The Secret Garden

e; 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 to the huge moor which seemed to spre

er 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 br

be hungry, and when she sat down to her breakfast she did not glance disdainfully at her porridge and

with that this mornin', d

said Mary, feeling a l

tha's got victuals as well as appetite. There's been twelve in our cottage as had th' stomach an' nothin' to put in

d Mary. "I have not

hings. 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

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 fo

as 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 t

not seem at all queer to her that she spoke to him as i

ere telling her all sorts of things. It seemed to Mistress Mary as if she un

sun nice? Isn't everything nice? Let us both

ts along the wall she ran after him. Poor little thin, sall

rped 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 bee

o herself. "It's the garden without a door. He live

e other door and then into the orchard, and when she stood and looked up there was the tree on the other side

n," she said. "I

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

was no door and there is no door. But there must have be

come to Misselthwaite Manor. In India she had always felt hot and too languid to care much about anything. The fact w

le. She did not feel cross when Martha chattered away. She felt as if she rather liked to hear her, and at last she thought s

aven hate the g

ull 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

earth herself without

he said. "I knew tha' would. That was just t

hate it?" Ma

under her and made he

ouse," she said. "You could bare stand up

r 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 t

asked, after she had listened. Sh

ve up her stor

ried 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' and 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 ma

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

om 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 pre

any one cryin

denly look

it sounds like as if some one was lost on th'

It's in the house-down one

ssage and the door of the room they sat in was blown open with a crash, and as they both jumped to their feet the ligh

u so! It is some one crying-an

th heard the sound of a door in some far passage shutting with a bang, and the

f it wasn't, it was little Betty Butterworth, th'

er made Mistress Mary stare very hard at her.