Таинственный сад / The secret garden

“There was no door there into the other garden,” said Mary.

“What garden?” he said in a rough voice.

“The one on the other side of the wall,” answered Mistress Mary. “There are trees there-I saw the tops of them. A bird with a red breast was sitting on one of them and singing.”

To her surprise the surly face actually changed its expression. A slow smile spread over it and the gardener looked quite different. It was curious how much nicer a person looked when he smiled.

He began to whistle.

Almost the next moment a wonderful thing happened. The bird with the red breast flew to them, and alighted near to the gardener’s foot.

Mary went a step nearer to the robin and looked at it.

“I’m lonely,” she said.

The old gardener stared at her.

“Are you that little wench from India?” he asked.

Mary nodded.

He began to dig again.

“What is your name?” Mary inquired.

“Ben Weatherstaff,” he answered, and then he added with a surly chuckle, “I’m lonely myself except when he’s with me,” and he jerked his thumb toward the robin.

“He’s the only friend I’ve got.”

“I have no friends at all,” said Mary. “I never had. My Ayah didn’t like me and I never played with anyone.”

Suddenly a little sound broke out near her and she turned round. The bird was singing.

“Will you make friends with me?” Mary said to the robin. “Will you?”

“Why,” Ben Weatherstaff cried out, “you are a real child instead of a sharp old woman.

You talk like Dickon talks to his animals on the moor.”

“Do you know Dickon?” Mary asked.

“Everybody knows him. Dickon is wandering about everywhere. Blackberries and heather-bells know him. Foxes shows him where their cubs lie, skylarks don’t hide their nests from him.”

Chapter V

The cry in the corridor

Each day which passed by for Mary Lennox was exactly like the others. Every morning she awoke in her room and found Martha.

Every morning she ate her breakfast in the nursery. After each breakfast she gazed out of the window across to the huge moor. Then she went out. She began to walk quickly or even run along the paths.

One day she woke up and was hungry. When she sat down to her breakfast she did not glance disdainfully at her porridge and push it away, but took up her spoon and began to eat it.

Then she went out. There was nothing else to do.