must say nothin’ about him an’ I don’t like havin’ to hide things.”

“Don’t you like hiding the garden?” said Mary.

“I’ll never tell about it,” he answered. “But I says to Mother, ‘Mother,’ I says, ‘I got a secret to keep. It’s not a bad ’un, tha’ knows that. It’s no worse than hidin’ where a bird’s nest is. Tha’ doesn’t mind it, does tha’?’”

Mary always wanted to hear about Mother.

“What did she say?” she asked, not at all afraid to hear.

Dickon grinned sweet-temperedly.

“It was just like her, what she said,” he answered. “She give my head a bit of a rub an’ laughed an’ she says, ‘Eh, lad, tha’ can have all th’ secrets tha’ likes, I’ve knowed thee twelve year’.’”

“How did you know about Colin?” asked Mary.

“Everybody as knowed about Mester Craven knowed there was a little lad as was like to be a cripple, an’ they knowed Mester Craven didn’t like him to be talked about. Folks is sorry for Mester Craven because Mrs. Craven was such a pretty young lady an’ they was so fond of each other. Mrs. Medlock stops in our cottage whenever she goes to Thwaite an’ she doesn’t mind talkin’ to Mother before us children, because she knows us has been brought up to be trusty. How did tha’ find out about him? Martha was in fine trouble th’ last time she came home. She said tha’d heard him frettin’ an’ tha’ was askin’ questions an’ she didn’t know what to say.”

Mary told him her story about the midnight wuthering of the wind which had wakened her and about the faint far-off sounds of the complaining voice which had led her down the dark corridors with her candle and had ended with her opening of the door of the dimly lighted room with the carven four-posted bed in the corner. When she described the small ivory-white face and the strange black-rimmed eyes Dickon shook his head.

“Them’s just like his mother’s eyes, only hers was always laughin’, they say,” he said. “They say as Mr. Craven can’t bear to see him when he’s awake an’ it’s because his eyes is so like his mother’s an’ yet looks so different in his miserable bit of a face.”

“Do you think he wants him to die?” whispered Mary.

“No, but he wishes he’d never been born. Mother she says that’s th’ worst thing on earth for a child. Them as is not wanted scarce ever thrives. Mester Craven he’d buy anythin’ as money could buy for th’ poor lad but he’d like to forget as he’s on earth. For one thing, he’s afraid he’ll look at him some day and find he’s growed hunchback.”

“Colin’s so afraid of it himself that he won’t sit up,” said Mary. “He says he’s always thinking that if he should feel a lump coming he should go crazy and scream himself to death.”

“Eh! he oughtn’t to lie there thinkin’ things like that,” said Dickon. “No lad could get well as thought them sort o’ things.”

The fox was lying on the grass close by him looking up to ask for a pat now and then, and Dickon bent down and rubbed his neck softly and thought a few minutes in silence. Presently he lifted his head and looked round the garden.

“When first we got in here,” he said, “it seemed like everything was grey. Look round now and tell me if tha’ doesn’t see a difference.”

Mary looked and caught her breath a little.

“Why!” she cried, “the grey wall is changing. It is as if a green mist were creeping over it. It’s almost like a green gauze veil.”

“Aye,” said Dickon. “An’ it’ll be greener and greener till th’ grey’s all gone. Can tha’ guess what I was thinkin’?”

“I know it was something nice,” said Mary eagerly. “I believe it was something about Colin.”

“I was thinkin’ that if he was out here he wouldn’t be watchin’ for lumps to grow on his back; he’d be watchin’ for buds to break on th’ rose bushes, an’ he’d likely be healthier,” explained Dickon. “I was wonderin’ if us could ever get him in th’ humour to come, out here an’ lie under th’ trees in his carriage.”

“I’ve been wondering that myself. I’ve thought of it almost every time I’ve talked to him,” said Mary. “I’ve wondered if he could keep a secret and I’ve wondered if we could bring him here without anyone seeing us. I thought perhaps you could push his carriage. The doctor said he must have fresh air and if he wants us to take him out no one dare disobey him. He won’t go out for other people and perhaps they will be glad if he will go out with us. He could order the gardeners to keep away so they wouldn’t find out.”

Dickon was thinking very hard as he scratched Captain’s back.

“It’d be good for him, I’ll warrant,” he said. “Us’d not be thinkin’ he’d better never been born. Us’d be just two children watchin’ a garden grow, an’ he’d be another. Two lads an’ a little lass just lookin’ on at th’ springtime. I warrant it’d be better than doctor’s stuff.”

“He’s been lying in his room so long and he’s always been so afraid of his back that it has made him queer,” said Mary. “He knows a good many things out of books but he doesn’t know anything else. He says he has been too ill to notice things and he hates going out of doors and hates gardens and gardeners. But he likes to hear about this garden because it is a secret. I daren’t tell him much but he said he wanted to see it.”

“Us’ll have him out here some time for sure,” said Dickon. “I could push his carriage well enough. Has tha’ noticed how th’ robin an’ his mate has been workin’ while we’ve been sittin’ here? Look at him perched on that branch wonderin’ where it’d be best to put that twig he’s got in his beak.”

He made one of his low whistling calls and the robin turned his head and looked at him inquiringly, still holding his twig. Dickon spoke to him as Ben Weatherstaff did, but Dickon’s tone was one of friendly advice.

“Wheres‘ever tha’ puts it,” he said, “it’ll be all right. Tha’ knew how to build tha’ nest before tha’ came out o’ th’ egg. Get on with thee, lad. Tha’st got no time to lose.”

“Oh, I do like to hear you talk to him!” Mary said, laughing delightedly. “Ben Weatherstaff scolds him and makes fun of him, and he hops about and looks as if he understood every word, and I know he likes it. Ben Weatherstaff says he is so conceited he would rather have stones thrown at him than not be noticed.”

Dickon laughed too and went on talking.

“Tha’ knows us won’t trouble thee,” he said to the robin. “Us is near bein’ wild things ourselves. Us is nest-buildin’ too, bless thee. Look out tha’ doesn’t tell on us.”

And though the robin did not answer, because his beak was occupied, Mary knew that when he flew away with his twig to his own corner of the garden the darkness of his dew-bright eye meant that he would not tell their secret for the world.

16

“I Won’t!” said Mary

THEY FOUND A GREAT DEAL TO DO THAT MORNING, AND Mary was late in returning to the house and was also in such a hurry to get back to her work that she quite forgot Colin until the last moment.

“Tell Colin that I can’t come and see him yet,” she said to Martha. “I’m very busy in the garden.”

Martha looked rather frightened.

“Eh! Miss Mary,” she said, “it may put him all out of humour when I tell him that.”

But Mary was not as afraid of him as other people were, and she was not a self-sacrificing person.

“I can’t stay,” she answered. “Dickon’s waiting for me”; and she ran away.

The afternoon was even lovelier and busier than the morning had been. Already nearly all the weeds were cleared out of the garden and most of the roses and trees had been pruned or dug about. Dickon had brought a spade of his own and he had taught Mary to use all her tools, so that by this time it was plain that though the lovely wild place was not likely to become a “gardener’s garden,” it would be a wilderness of growing things before the springtime was over.

“There’ll be apple blossoms an’ cherry blossoms overhead,” Dickon said, working away with all his might. “An’ there’ll be peach an’ plum trees in bloom against th’ walls, an’ th’ grass’ll be a carpet o’ flowers.”

The little fox and the rook were as happy and busy as they were, and the robin and his mate flew backward and forward like tiny streaks of lightning. Sometimes the rook flapped his black wings and soared away over the tree-tops in the park. Each time he came back and perched near Dickon and cawed several times as if he were relating his adventures, and Dickon talked to him just as he had talked to the robin. Once when Dickon was so busy that he did not answer him at first, Soot flew on to his shoulder and gently tweaked his ear with his large beak. When Mary wanted to rest a little Dickon sat down with her under a tree, and once he took his pipe out of his pocket and played the soft, strange little notes, and two squirrels appeared on the wall and looked and listened.

“Tha’s a good bit stronger than tha’ was,” Dickon said, looking at her as she was digging. “Tha’s beginnin’ to look different, for sure.”

Mary was glowing with exercise and good spirits.

“I’m getting fatter and fatter every day,” she said quite exultantly. “Mrs. Medlock will have to get me some bigger dresses. Martha says my hair is growing thicker. It isn’t so flat and stringy.”

The sun was beginning to set and sending deep gold-coloured rays slanting under the trees when they parted.

“It’ll be fine tomorrow,” said Dickon. “I’ll be at work by sunrise.”

“So will I,” said Mary.

She ran back to the house as quickly as her feet would carry her. She wanted to tell Colin about Dickon’s fox cub and the rook and about what the springtime had been doing. She felt sure he would like to hear. So it was not very pleasant when she opened the door of her room, to see Martha standing waiting for her with a doleful face.

“What is the matter?” she asked. “What did Colin say when you told him I couldn’t come?”

“Eh!” said Martha, “I wish tha’d gone. He was nigh goin’ into one o’ his tantrums. There’s been a nice to do all afternoon to keep him quiet. He would watch the clock all th’ time.”

Mary’s lips pinched themselves together. She was no more used to considering other people than Colin was, and she saw no reason why an ill-tempered boy should interfere with the thing she liked best. She knew nothing about the pitifulness of people who had been ill and nervous and who did not know that they could control their tempers and need not make other people ill and nervous too. When she had had a headache in India she had done her best to see that everybody else also had a headache or something quite as bad. And she felt she was quite right; but of course now she felt that Colin was quite wrong.

He was not on his sofa when she went into his room. He was lying flat on his back in bed and he did not turn his head toward her as she came in. This was a bad beginning and Mary marched up to him with her stiff manner.

“Why didn’t you get up?” she said.

“I did get up this morning when I thought you were coming,” he answered, without looking at her. “I made them put me back in bed this afternoon. My back ached and my head ached and I was tired. Why didn’t you come?”

“I was working in the garden with Dickon,” said Mary.

Colin frowned and condescended to look at her.

“I won’t let that boy come here if you go and stay with him instead of coming to talk to me,” he said.

Mary flew into a fine passion. She could fly into a passion without making a noise. She just grew sour and obstinate and did not care what happened.

“If you send Dickon away, I’ll never come into this room again,” she retorted.

“You’ll have to if I want you,” said Colin.

“I won’t!” said Mary.

“I’ll make you,” said Colin. “They shall drag you in.”

“Shall they, Mr. Rajah!” said Mary fiercely. “They may drag me in but they can’t make me talk when they get me here. I’ll sit and clench my teeth and never tell you one thing. I won’t even look at you. I’ll stare at the floor!”

They were a nice agreeable pair as they glared at each other. If they had been two little street boys they would have sprung at each other and had a rough-and-tumble fight. As it was, they did the next thing to it.

“You are a selfish thing!” cried Colin.

“What are you?” said Mary. “Selfish people always say that. Anyone is selfish who doesn’t do what they want. You’re more selfish than I am. You’re the most selfish boy I ever saw.”

“I’m not!” snapped Colin. “I’m not as selfish as your fine Dickon is! He keeps you playing in the dirt when he knows I am all by myself. He’s selfish, if you like!”

Mary’s eyes flashed fire.

“He’s nicer than any other boy that ever lived!” she said. “He’s—he’s like an angel!” It might sound rather silly to say that but she did not care.

“A nice angel!” Colin sneered ferociously. “He’s a common cottage boy off the moor!”

“He’s better than a common rajah!” retorted Mary. “He’s a thousand times better!”

Because she was the stronger of the two she was beginning to get the better of him. The truth was that he had never had a fight with anyone like himself in his life and, upon the whole, it was rather good for him, though neither he nor Mary knew anything about that. He turned his head on his pillow and shut his eyes and a big tear was squeezed out and ran down his cheek. He was beginning to feel pathetic and sorry for himself—not for anyone else.

“I’m not as selfish as you, because I’m always ill, and I’m sure there is a lump coming on my back,” he said. “And I am going to die besides.”

“You’re not!” contradicted Mary unsympathetically.

He opened his eyes quite wide with indignation. He had never heard such a thing said before. He was at once furious and slightly pleased, if a person could be both at the same time.

“I’m not?” he cried. “I am! You know I am! Everybody says so.”

“I don’t believe it!” said Mary sourly. “You just say that to make people sorry. I believe you’re proud of it. I don’t believe it! If you were a nice boy it might be true—but you’re too nasty!”

In spite of his invalid back Colin sat up in bed in quite a healthy rage.

“Get out of the room!” he shouted and he caught hold of his pillow and threw it at her. He was not strong enough to throw it far and it only fell at her feet, but Mary’s face looked as pinched as a nutcracker.

“I’m going,” she said. “And I won’t come back!”

She walked to the door and when she reached it she turned round and spoke again.

“I was going to tell you all sorts of nice things,” she said. “Dickon brought his fox and his rook and I was going to tell you all about them. Now I won’t tell you a single thing!”

She marched out of the door and closed it behind her, and there to her great astonishment she found the trained nurse standing as if she had been listening and, more amazing still—she was laughing. She was a big handsome young woman who ought not to have been a trained nurse at all, as she could not bear invalids and she was always making excuses to leave Colin to Martha or anyone else who would take her place. Mary had never liked her, and she simply stood and gazed up at her as she stood giggling into her handkerchief.

“What are you laughing at?” she asked her.

“At you two young ones,” said the nurse. “It’s the best thing that could happen to the sickly pampered thing to have someone to stand up to him that’s as spoiled as himself’; and she laughed into her handkerchief again.”If he’d had a young vixen of a sister to fight with it would have been the saving of him.”

“Is he going to die?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said the nurse. “Hysterics and temper are half what ails him.”

“What are hysterics?” asked Mary.

“You’ll find out if you work him into a tantrum after this—but at any rate you’ve given him something to have hysterics about, and I’m glad of it.”

Mary went back to her room not feeling at all as she had felt when she had come in from the garden. She was cross and disappointed but not at all sorry for Colin. She had looked forward to telling him a great many things and she had meant to try to make up her mind whether it would be safe to trust him with the great secret. She had been beginning to think it would be, but now she had changed her mind entirely. She would never tell him and he could stay in his room and never get any fresh air and die if he liked! It would serve him right! She felt so sour and unrelenting that for a few minutes she almost forgot about Dickon and the green veil creeping over the world and the soft wind blowing down from the moor.

Martha was waiting for her and the trouble in her face had been temporarily replaced by interest and curiosity. There was a wooden box on the table and its cover had been removed and revealed that it was full of neat packages.

“Mr. Craven sent it to you,” said Martha. “It looks as if it had picture-books in it.”

Mary remembered what he had asked her the day she had gone to his room. “Do you want anything—dolls—toys—books?” She opened the package wondering if he had sent a doll, and also wondering what she should do with it if he had. But he had not sent one. There were several beautiful books such as Colin had, and two of them were about gardens and were full of pictures. There were two or three games and there was a beautiful little writing-case with a gold monogram on it and a gold pen and inkstand.

Everything was so nice that her pleasure began to crowd her anger out of her mind. She had not expected him to remember her at all and her hard little heart grew quite warm.

“I can write better than I can print,” she said, “and the first thing I shall write with that pen will be a letter to tell him I am much obliged.”

If she had been friends with Colin she would have run to show him her presents at once, and they would have looked at the pictures and read some of the gardening books and perhaps tried playing the games, and he would have enjoyed himself so much he would never once have thought he was going to die or have put his hand on his spine to see if there was a lump coming. He had a way of doing that which she could not bear. It gave her an uncomfortable frightened feeling because he always looked so frightened himself. He said that if he felt even quite a little lump some day he should know his hunch had begun to grow. Something he had heard Mrs. Medlock whispering to the nurse had given him the idea and he had thought over it in secret until it was quite firmly fixed in his mind. Mrs. Medlock had said his father’s back had begun to show its crookedness in that way when he was a child. He had never told anyone but Mary that most of his “tantrums,” as they called them, grew out of his hysterical hidden fear. Mary had been sorry for him when he had told her.

“He always began to think about it when he was cross or tired,” she said to herself. “And he has been cross today. Perhaps—perhaps he has been thinking about it all the afternoon.”

She stood still, looking down at the carpet and thinking.

“I said I would never go back again—” she hesitated, knitting her brows—“but perhaps, just perhaps, I will go and see—if he wants me—in the morning. Perhaps he’ll try to throw his pillow at me again, but—I think—I’ll go.”

17

A Tantrum

SHE HAD GOT UP VERY EARLY IN THE MORNING AND HAD worked hard in the garden and she was tired and sleepy, so as soon as Martha had brought her supper and she had eaten it, she was glad to go to bed. As she laid her head on the pillow she murmured to herself:

“I’ll go out before breakfast and work with Dickon and then afterward—I believe—I’ll go to see him.”

She thought it was the middle of the night when she was wakened by such dreadful sounds that she jumped out of bed in an instant. What was it—what was it? The next minute she felt quite sure she knew. Doors were opened and shut and there were hurrying feet in the corridors and someone was crying and screaming at the same time, screaming and crying in a horrible way.

“It’s Colin,” she said. “He’s having one of those tantrums the nurse calls hysterics. How awful it sounds.”

As she listened to the sobbing screams she did not wonder that people were so frightened that they gave him his own way in everything rather than hear them. She put her hands over her ears and felt sick and shivering.

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do,” she kept saying. “I can’t bear it.”

Once she wondered if he would stop if she dared go to him and then she remembered how he had driven her out of the room and thought that perhaps the sight of her might make him worse. Even when she pressed her hands more tightly over her ears she could not keep the awful sounds out. She hated them so and was so terrified by them that suddenly they began to make her angry and she felt as if she should like to fly into a tantrum herself and frighten him as he was frightening her. She was not used to anyone’s tempers but her own. She took her hands from her ears and sprang up and stamped her foot.

“He ought to be stopped! Somebody ought to make him stop! Somebody ought to beat him!” she cried out.

Just then she heard feet almost running down the corridor and her door opened and the nurse came in. She was not laughing now by any means. She even looked rather pale.

“He’s worked himself into hysterics,” she said in a great hurry. “He’ll do himself harm. No one can do anything with him. You come and try, like a good child. He likes you.”

“He turned me out of the room this morning,” said Mary, stamping her foot in excitement.

The stamp rather pleased the nurse. The truth was that she had been afraid she might find Mary crying and hiding her head under the bedclothes.

“That’s right,” she said. “You’re in the right humour. You go and scold him. Give him something new to think of. Do go, child, as quick as ever you can.”

It was not until afterward that Mary realized that the thing had been funny as well as dreadful—that it was funny that all the grown-up people were so frightened that they came to a little girl just because they guessed she was almost as bad as Colin himself.

She flew along the corridor and the nearer she got to the screams the higher her temper mounted. She felt quite wicked by the time she reached the door. She slapped it open with her hand and ran across the room to the four-posted bed.

“You stop!” she almost shouted. “You stop! I hate you! Everybody hates you! I wish everybody would run out of the house and let you scream yourself to death! You will scream yourself to death in a minute, and I wish you would!”

A nice sympathetic child could neither have thought nor said such things, but it just happened that the shock of hearing them was the best possible thing for this hysterical boy whom no one had ever dared to restrain or contradict.

He had been lying on his face beating his pillow with his hands and he actually almost jumped around, he turned so quickly at the sound of the furious little voice. His face looked dreadful, white and red, and swollen, and he was gasping and choking; but savage little Mary did not care an atom.

