The Secret Garden / Таинственный сад

There were walls all round it also and trees trained against them but there was no green door to be seen anywhere. Mary looked for it, and yet when she had entered the upper end of the garden she had noticed that the wall did not seem to end with the orchard but to extend beyond it as if it enclosed a place at the other side. She could see the tops of trees above the wall, and when she stood still she saw a bird sitting on the topmost branch of one of them, and suddenly he burst into his winter song.

She stopped and listened to him and somehow his cheerful, friendly little whistle gave her a pleased feeling- even a disagreeable little girl may be lonely, and the big closed house and big bare moor and big bare gardens had made this one feel as if there was no one left in the world but herself.

If she had been an affectionate child, who had been used to being loved, she would have broken her heart, but even though she was “Mistress Mary Quite Contrary” she was desolate, and the bright-breasted little bird brought a look into her sour little face which was almost a smile. She listened to him until he flew away. He was not like an Indian bird and she liked him and wondered if she should ever see him again. Perhaps he lived in the mysterious garden and knew all about it.

Perhaps it was because she had nothing whatever to do that she thought so much of the deserted garden. She was curious about it and wanted to see what it was like. She wanted to ask Mr. Craven why he had done such queer things.

“She thought of the robin [51 - robin – малиновка] and of the way he seemed to sing his song at her, and as she remembered the tree-top he perched on she stopped rather suddenly on the path.

“I believe that tree was in the secret garden-I feel sure it was,” she said. “There was a wall round the place and there was no door.”

She walked back into the first kitchen-garden she had entered and found the old man digging there. She went and stood beside him and watched him a few moments in her cold little way.

He took no notice of her and so at last she spoke to him.

“I have been into the other gardens,” she said.

“There was nothin' to prevent thee,” he answered crustily.

“I went into the orchard.”

“There was no dog at th' door to bite thee,” he answered. “There was no door there into the other garden,” said Mary. “What garden?” he said in a rough voice, stopping his digging for a moment.