The Key to the Garden (The Secret Garden)

01CHAPTER VII.

02THE KEY TO THE GARDEN.

03Two days after this, when Mary opened her eyes, she sat upright in bed immediately and called to Martha.

04Look at the moor!

05Look at the moor!

06The rain-storm had ended, and the grey mist and clouds had been swept away in the night by the wind.

07The wind itself had ceased, and a brilliant deep blue sky arched high over the moorland.

08Never, never had Mary dreamed of a sky so blue.

09In India skies were hot and blazing.

10This was of a deep, cool blue, which almost seemed to sparkle like the waters of some lovely bottomless lake.

11And here and there, high, high in the arched blueness, floated small clouds of snow-white fleece.

12The far-reaching world of the moor itself looked softly blue, instead of gloomy purple-black, or awful dreary grey.

13Aye!

14said Martha, with a cheerful grin.

15The storm's over for a bit.

16It does like this at this time of the year.

17It goes off in a night like it was pretending it had never been here and never meant to come again.

18That's because the springtime's on its way.

19It's a long way off yet, but it's coming.

20I thought perhaps it always rained or looked dark in England, Mary said.

21Hey, no!

22said Martha, sitting up on her heels among her black-lead brushes.

23Now to the sort!

24What does that mean?

25asked Mary seriously.

26In 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.

27Martha laughed as she had done the first morning.

28There now, she said, I've talked broad Yorkshire again like Mrs.

29Medlock said I mustn't.

30Now to the sort!

31means nothing of the sort, slowly and carefully.

32But it takes so long to say it.

33Yorkshire's the sunniest place on earth when it is sunny.

34I told thee that I'd like them more after a bit.

35Just you wait till you see the gold-coloured gorse blossoms, and the blossoms of the broom, and the heather flowerin', all purple bells, and hundreds of butterflies flutterin', and bees hummin', and skylarks soarin' up and singin'.

36You'll want to get out on it at sunrise and live out on it all day like Dickon does.

37Could I ever get there?

38asked Mary wistfully, looking through her window at the far-off blue.

39It was so new and big and wonderful and such a heavenly colour.

40I don't know, answered Martha.

41Tha's never used tha legs since tha was born, it seems to me.

42Tha couldn't walk five mile.

43It's five mile to our cottage.

44I should like to see your cottage.

45Martha stared at her a moment curiously before she took up her polishing brush and began to rub the grate again.

46She 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.

47It looked just a trifle like little Susan Ann's, when she wanted something very much.

48I'll ask my mother about it, she said.

49She is one of them that nearly always sees a way to do things.

50It's my day out to-day and I'm going home.

51Eh, I am glad.

52Mrs.

53Medlock thinks a lot of mother.

54Perhaps she could talk to her.

55I like your mother, said Mary.

56I should think tha did, agreed Martha, polishing away.

57I've never seen her, said Mary.

58No, tha hasn't, replied Martha.

59She 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.

60But she ended quite positively.

61Well, she's that sensible and hard-working and good-natured and clean that no one could help liking her whether they'd seen her or not.

62When I'm going home to her on my day out, I just jump for joy when I'm crossing the moor.

63I like Dickon, added Mary.

64And I've never seen him.

65Well, said Martha stoutly, I've told thee that the very birds likes him and the rabbits and wild sheep and ponies and the foxes themselves.

66I wonder, staring at her reflectively, what Dickon would think of thee?

67He wouldn't like me, said Mary in her stiff, cold little way.

68No one does.

69Martha looked reflective again.

70How does tha like thyself?

71she inquired, really quite as if she were curious to know.

72Mary hesitated a moment and thought it over.

73Not at all, really, she answered.

74But I never thought of that before.

75Martha grinned a little, as if at some homely recollection.

76Mother said that to me once, she said.

77She was at her wash-tub, and I was in a bad temper, and talking ill of folk.

78And she turns round on me and says, The young vixen, there the stand, saying tha doesn't like this one, and tha doesn't like that one.

79How does tha like thyself?

80It made me laugh, and it brought me to my senses in a minute.

81She went away in high spirits as soon as she had given Mary her breakfast.

82She 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.

83Mary felt lonelier than ever when she knew she was no longer in the house.