“If you scream another scream,” she said, “I’ll scream too—and I can scream louder than you can, and I’ll frighten you, I’ll frighten you!”

He actually had stopped screaming because she had startled him so. The scream which had been coming almost choked him. The tears were streaming down his face and he shook all over.

“I can’t stop!” he gasped and sobbed. “I can’t—I can’t!”

“You can!” shouted Mary. “Half that ails you is hysterics and temper—just hysterics—hysterics—hyster-ics!” and she stamped each time she said it.

“I felt the lump—I felt it,” choked out Colin. “I knew I should. I shall have a hunch on my back and then I shall die,” and he began to writhe again and turn on his face and sobbed and wailed, but he didn’t scream.

“You didn’t feel a lump!” contradicted Mary fiercely. “If you did it was only a hysterical lump. Hysterics makes lumps. There’s nothing the matter with your horrid back—nothing but hysterics! Turn over and let me look at it!”

She liked the word “hysterics,” and felt somehow as if it had an effect on him. He was probably like herself and had never heard it before.

“Nurse,” she commanded, “come here and show me his back this minute!”

The nurse, Mrs. Medlock and Martha had been standing huddled together near the door staring at her, their mouths half open. All three had gasped with fright more than once. The nurse came forward as if she were half afraid. Colin was heaving with great breathless sobs.

“Perhaps he—he won’t let me,” she hesitated, in a low voice.

Colin heard her, however, and he gasped out between two sobs:

“Sh-show her! She-she’ll see then!”

It was a poor thin back to look at when it was bared. Every rib could be counted and every joint of the spine, though Mistress Mary did not count them as she bent over and examined them with a solemn savage little face. She looked so sour and old-fashioned that the nurse turned her head aside to hide the twitching of her mouth. There was just a minute’s silence, for even Colin tried to hold his breath while Mary looked up and down his spine, and down and up, as intently as if she had been the great doctor from London.

“There’s not a single lump there!” she said at last. “There’s not a lump as big as a pin—except backbone lumps, and you can only feel them because you’re thin. I’ve got backbone lumps myself, and they used to stick out as much as yours do, until I began to get fatter, and I am not fat enough yet to hide them. There’s not a lump as big as a pin! If you ever say there is again, I shall laugh!”

No one but Colin himself knew what effect those crossly spoken childish words had on him. If he had ever had anyone to talk to about his secret terrors—if he had ever dared to let himself ask questions—if he had had childish companions and had not lain on his back in the huge closed house, breathing an atmosphere heavy with the fears of people who were most of them ignorant and tired of him, he would have found out that most of his fright and illness was created by himself. But he had lain and thought of himself and his aches and weariness for hours and days and months and years. And now that an angry unsympathetic little girl insisted obstinately that he was not as ill as he thought he was, he actually felt as if she might be speaking the truth.

“I didn’t know,” ventured the nurse, “that he thought he had a lump on his spine. His back is weak because he won’t try to sit up. I could have told him there was no lump there.”

Colin gulped and turned his face a little to look at her.

“C-could you?” he said pathetically.

“Yes, sir.”

“There!” said Mary, and she gulped too.

Colin turned on his face again and but for his long-drawn broken breaths, which were the dying down of his storm of sobbing, he lay still for a minute, though great tears streamed down his face and wet the pillow. Actually the tears meant that a curious great relief had come to him. Presently he turned and looked at the nurse again, and strangely enough he was not like a rajah at all as he spoke to her.

“Do you think—I could—live to grow up?” he said.

The nurse was neither clever nor soft-hearted, but she could repeat some of the London doctor’s words.

“You probably will if you will do what you are told to do, and not give way to your temper, and stay out a great deal in the fresh air.”

Colin’s tantrum had passed and he was weak and worn out with crying and this perhaps made him feel gentle. He put out his hand a little toward Mary, and I am glad to say that, her own tantrum having passed, she was softened too and met him half-way with her hand, so that it was a sort of making up.

“I’ll—I’ll go out with you, Mary,” he said. “I shan’t hate fresh air if we can find—” He remembered just in time to stop himself from saying “if we can find the secret garden” and he ended, “I shall like to go out with you if Dickon will come and push my chair. I do so want to see Dickon and the fox and the crow.”

The nurse remade the tumbled bed and shook and straightened the pillows. Then she made Colin a cup of beef-tea and gave a cup to Mary, who really was very glad to get it after her excitement. Mrs. Medlock and Martha gladly slipped away, and after everything was neat and calm and in order the nurse looked as if she would very gladly slip away also. She was a healthy young woman who resented being robbed of her sleep and she yawned quite openly as she looked at Mary, who had pushed her big footstool close to the four-posted bed and was holding Colin’s hand.

“You must go back and get your sleep out,” she said. “He’ll drop off after a while—if he’s not too upset. Then I’ll lie down myself in the next room.”

“Would you like me to sing you that song I learned from my Ayah?” Mary whispered to Colin.

His hand pulled hers gently and he turned his tired eyes on her appealingly.

“Oh, yes!” he answered. “It’s such a soft song. I shall go to sleep in a minute.”

“I will put him to sleep,” Mary said to the yawning nurse. “You can go if you like.”

“Well,” said the nurse, with an attempt at reluctance. “If he doesn’t go to sleep in half an hour you must call me.”

“Very well,” answered Mary.

The nurse was out of the room in a minute and as soon as she was gone Colin pulled Mary’s hand again.

“I almost told,” he said; “but I stopped myself in time. I won’t talk and I’ll go to sleep, but you said you had a whole lot of nice things to tell me. Have you—do you think you have found out anything at all about the way into the secret garden?”

Mary looked at his poor little tired face and swollen eyes and her heart relented.

“Ye-es,” she answered, “I think I have. And if you will go to sleep I will tell you tomorrow.”

His hand quite trembled.

“Oh, Mary!” he said. “Oh, Mary! If I could get into it I think I should live to grow up! Do you suppose that instead of singing the Ayah song—you could just tell me softly as you did that first day what you imagine it looks like inside? I am sure it will make me go to sleep.”

“Yes,” answered Mary. “Shut your eyes.”

He closed his eyes and lay quite still and she held his hand and began to speak very slowly and in a very low voice.

“I think it has been left alone so long—that it has grown all into a lovely tangle. I think the roses have climbed and climbed and climbed until they hang from the branches and walls and creep over the ground—almost like a strange grey mist. Some of them have died but many—are alive, and when the summer comes there will be curtains and fountains of roses. I think the ground is full of daffodils and snowdrops and lilies and iris working their way out of the dark. Now the spring has begun—perhaps—perhaps—”

The soft drone of her voice was making him stiller and stiller and she saw it and went on.

“Perhaps they are coming up through the grass—perhaps there are clusters of purple crocuses and gold ones—even now. Perhaps the leaves are beginning to break out and uncurl—and perhaps—the grey is changing and a green gauze veil is creeping—and creeping over—everything. And the birds are coming to look at it—because it is—so safe and still. And perhaps—perhaps—perhaps—” very softly and slowly indeed, “the robin has found a mate—and is building a nest.”

And Colin was asleep.

18

“Tha Munnot Waste No Time”

OF COURSE MARY DID NOT WAKEN EARLY THE NEXT MORNING. She slept late because she was tired, and when Martha brought her breakfast she told her that though Colin was quite quiet he was ill and feverish as he always was after he had worn himself out with a fit of crying. Mary ate her breakfast slowly as she listened.

“He says he wishes tha’ would please go and see him as soon as tha’ can,” Martha said. “It’s queer what a fancy he’s took to thee. Tha’ did give it him last night for sure—didn’t tha’? Nobody else would have dared to do it. Eh! poor lad! He’s been spoiled till salt won’t save him. Mother says as th’ two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way—or always to have it. She doesn’t know which is th’ worst. Tha’ was in a fine temper tha’self, too. But he says to me when I went into his room, ‘Please ask Miss Mary if she’ll please come an’ talk to me?’ Think o’ him saying please! Will you go, Miss?”

“I’ll run and see Dickon first,” said Mary. “No, I’ll go and see Colin first and tell him—I know what I’ll tell him,” with a sudden inspiration.

She had her hat on when she appeared in Colin’s room and for a second he looked disappointed. He was in bed and his face was pitifully white and there were dark circles round his eyes.

“I’m glad you came,” he said. “My head aches and I ache all over because I’m so tired. Are you going somewhere?”

Mary went and leaned against his bed.

“I won’t be long,” she said. “I’m going to Dickon, but I’ll come back. Colin, it’s—it’s something about the secret garden.”

His whole face brightened and a little colour came into it.

“Oh! is it!” he cried out. “I dreamed about it all night. I heard you say something about grey changing into green, and I dreamed I was standing in a place all filled with trembling little green leaves—and there were birds on nests everywhere and they looked so soft and still. I’ll lie and think about it until you come back.”

In five minutes Mary was with Dickon in their garden. The fox and the crow were with him again and this time he had brought two tame squirrels.

“I came over on the pony this mornin’,” he said. “Eh! he is a good little chap—Jump is! I brought these two in my pockets. This here one he’s called Nut an’ this here other one’s called Shell.”

When he said “Nut” one squirrel leaped on to his right shoulder and when he said “Shell” the other one leaped on to his left shoulder.

When they sat down on the grass with Captain curled at their feet, Soot solemnly listening on a tree and Nut and Shell nosing about close to them, it seemed to Mary that it would be scarcely bearable to leave such delight-fulness, but when she began to tell her story somehow the look in Dickon’s funny face gradually changed her mind. She could see he felt sorrier for Colin than she did. He looked up at the sky and all about him.

“Just listen to them birds—th’ world seems full of ’em—all whistlin’ an’ pipin’,” he said. “Look at ’em dartin’ about, an’ hearken at ‘em callin’ to each other. Come springtime seems like as if all th’ world’s callin’. The leaves is uncurlin’ so you can see ’em—an’, my word, th’ nice smells there is about!” sniffing with his happy turned-up nose. “An’ that poor lad lyin’ shut up an’ seein’ so little that he gets to thinkin’ o’ things as sets him screamin’. Eh! my! we mun get him out here—we mun get him watchin’ an’ listenin’ an’ sniffin’ up th’ air an’ get him just soaked through wi’ sunshine. An’ we munnot lose no time about it.”

When he was very much interested he often spoke quite broad Yorkshire though at other times he tried to modify his dialect so that Mary could better understand. But she loved his broad Yorkshire and had in fact been trying to learn to speak it herself. So she spoke a little now.

“Aye, that we mun,” she said (which meant “Yes, indeed, we must”). “I’ll tell thee what us’ll do first,” she proceeded, and Dickon grinned, because when the little wench tried to twist her tongue into speaking Yorkshire it, amused him very much. “He’s took a graidely fancy to thee. He wants to see thee and he wants to see Soot an’ Captain. When I go back to the house to talk to him I’ll ax him if tha’ canna come an’ see him tomorrow mornin’—an’ bring tha’ creatures wi’ thee—an’ then—in a bit, when there’s more leaves out, an’ happen a bud or two, we’ll get him to come out an’ tha’ shall push him in his chair an’ we’ll bring him here an’ show him everything.”

When she stopped she was quite proud of herself. She had never made a long speech in Yorkshire before and she had remembered very well.

“Tha’ mun talk a bit o’ Yorkshire like that to Mester Colin,” Dickon chuckled. “Tha’ll make him laugh an’ there’s nowt as good for ill folk as laughin’ is. Mother says she believes as half a hour’s good laugh every mornin’ ’ud cure a chap as was making ready for typhus fever.”

“I’m going to talk Yorkshire to him this very day,” said Mary, chuckling herself.

The garden had reached the time when every day and every night it seemed as if Magicians were passing through it drawing loveliness out of the earth and the boughs with wands. It was hard to go away and leave it all, particularly as Nut had actually crept on to her dress and Shell had scrambled down the trunk of the apple tree they sat under and stayed there looking at her with inquiring eyes. But she went back to the house and when she sat down close to Colin’s bed he began to sniff as Dickon did, though not in such an experienced way.

“You smell like flowers and—and fresh things,” he cried out quite joyously. “What is it you smell of? It’s cool and warm and sweet all at the same time.”

“It’s th’ wind from th’ moor,” said Mary. “It comes o’ sittin’ on th’ grass under a tree wi’ Dickon an’ wi’ Captain an’ Soot an’ Nut an’ Shell. It’s th’ springtime an’ out o’ doors an’ sunshine as smells so graidely.”

She said it as broadly as she could, and you do not know how broadly Yorkshire sounds until you have heard someone speak it. Colin began to laugh.

“What are you doing?” he said. “I never heard you talk like that before. How funny it sounds.”

“I’m givin’ thee a bit o’ Yorkshire,” answered Mary triumphantly. “I canna talk as graidely as Dickon an’ Martha can but tha’ sees I can shape a bit. Doesn’t tha’ understand a bit o’ Yorkshire when tha’ hears it? An’ tha’ a Yorkshire lad thysel’ bred an’ born! Eh! I wonder tha’rt not ashamed o’ thy face.”

And then she began to laugh too and they both laughed until they could not stop themselves, and they laughed until the room echoed and Mrs. Medlock opening the door to come in drew back into the corridor and stood listening, amazed.

“Well, upon my word!” she said, speaking rather broad Yorkshire herself because there was no one to hear her and she was so astonished. “Who ever heard th’ like! Who ever on earth would ha’ thought it!”

There was so much to talk about. It seemed as if Colin could never hear enough of Dickon and Captain and Soot and Nut and Shell and the pony whose name was Jump. Mary had run round into the wood with Dickon to see Jump. He was a tiny little shaggy moor pony with thick locks hanging over his eyes and with a pretty face and a nuzzling velvet nose. He was rather thin with living on moor grass but he was as tough and wiry as if the muscle in his little legs had been made of steel springs. He had lifted his head and whinnied softly the moment he saw Dickon and he had trotted up to him and put his head across his shoulder and then Dickon had talked into his ear and Jump had talked back in odd little whinnies and puffs and snorts. Dickon had made him give Mary his small front hoof and kiss her on her cheek with his velvet muzzle.

“Does he really understand everything Dickon says?” Colin asked.

“It seems as if he does,” answered Mary. “Dickon says anything will understand if you’re friends with it for sure, but you have to be friends for sure.”

Colin lay quiet a little while and his strange grey eyes seemed to be staring at the wall, but Mary saw he was thinking.

“I wish I was friends with things,” he said at last, “but I’m not. I never had anything to be friends with, and I can’t bear people.”

“Can’t you bear me?” asked Mary.

“Yes, I can,” he answered. “It’s very funny but I even like you.”

“Ben Weatherstaff said I was like him,” said Mary. “He said he’d warrant we’d both got the same nasty tempers. I think you are like him too. We are all three alike—you and I and Ben Weatherstaff. He said we were neither of us much to look at and we were as sour as we looked. But I don’t feel as sour as I used to before I knew the robin and Dickon.”

“Did you feel as if you hated people?”

“Yes,” answered Mary without any affectation. “I should have detested you if I had seen you before I saw the robin and Dickon.”

Colin put out his thin hand and touched her.

“Mary,” he said, “I wish I hadn’t said what I did about sending Dickon away. I hated you when you said he was like an angel and I laughed at you but—but perhaps he is.”

“Well, it was rather funny to say it,” she admitted frankly, “because his nose does turn up and he has a big mouth and his clothes have patches all over them and he talks broad Yorkshire, but—but if an angel did come to Yorkshire and live on the moors—if there was a Yorkshire angel—I believe he’d understand the green things and know how to make them grow and he would know how to talk to the wild creatures as Dickon does and they’d know he was friends for sure.”

“I shouldn’t mind Dickon looking at me,” said Colin; “I want to see him.”

“I’m glad you said that,” answered Mary, “because—because—”

Quite suddenly it came into her mind that this was the minute to tell him. Colin knew something new was coming.

“Because what?” he cried eagerly.

Mary was so anxious that she got up from her stool and came to him and caught hold of both his hands.

“Can I trust you? I trusted Dickon because birds trusted him. Can I trust you—forsure—for sure?” she implored.

Her face was so solemn that he almost whispered his answer.

“Yes—yes!”

“Well, Dickon will come to see you tomorrow morning, and he’ll bring his creatures with him.”

“Oh! Oh!” Colin cried out in delight.

“But that’s not all,” Mary went on, almost pale with solemn excitement. “The rest is better. There is a door into the garden. I found it. It is under the ivy on the wall.”

If he had been a strong healthy boy Colin would probably have shouted “Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!” but he was weak and rather hysterical; his eyes grew bigger and bigger and he gasped for breath.

“Oh! Mary!” he cried out with a half sob. “Shall I see it? Shall I get into it? Shall I live to get into it?” and he clutched her hands and dragged her toward him.

“Of course you’ll see it!” snapped Mary indignantly. “Of course you’ll live to get into it! Don’t be silly!”

And she was so un-hysterical and natural and childish that she brought him to his senses and he began to laugh at himself and a few minutes afterward she was sitting on her stool again telling him not what she imagined the secret garden to be like but what it really was, and Colin’s aches and tiredness were forgotten and he was listening enraptured.

“It is just what you thought it would be,” he said at last. “It sounds just as if you had really seen it. You know I said that when you told me first.”

Mary hesitated about two minutes and then boldly spoke the truth.

“I had seen it—and I had been in,” she said. “I found the key and got in weeks ago. But I daren’t tell you—I daren’t because I was so afraid I couldn’t trust you—for sure!”

19

“It Has Come!”

OF COURSE DR. CRAVEN HAD BEEN SENT FOR THE MORNING after Colin had had his tantrum. He was always sent for at once when such a thing occurred and he always found, when he arrived, a white, shaken boy lying on his bed, sulky and still so hysterical that he was ready to break into fresh sobbing at the least word. In fact, Dr. Craven dreaded and detested the difficulties of these visits. On this occasion he was away from Misselthwaite Manor until afternoon.

“How is he?” he asked Mrs. Medlock rather irritably when he arrived. “He will break a blood-vessel in one of those fits some day. The boy is half insane with hysteria and self-indulgence.”

“Well, sir,” answered Mrs. Medlock, “you’ll scarcely believe your eyes when you see him. That plain sour-faced child that’s almost as bad as himself has just bewitched him. How she’s done it there’s no telling. The Lord knows she’s nothing to look at and you scarcely ever hear her speak, but she did what none of us dare do. She just flew at him like a little cat last night, and stamped her feet and ordered him to stop screaming, and somehow she startled him so that he actually did stop, and this afternoon—well, just come up and see, sir. It’s past crediting.”

The scene which Dr. Craven beheld when he entered his patient’s room was indeed rather astonishing to him. As Mrs. Medlock opened the door he heard laughing and chattering. Colin was on his sofa in his dressing-gown and he was sitting up quite straight looking at a picture in one of the garden books and talking to the plain child who at that moment could scarcely be called plain at all because her face was so glowing with enjoyment.

“Those long spires of blue ones—we’ll have a lot oi those,” Colin was announcing. “They’re called Del-phin-iums.”

“Dickon says they’re larkspurs made big and grand,” cried Mistress Mary. “There are clumps there already.”

Then they saw Dr. Craven and stopped. Mary became quite still and Colin looked fretful.

