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 in to 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 be 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