84She 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.

85She counted the times carefully, and when she had finished, she felt in better spirits.

86The sunshine made the whole place look different.

87The high, deep blue sky arched over Misselthwaite as well as over the moor.

88And 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.

89She went into the first kitchen garden and found Ben Weatherstaff working there with two other gardeners.

90The change in the weather seemed to have done him good.

91He spoke to her of his own accord.

92"'Springtime's comin', he said.

93"'Cannot the smell it?' Mary sniffed and thought she could.

94"'I smell something nice and fresh and damp,' she said.

95"'That's the good rich earth,' he answered, digging away.

96"'It's in a good humour, makin' ready to grow things.

97It's glad when plantin' time comes.

98It's dull in the winter when it's gotten out to do.

99In the flower gardens out there things will be stirrin' down below in the dark.

100The sun's warmin' em'.

101You'll see bits o' green spikes stickin' out o' the black earth after a bit.' "'What will they be?' asked Mary.

102"'Crocusses and snowdrops and daffydown dillies.

103Has the never seen them?' "'No.

104Everything is hot and wet and green after the rains in India,' said Mary.

105"'And I think things grow up in a night.' "'These won't grow up in a night,' said Weatherstaff.

106"'Thou'll have to wait for em.

107They'll poke up a bit higher here and push out a spike more there, and uncurl a leaf this day and another that.

108You watch em.' "'I am going to,' answered Mary.

109Very soon she heard the soft, rustling flight of wings again, and she knew at once that the robin had come again.

110He 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.

111"'Do you think he remembers me?' she said.

112"'Remembers thee?' said Weatherstaff, indignantly.

113"'He knows every cabbage stump in the gardens, let alone the people.

114He's never seen a little wench here before, and he's bent on finding out all about thee.

115There'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.

116"'What garden?' grunted Weatherstaff, becoming surly again.

117"'The one where the old rose-trees are.' She could not help asking, because she wanted so much to know.

118"'Are all the flowers dead, or do some of them come again in the summer?

119Are there ever any roses?' "'Ask him,' said Ben Weatherstaff, hunching his shoulders toward the robin.

120"'He's the only one who knows.

121No one else has seen inside it for ten years.' "'Ten years was a long time,' Mary thought.

122She had been born ten years ago.

123She walked away, slowly thinking.

124She had begun to like the garden, just as she had begun to like the robin, and Dickon, and Martha's mother.

125She was beginning to like Martha, too.

126That seemed a good many people to like, when you were not used to liking.

127She thought of the robin as one of the people.

128She went to her walk outside the long, ivy-covered wall, over which she could see the treetops.

129And the second time she walked up and down, the most interesting and exciting thing happened to her.

130And it was all through Ben Weatherstaff's robin.

131She 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.

132But she knew he had followed her, and the surprise so filled her with delight that she almost trembled a little.

133"'You do remember me!' she cried out.

134"'You do!

135You are prettier than anything else in the world!' She chirped and talked and coaxed, and he hopped and flirted his tail and twittered.

136It was as if he were talking.

137His 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.

138Mistress 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.

139Oh, to think that he should actually let her come as near to him as that!

140He knew nothing in the world would make her put out her hand toward him or startle him in the least tiniest way.

141He knew it because he was a real person, only nicer than any other person in the world.

142She was so happy that she scarcely dared to breathe.

143The flower-bed was not quite bare.

144It was bare of flowers, because the perennial plants had been cut down for their winter rest.

145But 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.

146He stopped on it to look for a worm.

147The earth had been turned up because a dog had been trying to dig up a mole, and he had scratched quite a deep hole.

148Mary 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.

149It was something like a ring of rusty iron or brass, and when the robin flew up into a tree nearby, she put out her hand and picked the ring up.

150It was more than a ring, however.

151It was an old key, which looked as if it had been buried a long time.

152Mistress Mary stood up and looked at it with an almost frightened face as it hung from her finger.

153"'Perhaps it has been buried for ten years,' she said in a whisper.

154"'Perhaps it is the key to the garden.'" End of chapter 7 Read by Kara Schallenberg on January 20, 2006 in Oceanside, California End of chapter 7 Read by Kara Schallenberg Read by Kara Schallenberg