“I am sorry to hear you were ill last night, my boy,” Dr. Craven said a trifle nervously. He was rather a nervous man.

“I’m better now—much better,” Colin answered, rather like a rajah. “I’m going out in my chair in a day or two if it is fine. I want some fresh air.”

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 for ever and ever. Breathe it and breathe it.”

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

“‘For ever 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 grey 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 and 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 and 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.”

20

“I Shall Live for Ever—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 great generals in time of war.

Rumours of the new and curious things which were occurring in the invalid’s apartments had of course filtered through the servants’ hall into the stableyards 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 everyone 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 the whole 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.”

“How funny!” said Mary. “That’s really just what it feels like. And if all the flowers and leaves and green things and birds and wild creatures danced past at once, what a crowd it would be! I’m sure they’d dance and sing and flute and that would be the wafts of music.”

They both laughed but it was not because the idea was laughable, but because they both so liked it.

A little later the nurse made Colin ready. She noticed that instead of lying like a log while his clothes were put on he sat up and made some efforts to help himself, and he talked and laughed with Mary all the time.

“This is one of his good days, sir,” she said to Dr. Craven, who dropped in to inspect him. “He’s in such good spirits that it makes him stronger.”

“I’ll call in again later in the afternoon, after he has come in,” said Dr. Craven. “I must see how the going out agrees with him. I wish,” in a very low voice, “that he would let you go with him.”

“I’d rather give up the case this moment, sir, than even stay here while it’s suggested,” answered the nurse with sudden firmness.

“I hadn’t really decided to suggest it,” said the doctor, with his slight nervousness. “We’ll try the experiment. Dickon’s a lad I’d trust with a new-born child.”

The strongest footman in the house carried Colin downstairs and put him in his wheeled chair, near which Dickon waited outside. After the manservant had arranged his rugs and cushions the rajah waved his hand to him and to the nurse.

“You have my permission to go,” he said, and they both disappeared quickly and, it must be confessed, giggled when they were safely inside the house.

Dickon began to push the wheeled chair slowly and steadily. Mistress Mary walked beside it and Colin leaned back and lifted his face to the sky. The arch of it looked very high and the small snowy clouds seemed like white birds floating on outspread wings below its crystal blueness. The wind swept in soft big breaths down from the moor and was strange with a wild clear scented sweetness. Colin kept lifting his thin chest to draw it in, and his big eyes looked as if it were they which were listening—listening, instead of his ears.

“There are so many sounds of singing and humming and calling out,” he said. “What is that scent the puffs of wind bring?”

“It’s gorse on th’ moor that’s openin’ out,” answered Dickon. “Eh! th’ bees are at it wonderful today.”

Not a human creature was to be caught sight of in the paths they took. In fact every gardener or gardener’s lad had been witched away. But they wound in and out among the shrubbery and out and round the fountain beds, following their carefully planned route for the mere mysterious pleasure of it. But when at last they turned into the Long Walk by the ivied walls the excited sense of an approaching thrill made them, for some curious reason they could not have explained, begin to speak in whispers.

“This is it,” breathed Mary. “This is where I used to walk up and down and wonder and wonder.”

“Is it?” cried Colin, and his eyes began to search the ivy with eager curiousness. “But I can see nothing,” he whispered. “There is no door.”

“That is what I thought,” said Mary.

Then there was a lovely breathless silence and the chair wheeled on.

“That is the garden where Ben Weatherstaff works,” said Mary.

“Is it?” said Colin.

A few yards more and Mary whispered again.

“This is where the robin flew over the wall,” she said.

“Is it?” cried Colin. “Oh! I wish he’d come again!”

“And that,” said Mary with solemn delight, pointing under a big lilac bush, “is where he perched on the little heap of earth and showed me the key.”

Then Colin sat up.

“Where? Where? There?” he cried, and his eyes were as big as the wolf’s in Red Riding-Hood, when Red Riding-Hood felt called upon to remark on them. Dickon stood still and the wheeled chair stopped.

“And this,” said Mary, stepping on to the bed close to the ivy, “is where I went to talk to him when he chirped at me from the top of the wall. And this is the ivy the wind blew back,” and she took hold of the hanging green curtain.

“Oh! is it—is it!” gasped Colin.

“And here is the handle, and here is the door. Dickon, push him in—push him in quickly!”

And Dickon did it with one strong, steady, splendid push.

But Colin had actually dropped back against his cushions, even though he gasped with delight, and he had covered his eyes with his hands and held them there shutting out everything until they were inside and the chair stopped as if by magic and the door was closed. Not till then did he take them away and look round and round and round as Dickon and Mary had done. And over walls and earth and trees and swinging sprays and tendrils the fair green veil of tender little leaves had crept, and in the grass under the trees and the grey urns in the alcoves and here and there everywhere were touches or splashes of gold and purple and white and the trees were showing pink and snow above his head and there were fluttering of wings and faint sweet pipes and humming and scents and scents. And the sun fell warm upon his face like a hand with a lovely touch. And in wonder Mary and Dickon stood and stared at him. He looked so strange and different because a pink glow of colour had actually crept all over him—ivory face and neck and hands and all.

“I shall get well! I shall get well!” he cried out. “Mary! Dickon! I shall get well! And I shall live for ever and ever and ever!”

21

Ben Weatherstaff

ONE OF THE STRANGE THINGS ABOUT LIVlNG IN THE WORLD IS that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live for ever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvellous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun—which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone’s eyes.

And it was like that with Colin when he first saw and heard and felt the Springtime inside the four high walls of a hidden garden. That afternoon the whole world seemed to devote itself to being perfect and radiantly beautiful and kind to one boy. Perhaps out of pure heavenly goodness the spring came and crowded everything it possibly could into that one place. More than once Dickon paused in what he was doing and stood still with a sort of growing wonder in his eyes, shaking his head softly.

“Eh! It is graidely,” he said. “I’m twelve goin’ on thirteen an’ there’s a lot o’ afternoons in thirteen years, but seems to me like I never seed one as graidely as this ’ere.”

“Aye, it is a graidely one,” said Mary, and she sighed for mere joy. “I’ll warrant it’s th’ graidelest one as ever was in this world.”

“Does tha’ think,” said Colin with dreamy carefulness, “as happen it was made loike this ’ere all o’ purpose for me?”

“My word!” cried Mary admiringly, “that there is a bit o’ good Yorkshire. Tha’rt shapin’ first-rate—that tha’ art.”

And delight reigned.

They drew the chair under the plum tree, which was snow-white with blossoms and musical with bees. It was like a king’s canopy, a fairy king’s. There were flowering cherry trees near and apple trees whose buds were pink and white, and here and there one had burst open wide. Between the blossoming branches of the canopy bits of blue sky looked down like wonderful eyes.

Mary and Dickon worked a little here and there and Colin watched them. They brought him things to look at—buds which were opening, buds which were tight closed, bits of twig whose leaves were just showing green, the feather of a woodpecker which had dropped on the grass, the empty shell of some bird early hatched. Dickon pushed the chair slowly round and round the garden, stopping every other moment to let him look at wonders springing out of the earth or trailing down from trees. It was like being taken in state round the country of a magic king and queen and shown all the mysterious riches it contained.

“I wonder if we shall see the robin?” said Colin.

“Tha’ll see him often enow after a bit,” answered Dickon. “When th’ eggs hatches out th’ little chap he’ll be kep’ so busy it’ll make his head swim. Tha’ll see him flyin’ backward an’ for’ard carryin’ worms nigh as big as himsel’ an’ that much noise goin’ on in th’ nest when he gets there as fair flusters him so as he scarce knows which big mouth to drop th’ first piece in. An’ gapin’ beaks an’ squawks on every side. Mother says as when she sees th’ work a robin has to keep them gapin’ beaks filled, she feels like she was a lady with nothin’ to do. She says she’s seen th’ little chaps when it seemed like th’ sweat must be droppin’ off ’em, though folk can’t see it.”

This made them giggle so delightedly that they were obliged to cover their mouths with their hands, remembering that they must not be heard. Colin had been instructed as to the law of whispers and low voices several days before. He liked the mysteriousness of it and did his best, but in the midst of excited enjoyment it is rather difficult never to laugh above a whisper.

Every moment of the afternoon was full of new things and every hour the sunshine grew more golden. The wheeled chair had been drawn back under the canopy and Dickon had sat down on the grass and had just drawn out his pipe when Colin saw something he had not had time to notice before.

“That’s a very old tree over there, isn’t it?” he said.

Dickon looked across the grass at the tree and Mary looked and there was a brief moment of stillness.

“Yes,” answered Dickon, after it, and his low voice had a very gentle sound.

Mary gazed at the tree and thought.

“The branches are quite grey and there’s not a single leaf anywhere,” Colin went on. “It’s quite dead, isn’t it?”

“Aye,” admitted Dickon. “But them roses as has climbed all over it will near hide every bit o’ th’ dead wood when they’re full o’ leaves an’ flowers. It won’t look dead then. It’ll be th’ prettiest of all.”

Mary still gazed at the tree and thought.

“It looks as if a big branch had been broken off,” said Colin. “I wonder how it was done.”

“It’s been done many a year,” answered Dickon. “Eh!” with a sudden relieved start and laying his hand on Colin. “Look at that robin! There he is! He’s been foragin’ for his mate.”

Colin was almost too late but he just caught sight of him, the flash of red-breasted bird with something in his beak. He darted through the greenness, and into the close-grown corner and was out of sight. Colin leaned back on his cushion again, laughing a little.

“He’s taking her tea to her: Perhaps it’s five o’clock. I think I’d like some tea myself.”

And so they were safe.

“It was Magic which sent the robin,” said Mary secretly to Dickon afterward. “I know it was Magic.” For both she and Dickon had been afraid Colin might ask something about the tree whose branch had broken off ten years ago, and they had talked it over together and Dickon had stood and rubbed his head in a troubled way.

“We mun look as if it wasn’t no different from th’ other trees,” he had said. “We couldn’t never tell him how it broke, poor lad. If he says anything about it we mun—we mun try to look cheerful.”

“Aye, that we mun,” had answered Mary.

But she had not felt as if she looked cheerful when she gazed at the tree. She wondered and wondered in those few moments if there was any reality in that other thing Dickon had said. He had gone on rubbing his rust-red hair in a puzzled way, but a nice comforted look had begun to grow in his blue eyes.

“Mrs. Craven was a very lovely young lady,” he had gone on rather hesitatingly. “An’ Mother she thinks maybe she’s about Misselthwaite many a time lookin’ after Mester Colin, same as all mothers do when they’re took out o’ th’ world. They have to come back, tha’ sees. Happen she’s been in the garden an’ happen it was her set us to work, an’ told us to bring him here.”

Mary had thought he meant something about Magic. She was a great believer in Magic. Secretly she quite believed that Dickon worked Magic, of course good Magic, on everything near him and that was why people liked him so much and wild creatures knew he was their friend. She wondered, indeed, if it were not possible that his gift had brought the robin just at the right moment when Colin asked that dangerous question. She felt that his Magic was working all the afternoon and making Colin look like an entirely different boy. It did not seem possible that he could be the crazy creature who had screamed and beaten and bitten his pillow. Even his ivory whiteness seemed to change. The faint glow of colour which had shown on his face and neck and hands when he first got inside the garden really never quite died away. He looked as if he were made of flesh instead of ivory or wax.

They saw the robin carry food to his mate two or three times, and it was so suggestive of afternoon tea that Colin felt they must have some.

“Go and make one of the menservants bring some in a basket to the rhododendron walk,” he said. “And then you and Dickon can bring it here.”

It was an agreeable idea; easily carried out, and when the white cloth was spread upon the grass, with hot tea and buttered toast and crumpets, a delightfully hungry meal was eaten, and several birds on domestic errands paused to inquire what was going on and were led into investigating crumbs with great activity. Nut and Shell whisked up trees with pieces of cake and Soot took the entire half of a buttered crumpet into a corner and pecked at and examined and turned it over and made hoarse remarks about it until he decided to swallow it all joyfully in one gulp.

The afternoon was dragging toward its mellow hour. The sun was deepening the gold of its lances, the bees were going home and the birds were flying past less often. Dickon and Mary were sitting on the grass, the tea-basket was repacked ready to be taken back to the house, and Colin was lying against his cushions with his heavy locks pushed back from his forehead and his face looking quite a natural colour.

“I don’t want this afternoon to go,” he said; “but I shall come back tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, and the day after.”

“You’ll get plenty of fresh air, won’t you?” said Mary.

“I’m going to get nothing else,” he answered. “I’ve seen the spring now and I’m going to see the summer. I’m going to see everything grow here. I’m going to grow here myself.”

“That tha’ will,” said Dickon. “Us’ll have thee walkin’ about here an’ diggin’ same as other folk afore long.”

Colin flushed tremendously.

“Walk!” he said. “Dig! Shall I?”

Dickon’s glance at him was delicately cautious. Neither he nor Mary had ever asked if anything was the matter with his legs.

“For sure tha’ will,” he said stoutly. “Tha’—tha’s got legs o’ thine own, same as other folks!”

Mary was rather frightened until she heard Colin’s answer.

“Nothing really ails them,” he said, “but they are so thin and weak. They shake so that I’m afraid to try to stand on them.”

Both Mary and Dickon drew a relieved breath.

“When tha’ stops bein’ afraid tha‘lt stand on ’em,” Dickon said with renewed cheer. “An’ tha’lt stop bein’ afraid in a bit.”

“I shall?” said Colin, and he lay still as if he were wondering about things.

They were really very quiet for a little while. The sun was dropping lower. It was that hour when everything stills itself, and they really had had a busy and exciting afternoon. Colin looked as if he were resting luxuriously. Even the creatures had ceased moving about and had drawn together and were resting near them. Soot had perched on a low branch and drawn up one leg and dropped the grey film drowsily over his eyes. Mary privately thought he looked as if he might snore in a minute.

In the midst of this stillness it was rather startling when Colin half lifted his head and exclaimed in a loud, suddenly alarmed whisper:

“Who is that man?”

Dickon and Mary scrambled to their feet.

“Man?” they both cried in low quick voices.

Colin pointed to the high wall.

“Look!” he whispered excitedly. “Just look!”

Mary and Dickon wheeled about and looked. There was Ben Weatherstaff’s indignant face glaring at them over the wall from the top of a ladder! He actually shook his fist at Mary.

“If I wasn’t a bachelder, an’ tha’ was a wench o’ mine,” he cried, “I’d give thee a hidin’!”

He mounted another step threateningly as if it were his energetic intention to jump down and deal with her; but as she came toward him he evidently thought better of it and stood on the top step of his ladder shaking his fist down at her.

“I never thowt much o’ thee!” he harangued. “I couldna’ abide thee th’ first time I set eyes on thee. A scrawny buttermilk-faced young besom, allus askin’ questions an’ pokin’ tha’ nose where it wasna’ wanted. I never knowed how tha’ got so thick wi’ me. If it hadna’ been for th’ robin—drat him—”

“Ben Weatherstaff,” called out Mary, finding her breath. She stood below him and called up to him with a sort of gasp. “Ben Weatherstaff, it was the robin who showed me the way!”

Then it did seem as if Ben really would scramble down on her side of the wall, he was so outraged.

“Tha’ young bad ’un!” he called down at her. “Layin’ tha’ badness on a robin—not but what he’s impidint enow for anythin’. Him showin’ thee th’ way! Him! Eh! tha’ young nowt”—she could see his next words burst out because he was overpowered by curiosity—“however i’ this world did tha’ get in?”

“It was the robin who showed me the way,” she protested obstinately. “He didn’t know he was doing it but he did. And I can’t tell you from here while you’re shaking your fist at me.”

He stopped shaking his fist very suddenly at that very moment and his jaw actually dropped as he stared over her head at something he saw coming over the grass toward him.

At the first sound of his torrent of words Colin had been so surprised that he had only sat up and listened as if he were spellbound. But in the midst of it he had recovered himself and beckoned imperiously to Dickon.

“Wheel me over there!” he commanded. “Wheel me quite close and stop right in front of him!”

And this, if you please, this is what Ben Weatherstaff beheld and which made his jaw drop. A wheeled chair with luxurious cushions and robes which came toward him looking rather like some sort of state coach because a young rajah leaned back in it with royal command in his great black-rimmed eyes and a thin white hand extended haughtily toward him. And it stopped right under Ben Weatherstaff’s nose. It was really no wonder his mouth dropped open.

“Do you know who I am?” demanded the rajah.

How Ben Weatherstaff stared! His red old eyes fixed themselves on what was before him as if he were seeing a ghost. He gazed and gazed and gulped a lump down his throat and did not say a word.

“Do you know who I am?” demanded Colin still more imperiously. “Answer!”

Ben Weatherstaff put his gnarled hand up and passed it over his eyes and over his forehead and then he did answer in a queer shaky voice.

“Who tha’ art?” he said. “Aye, that I do—wi’ tha’ mother’s eyes starin’ at me out o’ tha’ face. Lord knows how tha’ come here. But tha’rt t’ poor cripple.”

Colin forgot that he had ever had a back. His face flushed scarlet and he sat bolt upright.

“I’m not a cripple!” he cried out furiously. “I’m not!”

“He’s not!” cried Mary, almost shouting up the wall in her fierce indignation. “He’s not got a lump as big as a pin! I looked and there was none there—not one!”

Ben Weatherstaff passed his hand over his forehead again and gazed as if he could never gaze enough. His hand shook and his mouth shook and his voice shook. He was an ignorant old man and a tactless old man and he could only remember the things he had heard.

“Tha‘—tha’ hasn’t got a crooked back?” he said hoarsely.

“No!” shouted Colin.

“Tha‘—tha’ hasn’t got crooked legs?” quavered Ben more hoarsely yet.

It was too much. The strength which Colin usually threw into his tantrums rushed through him now in a new way. Never yet had he been accused of crooked legs—even in whispers—and the perfectly simple belief in their existence which was revealed by Ben Weatherstaff’s voice was more than rajah flesh and blood could endure. His anger and insulted pride made him forget everything but this one moment and filled him with a power he had never known before, an almost unnatural strength,

“Come here!” he shouted to Dickon, and he actually began to tear the coverings off his lower limbs and disentangle himself. “Come here! Come here! This minute!”

Dickon was by his side in a second. Mary caught her breath in a short gasp and felt herself turn pale.

“He can do it! He can do it! He can do it! He can!” she gabbled over to herself under her breath as fast as ever she could.

There was a brief fierce scramble, the rugs were tossed on to the ground, Dickon held Colin’s arm, the thin legs were out, the thin feet were on the grass. Colin was standing upright—upright—as straight as an arrow and looking strangely tall—his head thrown back and his strange eyes flashing lightning.

“Look at me!” he flung up at Ben Weatherstaff. “Just look at me—you! Just look at me!”

“He’s as straight as I am!” cried Dickon. “He’s as straight as any lad i’ Yorkshire!”

What Ben Weatherstaff did Mary thought queer beyond measure. He choked and gulped and suddenly tears ran down his weather-wrinkled cheeks as he struck his old hands together.

“Eh!” he burst forth, “th’ lies folk tells! Tha’rt as thin as a lath an’ as white as a wraith, but there’s not a knob on thee. Tha’lt make a mon yet. God bless thee!”

Dickon held Colin’s arm strongly but the boy had not begun to falter. He stood straighter and straighter and looked Ben Weatherstaff in the face.

