Таинственный сад / The secret garden

“Can I ever get there?” asked Mary wistfully, looking through her window at the far-off blue. It was new and big and wonderful.

“I don’t know,” answered Martha. “Five miles, I think.”

“I want to see your cottage.”

Martha stared at her.

“I’ll ask my mother about it,” Martha said. “Mrs. Medlock likes my mother. Perhaps she can talk to her.”

“I like your mother, too” said Mary.

“Of course,” agreed Martha.

“And I like Dickon,” added Mary.

“Well,” said Martha stoutly, “all the birds like him and the rabbits and wild sheep and the ponies, and the foxes.”

“But he won’t like me,” said Mary. “No one does.”

“Do you like yourself?” Martha inquired.

Mary hesitated a moment.

“Not at all-really,” she answered.

Martha went away after the breakfast. She was going to walk five miles across the moor to the cottage, and she was going to help her mother.

Mary went out into the garden.

She went into the first kitchen-garden and found Ben Weatherstaff working there with two other gardeners.

She began to like the garden and Ben Weatherstaff – like the robin and Dickon and Martha’s mother. She was beginning to like Martha, too. She went outside the long, ivy-covered wall over which she could see the tree-tops.

She looked at the bare flower-bed at her left side. The flower-bed was not quite bare. It was bare of flowers, but there were tall and low shrubs.

The robin hopped about under them. He stopped on it to look for a worm. A dog scratched quite a deep hole there.

Mary looked at it and saw something in the soil. It was an old key!

Mary stood up and looked at it.

“Perhaps it is the key to the secret garden!” she said in a whisper.

Mary put the key in her pocket. She will always carry it with her when she goes out – to find the hidden door.

Chapter VIII

The Robin who showed the way

“I’ve brought you a present,” Martha said in the morning, with a cheerful grin.

“A present!” exclaimed Mary.

“Yes. It’s a skipping-rope.”

She brought it out from under her apron and exhibited it quite proudly. It was a strong, slender rope with a striped red and blue handle at each end. Mary gazed at it with a mystified expression.

“What is it for?” she asked curiously.

“Just watch me!” cried out Martha.