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."

CHAPTER XI

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 gray trees with the gray
creepers climbing over them