“I’m your master,” he said, “when my father is away. And you are to obey me. This is my garden. Don’t dare to say a word about it! You get down from that ladder and go out to the Long Walk and Miss Mary will meet you and bring you here. I want to talk to you. We did not want you, but now you will have to be in the secret. Be quick!”

Ben Weatherstaff’s crabbed old face was still wet with that one queer rush of tears. It seemed as if he could not take his eyes from thin straight Colin standing on his feet with his head thrown back.

“Eh! lad,” he almost whispered. “Eh! my lad!” And then remembering himself he suddenly touched his hat gardener fashion and said, “Yes, sir! Yes, sir!” and obediently disappeared as he descended the ladder.

22

When the Sun Went Down

WHEN HIS HEAD WAS OUT OF SIGHT COLIN TURNED TO MARY.

“Go and meet him,” he said; and Mary flew across the grass to the door under the ivy.

Dickon was watching him with sharp eyes. There were scarlet spots on his cheeks and he looked amazing, but he showed no signs of falling.

“I can stand,” he said, and his head was still held up and he said it quite grandly.

“I told thee tha’ could as soon as tha’ stopped bein’ afraid,” answered Dickon. “An’ tha’s stopped.”

“Yes, I’ve stopped,” said Colin.

Then suddenly he remembered something Mary had said.

“Are you making Magic?” he asked sharply.

Dickon’s curly mouth spread in a cheerful grin.

“Tha’s doin’ Magic thysel’,” he said. “It’s same Magic as made these ‘ere work out o’ th’ earth,” and he touched with his thick boot a clump of crocuses in the grass.

Colin looked down at them.

“Aye,” he said slowly, “there couldna’ be bigger Magic than that there—there couldna’ be.”

He drew himself up straighter than ever.

“I’m going to walk to that tree,” he said, pointing to one a few feet away from him. “I’m going to be standing when Weatherstaff comes here. I can rest against the tree if I like. When I want to sit down I will sit down, but not before. Bring a rug from the chair.”

He walked to the tree and though Dickon held his arm he was wonderfully steady. When he stood against the tree trunk it was not too plain that he supported himself against it, and he still held himself so straight that he looked tall.

When Ben Weatherstaff came through the door in the wall he saw him standing there and he heard Mary muttering something under her breath.

“What art sayin’?” he asked rather testily because he did not want his attention distracted from the long thin straight boy figure and proud face.

But she did not tell him. What she was saying was this:

“You can do it! You can do it! I told you you could! You can do it! You can do it! You can!”

She was saying it to Colin because she wanted to make Magic and keep him on his feet looking like that. She could not bear that he should give in before Ben Weatherstaff. He did not give in. She was uplifted by a sudden feeling that he looked quite beautiful in spite of his thinness. He fixed his eyes on Ben Weatherstaff in his funny imperious way.

“Look at me!” he commanded. “Look at me all over! Am I a hunchback? Have I got crooked legs?”

Ben Weatherstaff had not quite got over his emotion, but he had recovered a little and answered almost in his usual way.

“Not tha’,” he said. “Nowt o’ th’ sort. What’s tha’ been doin’ with thysel’—hidin’ out o’ sight an’ lettin’ folk think tha’ was cripple an’ half-witted?”

“Half-witted!” said Colin angrily. “Who thought that?”

“Lots o’ fools,” said Ben. “Th’ world’s full o’ jackasses brayin’ an’ they never bray nowt but lies. What did tha’ shut thysel’ up for?”

“Everyone thought I was going to die,” said Colin shortly. “I’m not!”

And he said it with such decision Ben Weatherstaff looked him over, up and down, down and up.

“Tha’ die!” he said with dry exultation. “Nowt o’ th’ sort! Tha’s got too much pluck in thee. When I seed thee put tha’ legs on th’ ground in such a hurry I knowed tha’ was all right. Sit thee down on th’ rug a bit young Mester an’ give me thy orders.”

There was a queer mixture of crabbed tenderness and shrewd understanding in his manner. Mary had poured out speech as rapidly as she could as they had come down the Long Walk. The chief thing to be remembered, she had told him, was that Colin was getting well—getting well. The garden was doing it. No one must let him remember about having humps and dying.

The rajah condescended to seat himself on a rug under the tree.

“What work do you do in the gardens, Weatherstaff?” he inquired.

“Anythin’ I’m told to do,” answered old Ben. “I’m kep’ on by favour—because she liked me.”

“She?” said Colin.

“Tha’ mother,” answered Ben Weatherstaff.

“My mother?” said Colin, and he looked about him quietly. “This was her garden, wasn’t it?”

“Aye, it was that!” and Ben Weatherstaff looked about him too. “She were main fond of it.”

“It is my garden now. I am fond of it. I shall come here every day,” announced Colin. “But it is to be a secret. My orders are that no one is to know that we come here. Dickon and my cousin have worked and made it come alive. I shall send for you sometimes to help—but you must come when no one can see you.”

Ben Weatherstaff’s face twisted itself in a dry old smile.

“I’ve come here before when no one saw me,” he said.

“What!” exclaimed Colin. “When?”

“Th’ last time I was here,” rubbing his chin and looking round, “was about two year’ ago.”

“But no one has been in it for ten years!” cried Colin. “There was no door!”

“I’m no one,” said old Ben dryly. “An’ I didn’t come through th’ door. I come over th’ wall. Th’ rheumatics held me back th’ last two year’.”

“Tha’ come an’ did a bit o’ prunin’!” cried Dickon. “I couldn’t make out how it had been done.”

“She was so fond of it—she was!” said Ben Weatherstaff slowly. “An’ she was such a pretty young thing. She says to me once, ’Ben,’ says she laughin’, ‘if ever I’m ill or if I go away you must take care of my roses.’ When she did go away th’ orders was no one was ever to come nigh. But I come,” with grumpy obstinacy. “Over th’ wall I come—until th’ rheumatics stopped me—an’ I did a bit of work once a year. She’d gave her order first.”

“It wouldn’t have been as wick as it is if tha’ hadn’t done it,” said Dickon. “I did wonder.”

“I’m glad you did it, Weatherstaff,” said Colin. “You’ll know how to keep the secret.”

“Aye, I’ll know, sir,” answered Ben. “An’ it’ll be easier for a man wi’ rheumatics to come in at th’ door.”

On the grass near the tree Mary had dropped her trowel. Colin stretched out his hand and took it up. An odd expression came into his face and he began to scratch at the earth. His thin hand was weak enough but presently as they watched him—Mary with quite breathless interest—he drove the end of the trowel into the soil and turned some over.

“You can do it! You can do it!” said Mary to herself. “I tell you, you can!”

Dickon’s round eyes were full of eager curiousness but he said not a word. Ben Weatherstaff looked on with interested face.

Colin persevered. After he had turned a few trowelfuls of soil he spoke exultantly to Dickon in his best Yorkshire.

“Tha’ said as tha’d have me walkin’ about here same as other folk—an’ tha’ said tha’d have me diggin’. I thowt tha’ was just leein’ to please me. This is only th’ first day an’ I’ve walked—an’ here I am diggin’.”

Ben Weatherstaff’s mouth fell open again when he heard him, but he ended by chuckling.

“Eh!” he said, “that sounds as if tha’d got wits enow. Tha‘rt a Yorkshire lad for sure. An’ tha‘rt diggin’, too. How’d tha’ like to plant a bit o’ somethin’? I can get thee a rose in a pot.”

“Go and get it!” said Colin, digging excitedly. “Quick! Quick!”

It was done quickly enough indeed. Ben Weatherstaff went his way forgetting rheumatics. Dickon took his spade and dug the hole deeper and wider than a new digger with thin white hands could make it. Mary slipped out to run and bring back a watering-can. When Dickon had deepened the hole Colin went on turning the soft earth over and over. He looked up at the sky, flushed and glowing with the strangely new exercise, slight as it was.

“I want to do it before the sun goes quite—quite down,” he said.

Mary thought that perhaps the sun held back a few minutes just on purpose. Ben Weatherstaff brought the rose in its pot from the greenhouse. He hobbled over the grass as fast as he could. He had begun to be excited, too. He knelt down by the hole and broke the pot from the mould.

“Here, lad,” he said, handing the plant to Colin. “Set it in the earth thysel’ same as th’ king does when he goes to a new place.”

The thin white hands shook a little and Colin’s flush grew deeper as he set the rose in the mould and held it while old Ben made firm the earth. It was filled in and pressed down and made steady. Mary was leaning forward on her hands and knees. Soot had flown down and marched forward to see what was being done. Nut and Shell chattered about it from a cherry tree.

“It’s planted!” said Colin at last. “And the sun is only slipping over the edge. Help me up, Dickon. I want to be standing when it goes. That’s part of the Magic.”

And Dickon helped him, and the Magic—or whatever it was—so gave him strength that when the sun did slip over the edge and end the strange lovely afternoon for them there he actually stood on his two feet—laughing.

23

Magic

DR. CRAVEN HAD BEEN WAITING SOME TIME AT THE HOUSE when they returned to it. He had indeed begun to wonder if it might not be wise to send someone out to explore the garden paths. When Colin was brought back to his room the poor man looked him over seriously.

“You should not have stayed so long,” he said. “You must not over-exert yourself.”

“I am not tired at all,” said Colin. “It has made me well. Tomorrow I am going out in the morning as well as in the afternoon.”

“I am not sure that I can allow it,” answered Dr. Craven. “I am afraid it would not be wise.”

“It would not be wise to try to stop me,” said Colin quite seriously. “I am going.”

Even Mary had found out that one of Colin’s chief peculiarities was that he did not know in the least what a rude little brute he was with his way of ordering people about. He had lived on a sort of desert island all his life and as he had been the king of it he had made his own manners and had had no one to compare himself with. Mary had indeed been rather like him herself and since she had been at Misselthwaite had gradually discovered that her own manners had not been of the kind which is usual or popular. Having made this discovery she naturally thought it of enough interest to communicate to Colin. So she sat and looked at him curiously for a few minutes after Dr. Craven had gone. She wanted to make him ask her why she was doing it and of course she did.

“What are you looking at me for?” he said.

“I’m thinking that I am rather sorry for Dr. Craven.”

“So am I,” said Colin calmly, but not without an air of some satisfaction. “He won’t get Misselthwaite at all now I’m not going to die.”

“I’m sorry for him because of that, of course,” said Mary, “but I was thinking just then that it must have been very horrid to have had to be polite for ten years to a boy who was always rude. I would never have done it.”

“Am I rude?” Colin inquired undisturbedly.

“If you had been his own boy and he had been a slapping sort of man,” said Mary, “he would have slapped you.”

“But he daren’t,” said Colin.

“No, he daren’t,” answered Mistress Mary, thinking the thing out quite without prejudice. “Nobody ever dared to do anything you didn’t like—because you were going to die and things like that. You were such a poor thing.”

“But,” announced Colin stubbornly, “I am not going to be a poor thing. I won’t let people think I’m one. I stood on my feet this afternoon.”

“It is always having your own way that has made you so queer,” Mary went on, thinking aloud.

Colin turned his head, frowning.

“Am I queer?” he demanded.

“Yes,” answered Mary, “very. But you needn’t be cross,” she added impartially, “because so am I queer—and so is Ben Weatherstaff. But I am not as queer as I was before I began to like people and before I found the garden.”

“I don’t want to be queer,” said Colin. “I am not going to be,” and he frowned again with determination.

He was a very proud boy. He lay thinking for a while and then Mary saw his beautiful smile begin and gradually change his whole face.

“I shall stop being queer,” he said, “if I go every day to the garden. There is Magic in there—good Magic, you know, Mary. I am sure there is.”

“So am I,” said Mary.

“Even if it isn’t real Magic,” Colin said, “we can pretend it is. Something is there—something!”

“It’s Magic,” said Mary, “but not black. It’s as white as snow.”

They always called it Magic and indeed it seemed like it in the months that followed—the wonderful months—the radiant months—the amazing ones. Oh! the things which happened in that garden! If you have never had a garden you cannot understand, and if you have had a garden you will know that it would take a whole book to describe all that came to pass there. At first it seemed that green things would never cease pushing their way through the earth, in the grass, in the beds, even in the crevices of the walls. Then the green things began to show buds and the buds began to unfurl and show colour, every shade of blue, every shade of purple, every tint and hue of crimson. In its happy days flowers had been tucked away into every inch and hole and corner. Ben Weatherstaff had seen it done and had himself scraped out mortar from between the bricks of the wall and made pockets of earth for lovely clinging things to grow on. Iris and white lilies rose out of the grass in sheaves, and the green alcoves filled themselves with amazing armies of the blue and white flower lances of tall delphiniums or columbines or campanulas.

“She was main fond o’ them—she was,” Ben Weatherstaff said. “She liked them things as was allus pointin’ up to th’ blue sky, she used to tell. Not as she was one o’ them as looked down on th’ earth—not her. She just loved it but she said as th’ blue sky allus looked so joyful.”

The seeds Dickon and Mary had planted grew as if fairies had tended them. Satiny poppies of all tints danced in the breeze by the score, gaily defying flowers which had lived in the garden for years, and which it might be confessed seemed rather to wonder how such new people had got there. And the roses—the roses! Rising out of the grass, tangled round the sun-dial, wreathing the tree trunks, and hanging from their branches, climbing up the walls and spreading over them with long garlands falling in cascades—they came alive day by day, hour by hour. Fair fresh leaves, and buds—and buds—tiny at first but swelling and working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air.

Colin saw it all, watching each change as it took place. Every morning he was brought out and every hour of each day, when it didn’t rain, he spent in the garden. Even grey days pleased him. He would lie on the grass “watching things growing,” he said. If you watched long enough, he declared, you could see buds unsheath themselves. Also you could make the acquaintance of strange busy insect things running about on various unknown but evidently serious errands, sometimes carrying tiny scraps of straw or feather or food, or climbing blades of grass as if they were trees from whose tops one could look out to explore the country. A mole throwing up its mound at the end of its burrow and making its way out at last with the long-nailed paws which looked so like elfish hands, had absorbed him one whole morning. Ants’ ways, beetles’ ways, bees ways, frogs’ ways, birds’ ways, plants’ ways, gave him a new world to explore, and when Dickon revealed them all and added foxes’ ways, otters’ ways, ferrets’ ways, squirrels’ ways, and trouts’ and water-rats’ and badgers’ ways, there was no end to the things to talk about and think over.

And this was not the half of the Magic. The fact that he had really once stood on his feet had set Colin thinking tremendously and when Mary told him of the spell she had worked he was excited and approved of it greatly. He talked of it constantly.

“Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world,” he said wisely one day, “but people don’t know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment.”

The next morning when they went to the secret garden he sent at once for Ben Weatherstaff. Ben came as quickly as he could and found the rajah standing on his feet under a tree and looking very grand but also very beautifully smiling.

“Good morning, Ben Weatherstaff,” he said. “I want you and Dickon and Miss Mary to stand in a row and listen to me because I am going to tell you something very important.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” answered Ben Weatherstaff, touching his forehead. (One of the long concealed charms of Ben Weatherstaff was that in his boyhood he had once run away to sea and had made voyages. So he could reply like a sailor.)

“I am going to try a scientific experiment,” explained the rajah. “When I grow up I am going to make great scientific discoveries and I am going to begin now with this experiment.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” said Ben Weatherstaff promptly, though this was the first time he had heard of great scientific discoveries.

It was the first time Mary had heard of them, either, but even at this stage she had begun to realize that, queer as he was, Colin had read about a great many singular things and was somehow a very convincing sort of boy. When he held up his head and fixed his strange eyes on you it seemed as if you believed him almost in spite of yourself, though he was only ten years old—going on eleven. At this moment he was especially convincing because he suddenly felt the fascination of actually making a sort of speech like a grown-up person.

“The great scientific discoveries I am going to make,” he went on, “will be about Magic. Magic is a great thing and scarcely anyone knows anything about it except a few people in old books—and Mary a little, because she was born in India where there are fakirs. I believe Dickon knows some Magic, but perhaps he doesn’t know he knows it. He charms animals and people. I would never have let him come to see me if he had not been an animal charmer—which is a boy charmer, too, because a boy is an animal. I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us—like electricity and horses and steam.”

This sounded so imposing that Ben Weatherstaff became quite excited and really could not keep still.

“Aye, aye, sir,” he said, and he began to stand up quite straight.

“When Mary found this garden it looked quite dead,” the orator proceeded. “Then something began pushing things up out of the soil and making things out of nothing. One day things weren’t there and another they were. I had never watched things before and it made me feel very curious. Scientific people are always curious and I am going to be scientific. I keep saying to myself: ‘What is it? What is it?’ It’s something. It can’t be nothing! I don’t know its name so I call it Magic. I have never seen the sun rise but Mary and Dickon have and from what they tell me I am sure that is Magic too. Something pushes it up and draws it. Sometimes since I’ve been in the garden I’ve looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something were pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden—in all the places. The Magic in this garden has made me stand up and know I am going to live to be a man. I am going to make the scientific experiment of trying to get some and put it in myself and make it push and draw me and make me strong. I don’t know how to do it but I think that if you keep thinking about it and calling it perhaps it will come. Perhaps that is the first baby way to get it. When I was going to try to stand that first time Mary kept saying to herself as fast as she could, ‘You can do it! You can do it!’ and I did. I had to try myself at the same time, of course, but her Magic helped me—and so did Dickon’s. Every morning and evening and as often in the daytime as I can remember I am going to say, ‘Magic is in me! Magic is making me well! I am going to be as strong as Dickon, as strong as Dickon!’ And you must all do it, too. That is my experiment. Will you help, Ben Weatherstaff?”

“Aye, aye, sir!” said Ben Weatherstaff. “Aye, aye!”

“If you keep doing it every day as regularly as soldiers go through drill we shall see what will happen and find out if the experiment succeeds. You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking about them until they stay in your mind for ever and I think it will be the same with Magic. If you keep calling it to come to you and help you it will get to be part of you and it will stay and do things.”

“I once heard an officer in India tell my mother that there were fakirs who said words over and over thousands of times,” said Mary.

“I’ve heard Jem Fettleworth’s wife say th’ same thing over thousands o’ times—callin’ Jem a drunken brute,” said Ben Weatherstaff dryly. “Summat allus come o’ that, sure enough. He gave her a good hidin’ an’ went to th’ ‘Blue Lion’ an’ got as drunk as a lord.”

Colin drew his brows together and thought a few minutes. Then he cheered up.

“Well,” he said, “you see something did come of it. She used the wrong Magic until she made him beat her. If she’d used the right Magic and had said something nice perhaps he wouldn’t have got as drunk as a lord and perhaps—perhaps he might have bought her a new bonnet.”

Ben Weatherstaff chuckled and there was shrewd admiration in his little old eyes.

“Tha‘rt a clever lad as well as a straight-legged one, Mester Colin,” he said. “Next time I see Bess Fettleworth I’ll give her a bit of a hint o’ what Magic will do for her. She’d be rare an’ pleased if th’ sinetifik ‘speriment worked—an’ so ’ud Jem.”

Dickon had stood listening to the lecture, his round eyes shining with curious delight. Nut and Shell were on his shoulders and he held a long-eared white rabbit in his arm and stroked and stroked it softly while it laid its ears along its back and enjoyed itself.

