Таинственный сад / The secret garden

The door opened slowly. She slipped through it, and shut it behind her. She was standing inside the secret garden.

Chapter IX

A very strange house

It was the most mysterious-looking place anyone can imagine. The high walls were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses. Mary Lennox knew they were roses because she saw many roses in India. All the ground was covered with grass. There were many trees in the garden, too. here were neither leaves nor roses on them now and Mary did not know whether they were dead or alive.

“How still it is!” she whispered. “How still!”

Then she waited a moment and listened at the stillness. The robin did not flutter his wings; he sat and looked at Mary.

“No wonder,” she whispered again. “I am the first person who has spoken in here for ten years.”

She moved away from the door. She was glad that there was grass under her feet and that her steps made no sounds. She walked under one of the gray arches between the trees.

“Are they are all dead?” she said. “Is it a dead garden?”

She was inside the wonderful secret garden. The sun was shining inside the four walls and the high arch of blue sky seemed even more brilliant than it was over the moor. The robin flew after her from one bush to another. Everything was strange and silent, but somehow she did not feel lonely at all.

She did not want it to be a dead garden. Her skipping-rope hung over her arm. She came near the alcove. There was a flower-bed in it, and she knelt down.

“These might be crocuses or snowdrops or daffodils,” she whispered.

She bent very close to them and sniffed the fresh scent of the damp earth. She liked it very much. “Perhaps there are some other ones coming up in other. I will go all over the garden and look.”

She did not skip, but walked. She went slowly. She looked in the old border beds and among the grass.

“It isn’t a dead garden,” she cried out softly to herself. “Even if the roses are dead, there are other things alive.

She found a sharp piece of wood and dug and weeded out the weeds and grass until she made nice little clear places around them.

“Now they can breathe,” she said. “I am going to do more. I’ll do all I can see. If I have no time today I can come tomorrow.”

She went from place to place, and dug and weeded, and enjoyed herself immensely. The robin was busy. He was very much pleased to see that.