even hear the stable boys."

A sudden thought made her scramble to her feet.

"I can't wait! I am going to see the garden!"

She had learned to dress herself by this time and she put on her
clothes in five minutes. She knew a small side door which she could
unbolt herself and she flew downstairs in her stocking feet and put on
her shoes in the hall. She unchained and unbolted and unlocked and
when the door was open she sprang across the step with one bound, and
there she was standing on the grass, which seemed to have turned green,
and with the sun pouring down on her and warm sweet wafts about her and
the fluting and twittering and singing coming from every bush and tree.
She clasped her hands for pure joy and looked up in the sky and it was
so blue and pink and pearly and white and flooded with springtime light
that she felt as if she must flute and sing aloud herself and knew that
thrushes and robins and skylarks could not possibly help it. She ran
around the shrubs and paths towards the secret garden.

"It is all different already," she said. "The grass is greener and
things are sticking up everywhere and things are uncurling and green
buds of leaves are showing. This afternoon I am sure Dickon will come."

The long warm rain had done strange things to the herbaceous beds which
bordered the walk by the lower wall. There were things sprouting and
pushing out from the roots of clumps of plants and there were actually
here and there glimpses of royal purple and yellow unfurling among the
stems of crocuses. Six months before Mistress Mary would not have seen
how the world was waking up, but now she missed nothing.

When she had reached the place where the door hid itself under the ivy,
she was startled by a curious loud sound. It was the caw--caw of a
crow and it came from the top of the wall, and when she looked up,
there sat a big glossy-plumaged blue-black bird, looking down at her
very wisely indeed. She had never seen a crow so close before and he
made her a little nervous, but the next moment he spread his wings and
flapped away across the garden. She hoped he was not going to stay
inside and she pushed the door open wondering if he would. When she
got fairly into the garden she saw that he probably did intend to stay
because he had alighted on a dwarf apple-tree and under the apple-tree
was lying a little reddish animal with a Bushy tail, and both of them
were watching the stooping body and rust-r