“Do you think the experiment will work?” Colin asked him, wondering what he was thinking. He so often wondered what Dickon was thinking when he saw him looking at him or at one of his “creatures” with his happy wide smile.

He smiled now and his smile was wider than usual.

“Aye,” he answered, “that I do. It’ll work same as th’ seeds do when th’ sun shines on ’em. It’ll work for sure. Shall us begin it now?”

Colin was delighted and so was Mary. Fired by recollections of fakirs and devotees in illustrations, Colin suggested that they should all sit cross-legged under the tree, which made a canopy.

“It will be like sitting in a sort of temple,” said Colin. “I’m rather tired and I want to sit down.”

“Eh!” said Dickon, “tha’ mustn’t begin by sayin’ tha‘rt tired. Tha’ might spoil th’ Magic.”

Colin turned and looked at him—into his innocent round eyes.

“That’s true,” he said slowly. “I must only think of the Magic.”

It all seemed most majestic and mysterious when they sat down in their circle. Ben Weatherstaff felt as if he had somehow been led into appearing at a prayer-meeting. Ordinarily he was very fixed in being what he called “agen’ prayer-meetin’s” but this being the rajah’s affair, he did not resent it and was, indeed, inclined to be gratified at being called upon to assist. Mistress Mary felt solemnly enraptured. Dickon held his rabbit in his arm, and perhaps he made some charmer’s signal no one heard, for when he sat down, cross-legged like the rest, the crow, the fox, the squirrels and the lamb slowly drew near and made part of the circle, settling each into a place of rest as if of their own desire.

“The ‘creatures’ have come,” said Colin gravely. “They want to help us.”

Colin really looked quite beautiful, Mary thought. He held his head high as if he felt like a sort of priest and his strange eyes had a wonderful look in them. The light shone on him through the tree canopy.

“Now we will begin,” he said. “Shall we sway backward and forward, Mary, as if we were dervishes?”

“I canna’ do no swayin’ back‘ard and for’ard,” said Ben Weatherstaff. “I’ve got th’ rheumatics.”

“The Magic will take them away,” said Colin in a High Priest tone, “but we won’t sway until it has done it. We will only chant.”

“I canna’ do no chantin’,” said Ben Weatherstaff a trifle testily. “They turned me out o’ th’ church choir th’ only time I ever tried it.”

No one smiled. They were all too much in earnest. Colin’s face was not even crossed by a shadow. He was thinking only of the Magic.

“Then I will chant,” he said. And he began, looking like a strange boy spirit. “The sun is shining—the sun is shining. That is the Magic. The flowers are growing—the roots are stirring. That is the Magic. Being alive is the Magic—being strong is the Magic. The Magic is in me—the Magic is in me. It is in me—it is in me. It’s in every one of us. It’s in Ben Weatherstaff’s back. Magic! Magic! Come and help!”

He said it a great many times—not a thousand times but quite a goodly number. Mary listened entranced. She felt as if it were at once queer and beautiful and she wanted him to go on and on. Ben Weatherstaff began to feel soothed into a sort of dream which was quite agreeable. The humming of the bees in the blossoms mingled with the chanting voice and drowsily melted into a doze. Dickon sat cross-legged with his rabbit asleep on his arm and a hand resting on the lamb’s back. Soot had pushed away a squirrel and huddled close to him on his shoulder, the grey film dropped over his eyes. At last Colin stopped.

“Now I am going to walk round the garden,” he announced.

Ben Weatherstaff’s head had just dropped forward and he lifted it with a jerk.

“You have been asleep,” said Colin.

“Nowt o’ th’ sort,” mumbled Ben. “Th’ sermon was good enow—but I’m bound to get out afore th’ collection.”

He was not quite awake yet.

“You’re not in church,” said Colin.

“Not me,” said Ben, straightening himself. “Who said I were? I heard every bit of it. You said th’ Magic was in my back. Th’ doctor calls it rheumatics.”

The rajah waved his hand.

“That was the wrong Magic,” he said. “You will get better. You have my permission to go to your work. But come back tomorrow.”

“I’d like to see thee walk round the garden,” grunted Ben.

It was not an unfriendly grunt, but it was a grunt. In fact, being a stubborn old party and not having entire faith in Magic, he had made up his mind that if he were sent away he would climb his ladder and look over the wall so that he might be ready to hobble back if there were any stumbling.

The rajah did not object to his staying and so the procession was formed. It really did look like a procession. Colin was at its head with Dickon on one side and Mary on the other. Ben Weatherstaff walked behind, and the “creatures” trailed after them, the lamb and the fox cub keeping close to Dickon, the white rabbit hopping along or stopping to nibble and Soot following with the solemnity of a person who felt himself in charge.

It was a procession which moved slowly but with dignity. Every few yards it stopped to rest. Colin leaned on Dickon’s arm and privately Ben Weatherstaff kept a sharp lookout, but now and then Colin took his hand from its support and walked a few steps alone. His head was held up all the time and he looked very grand.

“The Magic is in me!” he kept saying. “The Magic is making me strong! I can feel it! I can feel it!”

It seemed very certain that something was upholding and uplifting him. He sat on the seats in the alcoves, and once or twice he sat down on the grass and several times he paused in the path and leaned on Dickon, but he would not give up until he had gone all round the garden. When he returned to the canopy tree his cheeks were flushed and he looked triumphant.

“I did it! The Magic worked!” he cried. “That is my first scientific discovery.”

“What will Dr. Craven say?” broke out Mary.

“He won’t say anything,” Colin answered, “because he will not be told. This is to be the biggest secret of all. No one is to know anything about it until I have grown so strong that I can walk and run like any other boy. I shall come here every day in my chair and I shall be taken back in it. I won’t have people whispering and asking questions and I won’t let my father hear about it until the experiment has quite succeeded. Then some time when he comes back to Misselthwaite I shall just walk into his study and say, ‘Here I am; I am like any other boy. I am quite well and I shall live to be a man. It has been done by a scientific experiment.’”

“He will think he is in a dream,” cried Mary. “He won’t believe his eyes.”

Colin flushed triumphantly. He had made himself believe that he was going to get well, which was really more than half the battle, if he had been aware of it. And the thought which stimulated him more than any other was this imagining what his father would look like when he saw that he had a son who was as straight and strong as other fathers’ sons. One of his darkest miseries in the unhealthy morbid past days had been his hatred of being a sickly weak-backed boy whose father was afraid to look at him.

“He’ll be obliged to believe them,” he said. “One of the things I am going to do, after the Magic works and before I begin to make scientific discoveries, is to be an athlete.”

“We shall have thee takin’ to boxin’ in a week or so,” said Ben Weatherstaff. “Tha‘lt end wi’ winnin’ th’ Belt an’ bein’ champion prize-fighter of all England.”

Colin fixed his eyes on him sternly.

“Weatherstaff,” he said, “that is disrespectful. You must not take liberties because you are in the secret. However much the Magic works, I shall not be a prize-fighter. I shall be a Scientific Discoverer.”

“Ax pardon—ax pardon, sir,” answered Ben, touching his forehead in salute. “I ought to have seed it wasn’t a jokin’ matter,” but his eyes twinkled and secretly he was immensely pleased. He really did not mind being snubbed since the snubbing meant that the lad was gaining strength and spirit.

24

“Let Them Laugh”

THE SECRET GARDEN WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE DICKON WORKED in. Round the cottage on the moor there was a piece of ground enclosed by a low wall of rough stones. Early in the morning and late in the fading twilight and on all the days Colin and Mary did not see him, Dickon worked there planting or tending potatoes and cabbages, turnips and carrots and herbs for his mother. In the company of his “creatures” he did wonders there and was never tired of doing them, it seemed. While he dug or weeded he whistled or sang bits of Yorkshire moor songs or talked to Soot or Captain or the brothers and sisters he had taught to help him.

“We’d never get on as comfortable as we do,” Mrs. Sowerby said, “if it wasn’t for Dickon’s garden. Anything’ ll grow for him. His ’taters and cabbages is twice th’ size of anyone else’s an’ they’ve got a flavour with ’em as nobody’s has.”

When she found a moment to spare she liked to go out and talk to him. After supper there was still a long clear twilight to work in and that was her quiet time. She could sit upon the low rough wall and look on and hear stories of the day. She loved this time. There were not only vegetables in this garden. Dickon had bought penny packages of flower seeds now and then and sown bright sweet-scented things among gooseberry bushes and even cabbages and he grew borders of mignonette and pinks and pansies and things whose seeds he could save year after year or whose roots would bloom each spring and spread in time into fine clumps. The low wall was one of the prettiest things in Yorkshire because he had tucked moorland foxglove and ferns and rock-cress and hedgerow flowers into every crevice until only here and there glimpses of the stones were to be seen.

“All a chap’s got to do to make ‘em thrive, Mother,” he would say, “is to be friends with ’em for sure. They’re just like th’ ‘creatures.’ If they’re thirsty give ’em a drink, and if they’re hungry give ‘em a bit o’ food. They want to live same as we do. If they died I should feel as if I’d been a bad lad and somehow treated them heartless.”

It was in these twilight hours that Mrs. Sowerby heard of all that happened at Misselthwaite Manor. At first she was only told that “Mester Colin” had taken a fancy to going out into the grounds with Miss Mary and that it was doing him good. But it was not long before it was agreed between the two children that Dickon’s mother might “come into the secret.” Somehow it was not doubted that she was “safe for sure.”

So one beautiful still evening Dickon told the whole story, with all the thrilling details of the buried key and the robin and the grey haze which had seemed like deadness and the secret Mistress Mary had planned never to reveal. The coming of Dickon and how it had been told to him, the doubt of Mester Colin and the final drama of his introduction to the hidden domain, combined with the incident of Ben Weatherstaff’s angry face peering over the wall and Mester Colin’s sudden indignant strength, made Mrs. Sowerby’s nice-looking face quite change colour several times.

“My word!” she said. “It was a good thing that little lass came to th’ Manor. It’s been th’ makin’ o’ her an’ th’ savin’ o’ him. Standin’ on his feet! An’ us all thinkin’ he was a poor half-witted lad with not a straight bone in him.”

She asked a great many questions and her blue eyes were full of deep thinking.

“What do they make of it at th’ Manor—him being so well an’ cheerful an’ never complainin’?” she inquired.

“They don’t know what to make of it,” answered Dickon. “Every day as comes round his face looks different. It’s fillin’ out and doesn’t look so sharp an’ th’ waxy colour is goin’. But he has to do his bit o’ complainin’,” with a highly entertained grin.

“What for, i’ Mercy’s name?” asked Mrs. Sowerby.

Dickon chuckled.

“He does it to keep them from guessin’ what’s happened. If the doctor knew he’d found out he could stand on his feet he’d likely write and tell Mester Craven. Mester Colin’s savin’ th’ secret to tell himself. He’s goin’ to practise his Magic on his legs every day till his father comes back an’ then he’s goin’ to march into his room an’ show him he’s as straight as other lads. But him an’ Miss Mary thinks it’s best plan to do a bit o’ groanin’ an’ frettin’ now an’ then to throw off th’ scent.”

Mrs. Sowerby was laughing a low comfortable laugh long before he had finished his last sentence.

“Eh!” she said, “that pair’s enjoyin’ theirselves, I’ll warrant. They’ll get a good bit o’ play actin’ out of it, an’ there’s nothin’ children likes as much as play actin’. Let’s hear what they do, Dickon, lad.”

Dickon stopped weeding and sat up on his heels to tell her. His eyes were twinkling with fun.

“Mester Colin is carried down to his chair every time he goes out,” he explained. “An’ he flies out at John, th’ footman, for not carryin’ him careful enough. He makes himself as helpless lookin’ as he can an’ never lifts his head until we’re out o’ sight o’ th’ house. An’ he grunts an’ frets a good bit when he’s bein’ settled into his chair. Him an’ Miss Mary’s both got to enjoyin’ it an’ when he groans an’ complains she’ll say, ‘Poor Colin! Does it hurt you so much? Are you so weak as that, poor Colin?‘—but th’ trouble is that sometimes they can scarce keep from burstin’ out laughin’. When we get safe into the garden they laugh till they’ve no breath left to laugh with. An’ they have to stuff their faces into Mester Colin’s cushions to keep the gardeners from hearin’, if any of ’em’s about.”

“Th’ more they laugh th’ better for ‘em!” said Mrs. Sowerby, still laughing herself. “Good healthy child laughin’s better than pills any day o’ th’ year. That pair’ll plump up for sure.”

“They are plumpin’ up,” said Dickon. “They’re that hungry they don’t know how to get enough to eat without makin’ talk. Mester Colin says if he keeps sendin’ for more food they won’t believe he’s an invalid at all. Miss Mary says she’ll let him eat her share, but he says that if she goes hungry she’ll get thin an’ they mun both get fat at once.”

Mrs. Sowerby laughed so heartily at the revelation of this difficulty that she quite rocked backward and forward in her blue cloak, and Dickon laughed with her.

“I’ll tell thee what, lad,” Mrs. Sowerby said when she could speak. “I’ve thought of a way to help ‘em. When tha’ goes to ‘em in th’ mornin’s tha’ shall take a pail o’ good new milk an’ I’ll bake ’em a crusty cottage loaf or some buns wi’ currants in ’em, same as you children like. Nothin’s so good as fresh milk an’ bread. Then they could take off th’ edge o’ their hunger while they were in their garden an’ th’ fine food they get indoors ’ud polish off th’ corners.”

“Eh! Mother!” said Dickon admiringly, “what a wonder tha’ art! Tha’ always sees a way out o’ things. They was quite in a pother yesterday. They didn’t see how they was to manage without orderin’ up more food—they felt that empty inside.”

“They’re two young ‘uns growin’ fast, an’ health’s comin’ back to both of ‘em. Children like that feels like young wolves an’ food’s flesh an’ blood to ’em,” said Mrs. Sowerby. Then she smiled Dickon’s own curving smile. “Eh! but they’re enjoyin’ theirselves for sure,” she said.

She was quite right, the comfortable wonderful mother creature—and she had never been more so than when she said their “play actin’” would be their joy. Colin and Mary found it one of their most thrilling sources of entertainment. The idea of protecting themselves from suspicion had been unconsciously suggested to them first by the puzzled nurse and then by Dr. Craven himself.

“Your appetite is improving very much, Master Colin,” the nurse had said one day. “You used to eat nothing, and so many things disagreed with you.”

“Nothing disagrees with me now,” replied Colin, and then seeing the nurse looking at him curiously he suddenly remembered that perhaps he ought not to appear too well just yet. “At least, things don’t so often disagree with me. It’s the fresh air.”

“Perhaps it is,” said the nurse, still looking at him with a mystified expression. “But I must talk to Dr. Craven about it.”

“How she stared at you!” said Mary when she went away. “As if she thought there must be something to find out.”

“I won’t have her finding out things,” said Colin. “No one must begin to find out yet.”

When Dr. Craven came that morning he seemed puzzled, also. He asked a number of questions, to Colin’s great annoyance.

“You stay out in the garden a great deal,” he suggested. “Where do you go?”

Colin put on his favourite air of dignified indifference to opinion.

“I will not let anyone know where I go,” he answered. “I go to a place I like. Everyone has orders to keep out of the way. I won’t be watched and stared at. You know that!”

“You seem to be out all day, but I do not think it has done you harm—I do not think so. The nurse says that you eat much more than you have ever done before.”

“Perhaps,” said Colin, prompted by a sudden inspiration, “perhaps it is an unnatural appetite.”

“I do not think so, as your food seems to agree with you,” said Dr. Craven. “You are gaining flesh rapidly and your colour is better.”

“Perhaps—perhaps I am bloated and feverish,” said Colin, assuming a discouraging air of gloom. “People who are not going to live are often—different.”

Dr. Craven shook his head. He was holding Colin’s wrist and he pushed up his sleeve and felt his arm.

“You are not feverish,” he said thoughtfully, “and such flesh as you have gained is healthy. If we can keep this up, my boy, we need not talk of dying. Your father will be very happy to hear of this remarkable improvement.”

“I won’t have him told!” Colin broke forth fiercely. “It will only disappoint him if I get worse again—and I may get worse this very night. I might have a raging fever. I feel as if I might be beginning to have one now. I won’t have letters written to my father—I won’t—I I won’t! You are making me angry and you know that is bad for me. I feel hot already. I hate being written about and being talked over as much as I hate being stared at!”

“Hush-h! my boy,” Dr. Craven soothed him. “Nothing shall be written without your permission. You are too sensitive about things. You must not undo the good which has been done.”

He said no more about writing to Mr. Craven and when he saw the nurse he privately warned her that such a possibility must not be mentioned to the patient.

“The boy is extraordinarily better,” he said. “His advance seems almost abnormal. But of course he is doing now of his own free will what we could not make him do before. Still, he excites himself very easily and nothing must be said to irritate him.”

Mary and Colin were much alarmed and talked together anxiously. From this time dated their plan of “play actin’.”

“I may be obliged to have a tantrum,” said Colin regretfully. “I don’t want to have one and I’m not miserable enough now to work myself into a big one. Perhaps I couldn’t have one at all. That lump doesn’t come in my throat now and I keep thinking of nice things instead of horrible ones. But if they talk about writing to my father I shall have to do something.”

He made up his mind to eat less, but unfortunately it was not possible to carry out this brilliant idea when he wakened each morning with an amazing appetite and the table near his sofa was set with a breakfast of home-made bread and fresh butter, snow-white eggs, raspberry jam and clotted cream. Mary always breakfasted with him and when they found themselves at the table—particularly if there were delicate slices of sizzling ham sending forth tempting odours from under a hot silver cover—they would look into each other’s eyes in desperation.

“I think we shall have to eat it all this morning, Mary,” Colin always ended by saying. “We can send away some of the lunch and a great deal of the dinner.”

But they never found they could send away anything, and the highly polished condition of the empty plates returned to the pantry awakened much comment.

“I do wish,” Colin would say also, “I do wish the slices of ham were thicker, and one muffin each is not enough for anyone.”

“It’s enough for a person who is going to die,” answered Mary when first she heard this, “but it’s not enough for a person who is going to live. I sometimes feel as if I could eat three when those nice fresh heather and gorse smells from the moor come pouring in at the open window.”

The morning that Dickon—after they had been enjoying themselves in the garden for about two hours—went behind a big rose bush and brought forth two tin pails and revealed that one was full of rich new milk with cream on the top of it, and that the other held cottage-made currant buns folded in a clean blue and white napkin, buns so carefully tucked in that they were still hot, there was a riot of surprised joyfulness. What a wonderful thing for Mrs. Sowerby to think of! What a kind, clever woman she must be! How good the buns were! And what delicious fresh milk!

“Magic is in her just as it is in Dickon,” said Colin. “It makes her think of ways to do things—nice things. She is a Magic person. Tell her we are grateful, Dickon—extremely grateful.”

He was given to using rather grown-up phrases at times. He enjoyed them. He liked this so much that he improved upon it.

“Tell her she has been most bounteous and our gratitude is extreme.”

And then forgetting his grandeur he fell to and stuffed himself with buns and drank milk out of the pail in copious draughts in the manner of any hungry little boy who had been taking unusual exercise and breathing in moorland air and whose breakfast was more than two hours behind him.

