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“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 quite good-humoredly.
“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.”
For two or three minutes he stood looking round him, while Mary watched him, and then he began to walk about softly, even more lightly than Mary had walked the first time she had found herself inside the four walls. His eyes seemed to be taking in everything—the gray trees with the gray creepers climbing over them and hanging from their branches, the tangle on the walls and among the grass, the evergreen alcoves with the stone seats and tall flower urns standing in them.
“I never thought I’d see this place,” he said at last, in a whisper.
“Did you know about it?” asked Mary.
She had spoken aloud and he made a sign to her.
“We must talk low,” he said, “or 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 gray 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!”