This was the beginning of many agreeable incidents of the same kind. They actually awoke to the fact that as Mrs. Sowerby had fourteen people to provide food for she might not have enough to satisfy two extra appetites every day. So they asked her to let them send some of their shillings to buy things.

Dickon made the stimulating discovery that in the wood in the park outside the garden where Mary had first found him piping to the wild creatures there was a deep little hollow where you could build a sort of tiny oven with stones and roast potatoes and eggs in it. Roasted eggs were a previously unknown luxury and very hot potatoes with salt and fresh butter in them were fit for a woodland king—besides being deliciously satisfying. You could buy both potatoes and eggs and eat as many as you liked without feeling as if you were taking food out of the mouths of fourteen people.

Every beautiful morning the Magic was worked by the mystic circle under the plum tree which provided a canopy of thickening green leaves after its brief blossom-time was ended. After the ceremony Colin always took his walking exercise and throughout the day he exercised his newly found power at intervals. Each day he grew stronger and could walk more steadily and cover more ground. And each day his belief in the Magic grew stronger—as well it might. He tried one experiment after another as he felt himself gaining strength and it was Dickon who showed him the best things of all.

“Yesterday,” he said one morning after an absence, “I went to Thwaite for Mother an’ near th’ Blue Cow Inn I seed Bob Haworth. He’s the strongest chap on th’ moor. He’s the champion wrestler an’ he can jump higher than any other chap an’ throw th’ hammer farther. He’s gone all th’ way to Scotland for th’ sports some years. He’s knowed me ever since I was a little ‘un an’ he’s a friendly sort an’ I axed him some questions. Th’ gentry calls him a athlete and I thought o’ thee, Mester Colin, and I says, ‘How did tha’ make tha’ muscles stick out that way, Bob? Did tha’ do anythin’ extra to make thysel’ so strong?’ An’ he says, ‘Well, yes, lad, I did. A strong man in a show that came to Thwaite once showed me how to exercise my arms an’ legs an’ every muscle in my body.’ An’ I says, ‘Could a delicate chap make himself stronger with ’em, Bob?’ an’ he laughed an’ says, ‘Art tha’ th’ delicate chap?’ an’ I says, ‘No, but I knows a young gentleman that’s gettin’ well of a long illness an’ I wish I knowed some o’ them tricks to tell him about.’ I didn’t say no names an’ he didn’t ask none. He’s friendly same as I said, an’ he stood up an’ showed me good-natured like, an’ I imitated what he did till I knowed it by heart.”

Colin had been listening excitedly.

“Can you show me?” he cried. “Will you?”

“Aye, to be sure,” Dickon answered, getting up. “But he says tha’ mun do ’em gentle at first an’ be careful not to tire thysel’. Rest in between times an’ take deep breaths an’ don’t overdo.”

“I’ll be careful,” said Colin. “Show me! Show me! Dickon, you are the most Magic boy in the world!”

Dickon stood up on the grass and slowly went through a carefully practical but simple series of muscle exercises. Colin watched them with widening eyes. He could do a few while he was sitting down. Presently he did a few gently while he stood upon his already steadied feet. Mary began to do them also. Soot, who was watching the performance, became much disturbed and left his branch and hopped about restlessly because he could not do them too.

From that time the exercises were part of the day’s duties as much as the Magic was. It became possible for both Colin and Mary to do more of them each time they tried, and such appetites were the results that but for the basket Dickon put down behind the bush each morning when he arrived they would have been lost. But the little oven in the hollow and Mrs. Sowerby’s bounties were so satisfying that Mrs. Medlock and the nurse and Dr. Craven became mystified again. You can trifle with your breakfast and seem to disdain your dinner if you are full to the brim with roasted eggs and potatoes and richly frothed new milk and oat-cakes and buns and heather honey and clotted cream.

“They are eating next to nothing,” said the nurse. “They’ll die of starvation if they can’t be persuaded to take some nourishment. And yet see how they look.”

“Look!” exclaimed Mrs. Medlock indignantly. “Eh! I’m moithered to death with them. They’re a pair of young Satans. Bursting their jackets one day and the next turning up their noses at the best meals Cook can tempt them with. Not a mouthful of that lovely young fowl and bread sauce did they set a fork into yesterday—and the poor woman fair invented a pudding for them—and back it’s sent. She almost cried. She’s afraid she’ll be blamed if they starve themselves into their graves.”

Dr. Craven came and looked at Colin long and carefully. He wore an extremely worried expression when the nurse talked with him and showed him the almost untouched tray of breakfast she had saved for him to look at—but it was even more worried when he sat down by Colin’s sofa and examined him. He had been called to London on business and had not seen the boy for nearly two weeks. When young things begin to gain health they gain it rapidly. The waxen tinge had left Colin’s skin and a warm rose showed through it; his beautiful eyes were clear and the hollows under them and in his cheeks and temples had filled out. His once dark, heavy locks had begun to look as if they sprang healthily from his forehead and were soft and warm with life. His lips were fuller and of a normal colour. In fact, as an imitation of a boy who was a confirmed invalid he was a disgraceful sight. Dr. Craven held his chin in his hand and thought him over.

“I am sorry to hear that you do not eat anything,” he said. “That will not do. You will lose all you have gained—and you have gained amazingly. You ate so well a short time ago.”

“I told you it was an unnatural appetite,” answered Colin.

Mary was sitting on her stool nearby and she suddenly made a very queer sound which she tried so violently to repress that she ended by almost choking.

“What is the matter?” said Dr. Craven, turning to look at her.

Mary became quite severe in her manner.

“It was something between a sneeze and a cough,” she replied with reproachful dignity, “and it got into my throat.”

“But,” she said afterwards to Colin, “I couldn’t stop myself. It just burst out because all at once I couldn’t help remembering that last big potato you ate and the way your mouth stretched when you bit through that thick lovely crust with jam and clotted cream on it.”

“Is there any way in which those children can get food secretly?” Dr. Craven inquired of Mrs. Medlock.

“There’s no way unless they dig it out of the earth or pick it off the trees,” Mrs. Medlock answered. “They stay out in the grounds all day and see no one but each other. And if they want anything different to eat from what’s sent up to them they need only ask for it.”

“Well,” said Dr. Craven, “so long as going without food agrees with them we need not disturb ourselves. The boy is a new creature.”

“So is the girl,” said Mrs. Medlock. “She’s begun to be downright pretty since she’s filled out and lost her ugly little sour look. Her hair’s grown thick and healthy looking and she’s got a bright colour. The glummest, ill-natured little thing she used to be and now her and Master Colin laugh together like a pair of crazy young ones. Perhaps they’re growing fat on that.”

“Perhaps they are,” said Dr. Craven. “Let them laugh.”

25

The Curtain

AND THE SECRET GARDEN BLOOMED AND BLOOMED AND EVERY morning revealed new miracles. In the robin’s nest there were Eggs and the robin’s mate sat upon them, keeping them warm with her feathery little breast and careful wings. At first she was very nervous and the robin himself was indignantly watchful. Even Dickon did not go near the close-grown corner in those days, but waited until by the quiet working of some mysterious spell he seemed to have conveyed to the soul of the little pair that in the garden there was nothing which was not quite like themselves—nothing which did not understand the wonderfulness of what was happening to them—the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking beauty and solemnity of Eggs. If there had been one person in that garden who had not known through all his or her innermost being that if an Egg were taken away or hurt the whole world would whirl round and crash through space and come to an end—if there had been even one who did not feel it and act accordingly there could have been no happiness even in that golden springtime air. But they all knew it and felt it and the robin and his mate knew they knew it.

At first the robin watched Mary and Colin with sharp anxiety. For some mysterious reason he knew he need not watch Dickon. The first moment he set his dew-bright black eye on Dickon he knew he was not a stranger but a sort of robin without beak or feathers. He could speak robin (which is a quite distinct language not to be mistaken for any other). To speak robin to a robin is like speaking French to a Frenchman. Dickon always spoke it to the robin himself, so the queer gibberish he used when he spoke to humans did not matter in the least. The robin thought he spoke this gibberish to them because they were not intelligent enough to understand feathered speech. His movements also were robin. They never startled one by being sudden enough to seem dangerous or threatening. Any robin could understand Dickon, so his presence was not even disturbing.

But at the outset it seemed necessary to be on guard against the other two. In the first place the boy creature did not come into the garden on his legs. He was pushed in on a thing with wheels and the skins of wild animals were thrown over him. That in itself was doubtful. Then when he began to stand up and move about he did it in a queer unaccustomed way and the others seemed to have to help him. The robin used to secrete himself in a bush and watch this anxiously, his head tilted first on one side and then on the other. He thought that the slow movements might mean that he was preparing to pounce, as cats do. When cats are preparing to pounce they creep over the ground very slowly. The robin talked this over with his mate a great deal for a few days but after that he decided not to speak of the subject because her terror was so great that he was afraid it might be injurious to the eggs.

When the boy began to walk by himself and even to move more quickly it was an immense relief. But for a long time—or it seemed a long time to the robin—he was a source of some anxiety. He did not act as the other humans did. He seemed very fond of walking but he had a way of sitting or lying down for a while and then getting up in a disconcerting manner to begin again.

One day the robin remembered that when he himself had been made to learn to fly by his parents he had done much the same sort of thing. He had taken short flights of a few yards and then had been obliged to rest. So it occurred to him that this boy was learning to fly—or rather to walk. He mentioned this to his mate and when he told her that the Eggs would probably conduct themselves in the same way after they were fledged she was quite comforted and even became eagerly interested and derived great pleasure from watching the boy over the edge of her nest—though she always thought that the Eggs would be much cleverer and learn more quickly. But then she said indulgently that humans were always more clumsy and slow than Eggs and most of them never seemed really to learn to fly at all. You never met them in the air or on tree-tops.

After a while the boy began to move about as the others did, but all three of the children at times did unusual things. They would stand under the trees and move their arms and legs and heads about in a way which was neither walking nor running nor sitting down. They went through these movements at intervals every day and the robin was never able to explain to his mate what they were doing or trying to do. He could only say that he was sure that the Eggs would never flap about in such a manner; but as the boy who could speak robin so fluently was doing the thing with them, birds could be quite sure that the actions were not of a dangerous nature. Of course neither the robin nor his mate had ever heard of the champion wrestler, Bob Haworth, and his exercises for making the muscles stand out like lumps. Robins are not like human beings; their muscles are always exercised from the first and so they develop themselves in a natural manner. If you have to fly about to find every meal you eat, your muscles do not become atrophied (atrophied means wasted away through want of use).

When the boy was walking and running about and digging and weeding like the others, the nest in the corner was brooded over by a great peace and content. Fears for the Eggs became things of the past. Knowing that your Eggs were as safe as if they were locked in a bank vault and the fact that you could watch so many curious things going on made sitting a most entertaining occupation. On wet days the Eggs’ mother sometimes felt even a little dull because the children did not come into the garden.

But even on wet days it could not be said that Mary and Colin were dull. One morning when the rain streamed down unceasingly and Colin was beginning to feel a little restive, as he was obliged to remain on his sofa because it was not safe to get up and walk about, Mary had an inspiration.

“Now that I am a real boy,” Colin had said, “my legs and arms and all my body are so full of Magic that I can’t keep them still. They want to be doing things all the time. Do you know that when I waken in the morning, Mary, when it’s quite early and the birds are just shouting outside and everything seems just shouting for joy—even the trees and things we can’t really hear—I feel as if I must jump out of bed and shout myself. And if I did, just think what would happen!”

Mary giggled inordinately.

“The nurse would come running and Mrs. Medlock would come running and they would be sure you had gone crazy and they’d send for the doctor,” she said.

Colin giggled himself. He could see how they would all look—how horrified by his outbreak and how amazed to see him standing upright.

“I wish my father would come home,” he said. “I want to tell him myself. I’m always thinking about it—but we couldn’t go on like this much longer. I can’t stand lying still and pretending, and besides I look too different. I wish it wasn’t raining today.”

It was then Mistress Mary had her inspiration.

“Colin,” she began mysteriously, “do you know how many rooms there are in this house?”

“About a thousand, I suppose,” he answered.

“There’s about a hundred no one ever goes into,” said Mary. “And one rainy day I went and looked into ever so many of them. No one ever knew, though Mrs. Medlock nearly found me out. I lost my way when I was coming back and I stopped at the end of your corridor. That was the second time I heard you crying.”

Colin started up on his sofa.

“A hundred rooms no one goes into,” he said. “It sounds almost like a secret garden. Suppose we go and look at them. You could wheel me in my chair and nobody would know where we went.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” said Mary. “No one would dare to follow us. There are galleries where you could run. We could do our exercises. There is a little Indian room where there is a cabinet full of ivory elephants. There are all sorts of rooms.”

“Ring the bell,” said Colin.

When the nurse came in he gave his orders.

“I want my chair,” he said. “Miss Mary and I are going to look at the part of the house which is not used. John can push me as far as the picture-gallery because there are some stairs. Then he must go away and leave us alone until I send for him again.”

Rainy days lost their terrors that morning. When the footman had wheeled the chair into the picture-gallery and left the two together in obedience to orders, Colin and Mary looked at each other delighted. As soon as Mary had made sure that John was really on his way back to his own quarters below stairs, Colin got out of his chair.

“I am going to run from one end of the gallery to the other,” he said, “and then I am going to jump and then we will do Bob Haworth’s exercises.”

And they did all these things and many others. They looked at the portraits and found the plain little girl dressed in green brocade and holding the parrot on her finger.

“All these,” said Colin, “must be my relations. They lived a long time ago. That parrot one, I believe, is one of my great, great, great, great-aunts. She looks rather like you, Mary—not as you look now but as you looked when you came here. Now you are a great deal fatter and better-looking.”

“So are you,” said Mary, and they both laughed.

They went to the Indian room and amused themselves with the ivory elephants. They found the rose-coloured brocade boudoir and the hole in the cushion the mouse had left, but the mice had grown up and run away and the hole was empty. They saw more rooms and made more discoveries than Mary had made on her first pilgrimage. They found new corridors and corners and flights of steps and new old pictures they liked and weird old things they did not know the use of It was a curiously entertaining morning and the feeling of wandering about in the same house with other people but at the same time feeling as if one were miles away from them was a fascinating thing.

“I’m glad we came,” Colin said. “I never knew I lived in such a big queer old place. I like it. We will ramble about every rainy day. We shall always be finding new queer corners and things.”

That morning they had found among other things such good appetites that when they returned to Colin’s room it was not possible to send the luncheon away untouched.

When the nurse carried the tray downstairs she slapped it down on the kitchen dresser so that Mrs. Loomis, the cook, could see the highly polished dishes and plates.

“Look at that!” she said. “This is a house of mystery, and those two children are the greatest mysteries in it.”

“If they keep that up every day,” said the strong young footman John, “there’d be small wonder that he weighs twice as much today as he did a month ago. I should have to give up my place in time, for fear of doing my muscles an injury.”

That afternoon Mary noticed that something new had happened in Colin’s room. She had noticed it the day before but had said nothing because she thought the change might have been made by chance. She said nothing today but she sat and looked fixedly at the picture over the mantel. She could look at it because the curtain had been drawn aside. That was the change she noticed.

“I know what you want me to tell you,” said Colin, after she had stared a few minutes. “I always know when you want me to tell you something. You are wondering why the curtain is drawn back. I am going to keep it like that.”

“Why?” asked Mary.

“Because it doesn’t make me angry any more to see her laughing. I wakened when it was bright moonlight two nights ago and felt as if the Magic was filling the room and making everything so splendid that I couldn’t lie still. I got up and looked out of the window. The room was quite light and there was a patch of moonlight on the curtain and somehow that made me go and pull the cord. She looked right down at me as if she were laughing because she was glad I was standing there. It made me like to look at her. I want to see her laughing like that all the time. I think she must have been a sort of Magic person perhaps.”

“You are so like her now,” said Mary, “that sometimes I think perhaps you are her ghost made into a boy.”

That idea seemed to impress Colin. He thought it over and then answered her slowly.

“If I were her ghost—my father would be fond of me,” he said.

“Do you want him to be fond of you?” inquired Mary.

“I used to hate it because he was not fond of me. If he grew fond of me I think I should tell him about the Magic. It might make him more cheerful.”

26

“It’s Mother!”

THEIR BELIEF IN THE MAGIC WAS AN ABIDING THING. AFTER the morning’s incantations Colin sometimes gave them Magic lectures.

“I like to do it,” he explained, “because when I grow up and make great scientific discoveries I shall be obliged to lecture about them, and so this is practice. I can only give short lectures now because I am very young, and, besides, Ben Weatherstaff would feel as if he was in church and he would go to sleep.”

“Th’ best thing about lecturin’,” said Ben, “is that a chap can get up an’ say aught he pleases an’ no other chap can answer him back. I wouldn’t be agin’ lecturin’ a bit mysel’ sometimes.”

But when Colin held forth under his tree old Ben fixed devouring eyes on him and kept them there. He looked him over with critical affection. It was not so much the lecture which interested him as the legs which looked straighter and stronger each day, the boyish head which held itself up so well, the once sharp chin and hollow cheeks which had filled and rounded out and the eyes which had begun to hold the light he remembered in another pair. Sometimes when Colin felt Ben’s earnest gaze meant he was much impressed he wondered what he was reflecting on, and once, when he had seemed quite entranced, he questioned him.

“What are you thinking about, Ben Weatherstaff?” he asked.

“I was thinkin’,” answered Ben, “as I’d warrant tha’s gone up three or four pound this week. I was lookin’ at tha’ calves an’ tha’ shoulders. I’d like to get thee on a pair o’ scales.”

“It’s the Magic and—and Mrs. Sowerby’s buns and milk and things,” said Colin. “You see the scientific experiment has succeeded.”

That morning Dickon was too late to hear the lecture. When he came he was ruddy with running and his funny face looked more twinkling than usual. As they had a good deal of weeding to do after the rains they fell to work. They always had plenty to do after a warm deep sinking rain. The moisture which was good for the flowers was also good for the weeds, which thrust up tiny blades of grass and points of leaves which must be pulled up before their roots took too firm hold. Colin was as good at weeding as anyone in these days, and he could lecture while he was doing it.

“The Magic works best when you work yourself,” he said this morning. “You can feel it in your bones and muscles. I am going to read books about bones and muscles, but I am going to write a book about Magic. I am making it up now. I keep finding out things.”

It was not very long after he had said this that he laid down his trowel and stood up on his feet. He had been silent for several minutes, and they had seen that he was thinking out lectures, as he often did. When he dropped his trowel and stood upright it seemed to Mary and Dickon as if a sudden strong thought had made him do it. He stretched himself out to his tallest height and he threw out his arms exultantly. Colour glowed in his face and his strange eyes widened with joyfulness. All at once he had realized something to the full.

“Mary! Dickon!” he cried. “Just look at me!”

They stopped their weeding and looked at him.

“Do you remember that first morning you brought me in here?” he demanded.

Dickon was looking at him very hard. Being an animal charmer, he could see more things than most people could, and many of them were things he never talked about. He saw some of them now in this boy.

“Aye, that we do,” he answered.

Mary looked hard too, but she said nothing.

“Just this minute,” said Colin, “all at once I remembered it myself—when I looked at my hand digging with the trowel—and I had to stand up on my feet to see if it was real. And it is real! I’m well—I’m well!”

“Aye, that th’ art!” said Dickon.

“I’m well! I’m well!” said Colin again, and his face went quite red all over.

He had known it before in a way, he had hoped it and felt it and thought about it, but just at that minute something had rushed all through him—a sort of rapturous belief and realization, and it had been so strong that he could not help calling out.

“I shall live for ever and ever and ever!” he cried grandly. “I shall find out thousands and thousands of things. I shall find out about people and creatures and everything that grows—like Dickon—and I shall never stop making Magic. I’m well! I’m well! I feel—I feel as if I want to shout out something—something thankful, joyful!”

Ben Weatherstaff, who had been working near a rose bush, glanced round at him.

“Tha’ might sing th’ Doxology,” he suggested in his dryest grunt. He had no opinion of the Doxology, and he did not make the suggestion with any particular reverence.

But Colin was of an exploring mind and he knew nothing about the Doxology.

“What is that?” he inquired.

“Dickon can sing it for thee, I’ll warrant,” replied Ben Weatherstaff.

Dickon answered with his all-perceiving animal charmer’s smile.

“They sing it i’ church,” he said. “Mother says she believes th’ skylarks sings it when they gets up i’ th’ mornin’.”

“If she says that, it must be a nice song,” Colin answered. “I’ve never been in a church myself. I was always too ill. Sing it, Dickon. I want to hear it.”

Dickon was quite simple and unaffected about it. He understood what Colin felt better than Colin did himself. He understood by a sort of instinct so natural that he did not know it was understanding. He pulled off his cap and looked round still smiling.

“Tha’ must take off tha’ cap,” he said to Colin, “an’ so mun tha’, Ben—an’ tha’ mun stand up, tha’ knows.”

Colin took off his cap and the sun shone on and warmed his thick hair as he watched Dickon intently. Ben Weatherstaff scrambled up from his knees and bared his head, too, with a sort of puzzled half-resentful look on his old face, as if he didn’t know exactly why he was doing this remarkable thing.

Dickon stood out among the trees and rose bushes and began to sing in quite a simple, matter-of-fact way, and in a nice strong boy voice:

“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below,
Praise Him above, ye Heavenly Host,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Amen.”

When he had finished, Ben Weatherstaff was standing quite still with his jaws set obstinately but with a disturbed look in his eyes, fixed on Colin. Colin’s face was thoughtful and appreciative.

“It is a very nice song,” he said. “I like it. Perhaps it means just what I mean when I want to shout out that I am thankful to the Magic.” He stopped and thought in a puzzled way. “Perhaps they are both the same thing. How can we know the exact names of everything? Sing it again, Dickon. Let us try, Mary. I want to sing it, too. It’s my song. How does it begin? ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow’?”

And they sang it again, and Mary and Colin lifted their voices as musically as they could, and Dickon’s swelled quite loud and beautiful—and at the second line Ben Weatherstaff raspingly cleared his throat, and at the third line he joined in with such vigour that it seemed almost savage, and when the “Amen” came to an end Mary observed that the very same thing had happened to him which had happened when he found out that Colin was not a cripple—his chin was twitching and he was staring and winking, and his leathery old cheeks were wet.

“I never seed no sense in th’ Doxology afore,” he said hoarsely, “but I may change my mind i’ time. I should say tha’d gone up five pound this week, Mester Colin—five on ’em!”

Colin was looking across the garden at something attracting his attention, and his expression had become a startled one.

“Who is coming in here?” he said quickly. “Who is it?”

The door in the ivied wall had been pushed gently open and a woman had entered. She had come in with the last line of their song and she had stood still listening and looking at them. With the ivy behind her, the sunlight drifting through the trees and dappling her long blue cloak, and her nice fresh face smiling across the greenery, she was rather like a softly coloured illustration in one of Colin’s books. She had wonderful affectionate eyes which seemed to take everything in—all of them, even Ben Weatherstaff and the “creatures” and every flower that was in bloom. Unexpectedly as she had appeared, not one of them felt that she was an intruder at all. Dickon’s eyes lighted like lamps.

“It’s Mother—that’s who it is!” he cried, and he went across the grass at a run.

Colin began to move toward her, too, and Mary went with him. They both felt their pulses beat faster.

“It’s Mother!” Dickon said again when they met half-way. “I knowed tha’ wanted to see her an’ I told her where th’ door was hid.”

Colin held out his hand with a sort of flushed royal shyness but his eyes quite devoured her face.

“Even when I was ill I wanted to see you,” he said, “you and Dickon and the secret garden. I’d never wanted to see anyone or anything before.”

The sight of his uplifted face brought about a sudden change in her own. She flushed and the corners of her mouth shook and a mist seemed to sweep over her eyes.

“Eh! dear lad!” she broke out tremulously. “Eh! dear lad!” as if she had not known she were going to say it. She did not say, “Mester Colin,” but just “dear lad” quite suddenly. She might have said it to Dickon in the same way if she had seen something in his face which touched her. Colin liked it.

“Are you surprised because I am so well?” he asked.

She put her hand on his shoulder and smiled the mist out of her eyes.

“Aye, that I am!” she said; “but tha‘rt so like thy mother tha’ made my heart jump.”

“Do you think,” said Colin a little awkwardly, “that will make my father like me?”

“Aye, for sure, dear lad,” she answered, and she gave his shoulder a soft quick pat. “He mun come home—he mun come home.”

“Susan Sowerby,” said Ben Weatherstaff, getting close to her. “Look at th’ lad’s legs, wilt tha’? They was like drumsticks i’ stockin’ two month’ ago—an’ I heard folk tell as they was bandy an’ knock-kneed both at th’ same time. Look at ’em now!”

Susan Sowerby laughed a comfortable laugh.

“They’re goin’ to be fine strong lad’s legs in a bit,” she said. “Let him go on playin’, an’ workin’ in th’ garden an’ eatin’ hearty an’ drinkin’ plenty o’ good sweet milk an’ there’ll not be a finer pair i’ Yorkshire, thank God for it.”

She put both hands on Mistress Mary’s shoulders and looked her little face over in a motherly fashion.

“An’ thee, too!” she said. “Tha’rt grown near as hearty as our ‘Lizabeth Ellen. I’ll warrant tha’rt like thy mother too. Our Martha told me as Mrs. Medlock heard she was a pretty woman. Tha‘lt be like a blush rose when tha’ grows up, my little lass, bless thee.”

She did not mention that when Martha came home on her “day out” and described the plain sallow child she had said that she had no confidence whatever in what Mrs. Medlock had heard. “It doesn’t stand to reason that a pretty woman could be th’ mother o’ such a fou’ little lass,” she had added obstinately.

Mary had not had time to pay much attention to her changing face. She had only known that she looked “different” and seemed to have a great deal more hair and that it was growing very fast. But remembering her pleasure in looking at the Mem Sahib in the past, she was glad to hear that she might some day look like her.

Susan Sowerby went round their garden with them and was told the whole story of it and shown every bush and tree which had come alive. Colin walked on one side of her and Mary on the other. Each of them kept looking up at her comfortable rosy face, secretly curious about the delightful feeling she gave them—a sort of warm, supported feeling. It seemed as if she understood them as Dickon understood his “creatures.” She stooped over the flowers and talked about them as if they were children. Soot followed her and once or twice cawed at her and flew upon her shoulder as if it were Dickon’s. When they told her about the robin and the first flight of the young ones she laughed a motherly little mellow laugh in her throat.

“I suppose learnin’ ‘em to fly is like learnin’ children to walk, but I’m feared I should be all in a worrit if mine had wings instead o’ legs,” she said.

It was because she seemed such a wonderful woman in her nice moorland cottage way that at last she was told about the Magic.

“Do you believe in Magic?” asked Colin after he had explained about Indian fakirs. “I do hope you do.”

“That I do, lad,” she answered. “I never knowed it by that name but what does th’ name matter? I warrant they call it a different name i’ France an’ a different one i’ Germany. Th’ same thing as set th’ seeds swellin’ an’ th’ sun shinin’ made thee a well lad an it’s th’ Good Thing. It isn’t like us poor fools as think it matters if us is called out of our names. Th’ Big Good Thing doesn’t stop to worrit, bless thee. It goes on makin’ worlds by th’ million—worlds like us. Never thee stop believin’ in th’ Big Good Thing an’ knowin’ th’ world’s full of it—an’ call it what tha’ likes. Tha’ wert singin’ to it when I come into th’ garden.”

“I felt so joyful,” said Colin, opening his beautiful strange eyes at her. “Suddenly I felt how different I was—how strong my arms and legs were, you know—and how I could dig and stand—and I jumped up and wanted to shout out something to anything that would listen.”

“Th’ Magic listened when tha’ sung th’ Doxology. It would ha’ listened to anything tha’d sung. It was th’ joy that mattered. Eh! lad, lad—what’s names to th’ Joy Maker,” and she gave his shoulders a quick soft pat again.

She had packed a basket which held a regular feast this morning, and when the hungry hour came and Dickon brought it out from its hiding-place, she sat down with them under their tree and watched them devour their food, laughing and quite gloating over their appetites. She was full of fun and made them laugh at all sorts of odd things. She told them stories in broad Yorkshire and taught them new words. She laughed as if she could not help it when they told her of the increasing difficulty there was in pretending that Colin was still a fretful invalid.

“You see we can’t help laughing nearly all the time when we are together,” explained Colin. “And it doesn’t sound ill at all. We try to choke it back but it will burst out and that sounds worse than ever.”

“There’s one thing that comes into my mind so often,” said Mary, “and I can scarcely ever hold in when I think of it suddenly. I keep thinking suppose Colin’s face should get to look like a full moon. It isn’t like one yet but he gets a tiny bit fatter every day—and suppose some morning it should look like one—what should we do!”

“Bless us all, I can see tha’ has a good bit o’ play actin’ to do,” said Susan Sowerby. “But tha’ won’t have to keep it up much longer. Mester Craven’ll come home.”

“Do you think he will?” asked Colin. “Why?”

Susan Sowerby chuckled softly.

“I suppose it ‘ud nigh break thy heart if he found out before tha’ told him in tha’ own way,” she said. “Tha’s laid awake nights plannin’ it.”

“I couldn’t bear anyone else to tell him,” said Colin. “I think about different ways every day. I think now I just want to run into his room.”

“That’d be a fine start for him,” said Susan Sowerby. “I’d like to see his face, lad. I would that! He mun come back—that he mun.”

One of the things they talked of was the visit they were to make to her cottage. They planned it all. They were to drive over the moor and lunch out of doors among the heather. They would see all the twelve children and Dickon’s garden and would not come back until they were tired.

Susan Sowerby got up at last to return to the house and Mrs. Medlock. It was time for Colin to be wheeled back also. But before he got into his chair he stood quite close to Susan and fixed his eyes on her with a kind of bewildered adoration and he suddenly caught hold of the fold of her blue cloak and held it fast.

“You were just what I—what I wanted,” he said. “I wish you were my mother—as well as Dickon’s!”

All at once Susan Sowerby bent down and drew him with her warm arms close against the bosom under the blue cloak—as if he had been Dickon’s brother. The quick mist swept over her eyes.

“Eh! dear lad!” she said. “Thy own mother’s in this ‘ere very garden, I do believe. She couldna’ keep out of it. Thy father mun come back to thee—he mun!”

27

In The Garden

IN EACH CENTURY SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any century before. In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done—then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.

So long as Mistress Mary’s mind was full of disagreeable thoughts about her dislikes and sour opinions of people and her determination not to be pleased by or interested in anything, she was a yellow-faced, sickly, bored and wretched child. Circumstances, however, were very kind to her, though she was not at all aware of it. They began to push her about for her own good. When her mind gradually filled itself with robins, and moorland cottages crowded with children, with queer crabbed old gardeners and common little Yorkshire housemaids, with springtime and with secret gardens coming alive day by day, and also with a moor boy and his “creatures,” there was no room left for the disagreeable thoughts which affected her liver and her digestion and made her yellow and tired.

So long as Colin shut himself up in his room and thought only of his fears and weakness and his detestation of people who looked at him and reflected hourly on humps and early death, he was a hysterical, half-crazy little hypochondriac who knew nothing of the sunshine and the spring, and also did not know that he could get well and could stand upon his feet if he tried to do it. When new beautiful thoughts began to push out the old hideous ones, life began to come back to him, his blood ran healthily through his veins and strength poured into him like a flood. His scientific experiment was quite practical and simple and there was nothing weird about it at all. Much more surprising things can happen to anyone who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable, determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.

“Where you tend a rose, my lad,
A thistle cannot grow.”

While the secret garden was coming alive and two children were coming alive with it, there was a man wandering about certain far-away beautiful places in the Norwegian fiords, and the valleys and mountains of Switzerland, and he was a man who for ten years had kept his mind filled with dark and heart-broken thinking. He had not been courageous; he had never tried to put any other thoughts in the place of the dark ones. He had wandered by blue lakes and thought them; he had lain on mountainsides with sheets of deep blue gentians blooming all about him and flower breaths filling all the air and he had thought them. A terrible sorrow had fallen upon him when he had been happy and he had let his soul fill itself with blackness and had refused obstinately to allow any rift of light to pierce through. He had forgotten and deserted his home and his duties. When he travelled about, darkness so brooded over him that the sight of him was a wrong done to other people because it was as if he poisoned the air about him with gloom. Most strangers thought he must be either half mad or a man with some hidden crime on his soul. He was a tall man with a drawn face and crooked shoulders, and the name he always entered on hotel registers was “Archibald Craven, Misselthwaite Manor, Yorkshire, England.”

He had travelled far and wide since the day he saw Mistress Mary in his study and told her she might have her “bit of earth.” He had been in the most beautiful places in Europe, though he had remained nowhere more than a few days. He had chosen the quietest and remotest spots. He had been on the tops of mountains whose heads were in the clouds and had looked down on other mountains when the sun rose and touched them with such light as made it seem as if the world were just being born.

But the light had never seemed to touch himself until one day when he realized that for the first time in ten years a strange thing had happened. He was in a wonderful valley in the Austrian Tyrol and he had been walking alone through such beauty as might have lifted any man’s soul out of shadow. He had walked a long way and it had not lifted his. But at last he had felt tired and had thrown himself down to rest on a carpet of moss by a stream. It was a clear little stream which ran quite merrily along on its narrow way through the luscious damp greenness. Sometimes it made a sound rather like very low laughter as it bubbled over and round stones. He saw birds come and dip their heads to drink in it and then flick their wings and fly away. It seemed like a thing alive and yet its tiny voice made the stillness seem deeper. The valley was very, very still.

As he sat gazing into the clear running of the water, Archibald Craven gradually felt his mind and body both grow quiet, as quiet as the valley itself. He wondered if he were going to sleep, but he was not. He sat and gazed at the sunlit water and his eyes began to see things growing at its edge. There was one lovely mass of blue forget-me-nots growing so close to the stream that its leaves were wet and at these he found himself looking as he remembered he had looked at such things years ago. He was actually thinking tenderly how lovely it was and what wonders of blue its hundreds of little blossoms were. He did not know that just that simple thought was slowly filling his mind—filling and filling it until other things were softly pushed aside. It was as if a sweet clear spring had begun to rise in a stagnant pool and had risen and risen until at last it swept the dark water away. But of course he did not think of this himself. He only knew that the valley seemed to grow quieter and quieter as he sat and stared at the bright delicate blueness. He did not know how long he sat there or what was happening to him, but at last he moved as if he were awakening and he got up slowly and stood on the moss carpet, drawing a long, deep, soft breath and wondering at himself. Something seemed to have been unbound and released in him, very quietly.

“What is it?” he said, almost in a whisper, and he passed his hand over his forehead. “I almost feel as if—I were alive!”

I do not know enough about the wonderfulness of undiscovered things to be able to explain how this happened to him. Neither does anyone else yet. He did not understand at all himself—but he remembered this strange hour months afterward when he was at Misselthwaite again and he found out quite by accident that on this very day Colin had cried out as he went into the secret garden:

“I am going to live for ever and ever and ever!”

The singular calmness remained with him the rest of the evening, and he slept a new reposeful sleep; but it was not with him very long. He did not know that it could be kept. By the next night he had opened the doors wide to his dark thoughts, and they had come trooping and rushing back. He left the valley and went on his wandering way again. But, strange as it seemed to him, there were minutes—sometimes half-hours—when, without his knowing why, the black burden seemed to lift itself again and he knew he was a living man and not a dead one. Slowly—slowly—for no reason that he knew of—he was “coming alive” with the garden.

As the golden summer changed into the deeper golden autumn he went to the Lake of Como. There he found the loveliness of a dream. He spent his days upon the crystal blueness of the lake or he walked back into the soft thick verdure of the hills and tramped until he was tired so that he might sleep. But by this time he had begun to sleep better, he knew, and his dreams had ceased to be a terror to him.

“Perhaps,” he thought, “my body is growing stronger.”

It was growing stronger but—because of the rare peaceful hours when his thoughts were changed—his soul was slowly growing stronger, too. He began to think of Misselthwaite and wonder if he should not go home. Now and then he wondered vaguely about his boy and asked himself what he should feel when he went and stood by the carved four-posted bed again and looked down at the sharply chiselled ivory-white face while it slept and the black lashes rimmed so startlingly the close-shut eyes. He shrank from it.

One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned the moon was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and silver. The stillness of lake and shore and wood was so wonderful that he did not go into the villa he lived in. He walked down to a little bowered terrace at the water’s edge and sat upon a seat and breathed in all the heavenly scents of the night. He felt the strange calmness stealing over him and it grew deeper and deeper until he fell asleep.

He did not know when he fell asleep and when he began to dream; his dream was so real that he did not feel as if he were dreaming. He remembered afterward how intensely wide awake and alert he had thought he was. He thought that as he sat and breathed in the scent of the late roses and listened to the lapping of the water at his feet he heard a voice calling. It was sweet and clear and happy and far away. It seemed very far, but he heard it as distinctly as if it had been at his very side.

“Archie! Archie! Archie!” it said, and then again, sweeter and clearer than before, “Archie! Archie!”

He thought he sprang to his feet not even startled.

It was such a real voice and it seemed so natural that he should hear it.

“Lilias! Lilias!” he answered. “Lilias! where are you?”

“In the garden,” it came back like a sound from a golden flute. “In the garden!”

And then the dream ended. But he did not awaken. He slept soundly and sweetly all through the lovely night. When he did awake at last it was brilliant morning and a servant was standing staring at him. He was an Italian servant and was accustomed, as all the servants of the villa were, to accepting without question any strange thing his foreign master might do. No one ever knew when he would go out or come in or where he would choose to sleep or if he would roam about the garden or lie in the boat on the lake all night. The man held a salver with some letters on it and he waited quietly until Mr. Craven took them. When he had gone away Mr. Craven sat a few moments holding them in his hand and looking at the lake. His strange calm was still upon him and something more—a lightness as if the cruel thing which had been done had not happened as he thought—as if something had changed. He was remembering the dream—the real—real dream.

“In the garden!” he said, wondering at himself. “In the garden! But the door is locked and the key is buried deep.”

When he glanced at the letters a few minutes later he saw that the one lying at the top of the rest was an English letter and came from Yorkshire. It was directed in a plain woman’s hand but it was not a hand he knew. He opened it, scarcely thinking of the writer, but the first words attracted his attention at once.

Dear Sir:

I am Susan Sowerby that made bold to speak to you once on the moor. It was about Miss Mary I spoke. I will make bold to speak again. Please, sir, I would come home if I was you. I think you would be glad to come and—if you will excuse me, sir—I think your lady would ask you to come if she was here.

Your obedient servant,
Susan Sowerby

Mr. Craven read the letter twice before he put it back in its envelope. He kept thinking about the dream.

“I will go back to Misselthwaite,” he said. “Yes, I’ll go at once.”

And he went through the garden to the villa and ordered Pitcher to prepare for his return to England.

In a few days he was in Yorkshire again, and on his long railroad journey he found himself thinking of his boy as he had never thought in all the ten years past. During those years he had only wished to forget him. Now, though he did not intend to think about him, memories of him constantly drifted into his mind. He remembered the black days when he had raved like a madman because the child was alive and the mother was dead. He had refused to see it, and when he had gone to look at it at last it had been such a weak wretched thing that everyone had been sure it would die in a few days. But to the surprise of those who took care of it the days passed and it lived and then everyone believed it would be a deformed and crippled creature.

He had not meant to be a bad father, but he had not felt like a father at all. He had supplied doctors and nurses and luxuries, but he had shrunk from the mere thought of the boy and had buried himself in his own misery. The first time after a year’s absence he returned to Misselthwaite and the small miserable-looking thing languidly and indifferently lifted to his face the great grey eyes with black lashes round them, so like and yet so horribly unlike the happy eyes he had adored, he could not bear the sight of them and turned away pale as death. After that he scarcely ever saw him except when he was asleep, and all he knew of him was that he was a confirmed invalid, with a vicious, hysterical, half-insane temper. He could only be kept from furies dangerous to himself by being given his own way in every detail.

All this was not an uplifting thing to recall, but as the train whirled him through mountain passes and golden plains the man who was “coming alive” began to think in a new way and he thought long and steadily and deeply.

“Perhaps I have been all wrong for ten years,” he said to himself. “Ten years is a long time. It may be too late to do anything—quite too late. What have I been thinking of!”

Of course this was the wrong Magic—to begin by saying “too late.” Even Colin could have told him that. But he knew nothing of Magic—either black or white. This he had yet to learn. He wondered if Susan Sowerby had taken courage and written to him only because the motherly creature had realized that the boy was much worse—was fatally ill. If he had not been under the spell of the curious calmness which had taken possession of him he would have been more wretched than ever. But the calm had brought a sort of courage and hope with it. Instead of giving way to thoughts of the worst he actually found he was trying to believe in better things.

“Could it be possible that she sees that I may be able to do him good and control him?” he thought. “I will go and see her on my way to Misselthwaite.”

But when on his way across the moor he stopped the carriage at the cottage, seven or eight children who were playing about gathered in a group and bobbing seven or eight friendly and polite curtsies told him that their mother had gone to the other side of the moor early in the morning to help a woman who had a new baby. “Our Dickon,” they volunteered, was over at the manor working in one of the gardens where he went several days each week.

Mr. Craven looked over the collection of sturdy little bodies and round red-cheeked faces, each one grinning in its own particular way, and he awoke to the fact that they were a healthy, likable lot. He smiled at their friendly grins, and took a golden sovereign from his pocket and gave it to “our ’Lizabeth Ellen,” who was the oldest.

“If you divide that into eight parts there will be half a crown for each of you,” he said.

Then amid grins and chuckles and bobbing of curtsies he drove away, leaving ecstasy and nudging elbows and little jumps of joy behind.

The drive across the wonderfulness of the moor was a soothing thing. Why did it seem to give him a sense of homecoming which he had been sure he could never feel again—that sense of the beauty of land and sky and purple bloom of distance, and a warming of the heart at drawing nearer to the great old house which had held those of his blood for six hundred years? How he had driven away from it the last time, shuddering to think of its closed rooms and the boy lying in the four-posted bed with the brocaded hangings. Was it possible that perhaps he might find him changed a little for the better, and that he might overcome his shrinking from him? How real that dream had been—how wonderful and clear the voice which called back to him, “In the garden—In the garden!”

“I will try to find the key,” he said. “I will try to open the door. I must—though I don’t know why.”

When he arrived at the manor the servants who received him with the usual ceremony, noticed that he looked better, and that he did not go to the remote rooms where he usually lived attended by Pitcher. He went into the library and sent for Mrs. Medlock. She came to him somewhat excited, and curious and flustered.

“How is Master Colin, Medlock?” he inquired.

“Well, sir,” Mrs. Medlock answered, “he’s—he’s different, in a manner of speaking.”

“Worse?” he suggested.

Mrs. Medlock really was flushed.

“Well, you see, sir,” she tried to explain, “neither Dr. Craven, nor the nurse, nor me can exactly make him out.”

“Why is that?”

“To tell the truth, sir, Master Colin might be better and he might be changing for the worse. His appetite, sir, is past understanding—and his ways—”

“Has he become more—more peculiar?” her master asked, knitting his brows anxiously.

“That’s it, sir. He’s growing very peculiar—when you compare him with what he used to be. He used to eat nothing, and then suddenly he began to eat something enormous—and then he stopped again all at once and the meals were sent back just as they used to be. You never knew, sir, perhaps, that out of doors he never would let himself be taken. The things we’ve gone through to get him to go out in his chair would leave a body trembling like a leaf. He’d throw himself into such a state that Dr. Craven said he couldn’t be responsible for forcing him. Well, sir, just without warning—not long after one of his worst tantrums, he suddenly insisted on being taken out every day by Miss Mary and Susan Sowerby’s boy Dickon that could push his chair. He took a fancy to both Miss Mary and Dickon, and Dickon brought his tame animals, and, if you’ll credit it, sir, out of doors he will stay from morning until night.”

“How does he look?” was the next question.

“If he took his food natural, sir, you’d think he was putting on flesh—but we’re afraid it may be a sort of bloat. He laughs sometimes in a queer way when he’s alone with Miss Mary. He never used to laugh at all. Dr. Craven is coming to see you at once, if you’ll allow him. He never was as puzzled in his life.”

“Where is Master Colin now?” Mr. Craven asked.

“In the garden, sir. He’s always in the garden—though not a human creature is allowed to go near for fear they’ll look at him.”

Mr. Craven scarely heard her last words.

“In the garden,” he said, and after he had sent Mrs. Medlock away he stood and repeated it again and again. “In the garden!”

He had to make an effort to bring himself back to the place he was standing in, and when he felt he was on earth again he turned and went out of the room. He took his way, as Mary had done, through the door in the shrubbery and among the laurels and the fountain beds. The fountain was playing now, and was encircled by beds of brilliant autumn flowers. He crossed the lawn and turned into the Long Walk by the ivied walls. He did not walk quickly, but slowly, and his eyes were on the path. He felt as if he were being drawn back to the place he had so long forsaken, and he did not know why. As he drew near to it his step became still more slow. He knew where the door was, even though the ivy hung thick over it—but he did not know exactly where it lay—that buried key.

So he stopped and stood still, looking about him, and almost the moment after he had paused he started and listened—asking himself if he were walking in a dream.

The ivy hung thick over the door, the key was buried under the shrubs, no human being had passed that portal for ten lonely years—and yet inside the garden there were sounds. They were the sounds of running, scuffling feet seeming to chase round and round under the trees, they were strange sounds of lowered suppressed voices—exclamations and smothered joyous cries. It seemed actually like the laughter of young things, the uncontrollable laughter of children who were trying not to be heard but who in a moment or so—as their excitement mounted—would burst forth. What in heaven’s name was he dreaming of—what in heaven’s name did he hear? Was he losing his reason and thinking he heard things which were not for human ears? Was it that the far clear voice had meant?

And then the moment came, the uncontrollable moment when the sounds forgot to hush themselves. The feet ran faster and faster—they were nearing the garden door—there was quick strong young breathing and a wild outbreak of laughing shouts which could not be contained—and the door in the wall was flung wide open, the sheet of ivy swinging back, and a boy burst through it at full speed and, without seeing the outsider, dashed almost into his arms.

Mr. Craven had extended them just in time to save him from falling as a result of his unseeing dash against him, and when he held him away to look at him in amazement at his being there he truly gasped for breath.

He was a tall boy and a handsome one. He was glowing with life, and his running had sent splendid colour leaping to his face. He threw the thick hair back from his forehead and lifted a pair of strange grey eyes—eyes full of boyish laughter and rimmed with black lashes like a fringe. It was the eyes which made Mr. Craven gasp for breath.

“Who—What? Who!” he stammered.

This was not what Colin had expected—this was not what he had planned. He had never thought of such a meeting. And yet to come dashing out—winning a race—perhaps it was even better. He drew himself up to his very tallest. Mary, who had been running with him and had dashed through the door too, believed that he managed to make himself look taller than he had ever looked before—inches taller.

“Father,” he said, “I’m Colin. You can’t believe it. I scarcely can myself. I’m Colin.”

Like Mrs. Medlock, he did not understand what his father meant when he said hurriedly:

“In the garden! In the garden!”

“Yes,” hurried on Colin. “It was the garden that did it—and Mary and Dickon and the creatures—and the Magic. No one knows. We kept it to tell you when you came. I’m well; I can beat Mary in a race. I’m going to be an athlete.”

He said it all so like a healthy boy—his face flushed, his words tumbling over each other in his eagerness—that Mr. Craven’s soul shook with unbelieving joy.

Colin put out his hand and laid it on his father’s arm.

“Aren’t you glad, Father?” he ended. “Aren’t you glad? I’m going to live for ever and ever and ever!”

Mr. Craven put his hands on both the boy’s shoulders and held him still. He knew he dared not even try to speak for a moment.

“Take me into the garden, my boy,” he said at last. “And tell me all about it.”

And so they led him in.

The place was a wilderness of autumn gold and purple and violet blue and flaming scarlet, and on every side were sheaves of late lilies standing together—lilies which were white or white and ruby. He remembered well when the first of them had been planted that just at this season of the year their late glories should reveal themselves. Late roses climbed and hung and clustered, and the sunshine deepening the hue of the yellowing trees made one feel that one stood in an embowered temple of gold. The newcomer stood silent just as the children had done when they came into its greyness. He looked round and round.

“I thought it would be dead,” he said.

“Mary thought so at first,” said Colin. “But it came alive.”

Then they sat down under their tree—all but Colin, who wanted to stand while he told the story.

It was the strangest thing he had ever heard, Archibald Craven thought, as it was poured forth in headlong boy fashion. Mystery and Magic and wild creatures, the weird midnight meeting—the coming of the spring—the passion of insulted pride which had dragged the young rajah to his feet to defy old Ben Weatherstaff to his face. The odd companionship, the play-acting, the great secret so carefully kept. The listener laughed until tears came into his eyes, and sometimes tears came into his eyes when he was not laughing. The Athlete, the Lecturer, the Scientific Discoverer was a laughable, lovable, healthy young human thing.

“Now,” he said at the end of the story, “it need not be a secret any more. I dare say it will frighten them nearly into fits when they see me—but I am never going to get into the chair again. I shall walk back with you, Father—to the house.”

Ben Weatherstaff’s duties rarely took him away from the gardens, but on this occasion he made an excuse to carry some vegetables to the kitchen, and being invited into the servants’ hall by Mrs. Medlock to drink a glass of beer, he was on the spot—as he had hoped to be—when the most dramatic event Misselthwaite Manor had seen during the present generation actually took place.

One of the windows looking upon the courtyard gave also a glimpse of the lawn. Mrs. Medlock, knowing Ben had come from the gardens, hoped that he might have caught sight of his master, and even by chance of his meeting with Master Colin.

“Did you see either of them, Weatherstaff?” she asked.

Ben took his beer-mug from his mouth and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

“Aye, that I did,” he answered with a shrewdly significant air.

“Both of them?” suggested Mrs. Medlock.

“Both of ‘em,” returned Ben Weatherstaff. “Thank ye kindly, ma’am, I could sup up another mug of it.”

“Together?” said Mrs. Medlock, hastily overfilling his beer-mug in her excitement.

“Together, ma’am,” and Ben gulped down half of his new mug at one gulp.

“Where was Master Colin? How did he look? What did they say to each other?”

“I didna’ hear that,” said Ben, “along o’ only bein’ on th’ stepladder lookin’ over th’ wall. But I’ll tell thee this. There’s been things goin’ on outside as you house people knows nowt about. An’ what tha’ll find out tha’ll find out soon.”

And it was not two minutes before he swallowed the last of his beer and waved his mug solemnly toward the window which took in through the shrubbery a piece of the lawn.

“Look here,” he said, “if tha’s curious. Look what’s comin’ across th’ grass.”

When Mrs. Medlock looked she threw up her hands and gave a little shriek, and every man and woman servant within hearing bolted across the servants’ hall and stood looking through the window with their eyes almost staring out of their heads.

Across the lawn came the Master of Misselthwaite, and he looked as many of them had never seen him. And by his side, with his head up in the air and his eyes full of laughter, walked as strongly and steadily as any boy in Yorkshire-Master Colin!

The Life of Frances Hodgson Burnett

FRANCES ELIZA HODGSON WAS BORN ON NOVEMBER 24, 1849, in Manchester, England, one of five children. Her father, a successful hardware dealer, died when she was still young and the family was forced to move from the fashionable Cheetham Hill district to a shabby house in Islington Square.

After the Hodgsons struggled unsuccessfully to maintain themselves in Manchester for several more years, they emigrated to America in 1865, moving to Knoxville, Tennessee.

Young Frances had been a dreamy child, writing since the age of seven. She was published in American magazines before she was twenty years old.

Her first book, That Lass o’ Lowrie’s, set around a Lancashire coal mine, was published in 1877 when she was twenty-seven, and she was published with regularity after that. Her more than forty sentimental novels for adults were vastly popular at the time, though it is for her three children’s books that she is known today: Little Lord Fauntleroy, Sara Crewe or The Little Princess, and The Secret Garden.

Little Lord Fauntleroy was written in 1885. It was about the conversion of a young street boy through a legacy into a velvet-suited, long-haired young gentleman. It set a standard for rich boys’ dress for a number of years. First serialized in the prominent St Nicholas magazine, the book was wildly successful both as a novel and a stage play, bringing Mrs. Burnett both fortune and fame.

Sara Crewe was also serialized in St Nicholas in 1885 but was not immediately turned into a book. It went from the magazine directly onto the stage. Not until 1905, when friends convinced her to revise the book according to the successful stage play—adding characters and situations that had not been in the original serialization—did Mrs. Burnett make it into a novel.

The Secret Garden was published in 1911. It has been one of the most popular books of childhood ever since.

In 1873, Frances Hodgson married Swan Burnett, a young man who had been crippled in childhood but who went on to become a successful eye specialist. Though always mindful of her mother’s insistence that she cultivate ladylike manners, Frances Hodgson Burnett nonetheless supported her husband during the time he was working to establish himself as an ophthalmologist.

They had two sons: Lionel and Vivian. Vivian was the model for Little Lord Fauntleroy and as a grown man wrote a biography of his famous mother called The Romantick Lady. In 1886, while Mrs. Burnett was travelling abroad after the extraordinary success of the Fauntleroy book, Lionel came down with consumption. She returned home at once to nurse him devotedly, keeping from him the knowledge that he was dying. “It seems to me,” she wrote later in a notebook, “that I must not give you the terror of knowing.”

In 1898 Dr. Burnett and Mrs. Burnett were divorced and she soon married another young doctor, Stephen Townesend, who had helped nurse Lionel during his final illness. Townesend was ten years younger than his famous wife, and desired to become an actor. She treated him more like a son than a husband, attempting to help him in his theatrical ventures with her rather important connections. As Vivian was to write later: “This was one of the few solaces … (she) had … her wish to help her older—disappointed—Stephen boy.” They separated a year later.

During her successful years, Mrs. Burnett was not considered a particularly appealing woman. Some critics accused her of being domineering and self-centered. But she left the literature of childhood richer with her writing, and that is worth a little conceit, surely.

Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett Townesend died at Plan-dome, New York, on October 29, 1924. The Secret Garden lives forever.

—JANE YOLEN

Afterword

BEFORE FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT WROTE THE SECRET Garden, most of the literature for children starred grotesquely good little boys and girls. Bad children were never the heroes of a story. Rather they were punished appropriately like the bad sister in the fairy tale, with a mouthful of toads, or reformed. Even Mrs. Burnett’s earlier heroes—the relentlessly courageous little Cedric Fauntleroy and the relentlessly hopeful little Sara Crewe—were such child paragons.

But in The Secret Garden a new child hero emerges. Cranky, demanding, angry, and thoroughly unattractive, both Mary and Colin are anything but likable. And yet, we understand what makes them that way.

Mary is a survivor. She survives her parents’ dismissive behavior toward her. She survives the Indian servants’ submissiveness. She survives the cholera epidemic. And we know she will survive the cold welcome she receives at Misselthwaite. She survives the only way she knows how—by being disagreeable, aggressive, and sly.

Colin, too, is a survivor. He survives his mother’s death and his father’s strange behavior toward him. He survives despite the doctor’s pessimistic diagnoses and detrimental treatment. He survives the servants’ pity and their indifference. He survives in the only way he knows how—by being hysterical, prone to tantrums, and ill.

That Frances Hodgson Burnett can make us like these two thoroughly unlikable children is a large part of the genius that makes this book a classic. We admire and enjoy Dickon, who is as much a nature god as he is a little boy. But we do not love him. Our hearts go out to the impossible pair—Mary and Colin. We root for them to get well, to fix the garden, to “live for ever and ever and ever.”

Some of what makes The Secret Garden work so well must have come from Mrs. Burnett’s life. Like Colin’s father, the gentleman with the unhappy past, Mrs. Burnett spent a great deal of time away from home. Her guilty secret was that she had been holidaying when her son Vivian had become so ill. And though she could not save him, she could save another little boy named Colin Craven. It is that secret guilt and her great need to have the child well, that drives the emotional part of this story.

Also, like Mary, Frances Hodgson Burnett lost a father early and was sent from a beloved home to a new, cold environment. Her solace had been in make-believe and in gardens. So Mary becomes a kind of symbol for Mrs. Burnett’s childhood tragedy. As one critic wrote of her, “It was Burnett’s lifelong habit … to transform her experience into the conventional forms of a story.”

There is another curious element in The Secret Garden. Unlike most of the ordinary books of the day, which had little moral lessons of a decidedly Christian nature, there is something curiously unchristian about the book. Burnett all but deifies nature, and clearly speaks about a kind of life force working in nature. Though she has Dickon sing the “Doxology,” that most Christian of hymns, both and he and his mother speak of the Magic in the earth and the growing things.

Mrs. Burnett was, herself, a most unorthodox Christian, dabbling in such interests as faith healing, Spiritualism, Theosophy, and Christian Science. Clearly she is not trying to force young readers onto any such paths. But there is a great magic healing power in the garden itself—and in the seasonal and cyclical plotting of the book. It ends in autumn, with everything—children and garden—awakened. That natural magic also transforms the book and every reader.

—JANE YOLEN

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE SECRET GARDEN

All new material in this edition is copyright © 1988 by Jane Yolen

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

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eISBN 9781466805736
First eBook Edition : November 2011
EAN 978-0812-50501-6

First Tor edition: January 1990