The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (story reading txt) 📕

the mice had grown up and run away and the hole was empty. They saw more rooms and made more discoveries than Mary had made on her first pilgrimage. They found new corridors and corners and flights of steps and new old pictures they liked and weird old things they did not know the use of. It was a curiously entertaining morning and the feeling of wandering about in the same house with other people but at the same time feeling as if one were miles away from them was a fascinating thing.

“I’m glad we came,” Colin said. “I never knew I lived in such a big queer old place. I like it. We will ramble about every rainy day. We shall always be finding new queer corners and things.”

That morning they had found among other things such good appetites that when they returned to Colin’s room it was not possible to send the luncheon away untouched.

When the nurse carried the tray downstairs she slapped it down on the kitchen dresser so that Mrs. Loomis, the cook, could see the highly polished dishes and plates.

“Look at that!” she said. “This is a house of mystery, and those two children are the greatest mysteries in it.”

“If they keep that up every day,” said the strong young footman John, “there’d be small wonder that he weighs twice as much today as he did a month ago. I should have to give up my place in time, for fear of doing my muscles an injury.”

That afternoon Mary noticed that something new had happened in Colin’s room. She had noticed it the day before but had said nothing because she thought the change might have been made by chance. She said nothing today but she sat and looked fixedly at the picture over the mantel. She could look at it because the curtain had been drawn aside. That was the change she noticed.

“I know what you want me to tell you,” said Colin, after she had stared a few minutes. “I always know when you want me to tell you something. You are wondering why the curtain is drawn back. I am going to keep it like that.”

“Why?” asked Mary.

“Because it doesn’t make me angry any more to see her laughing. I wakened when it was bright moonlight two nights ago and felt as if the Magic was filling the room and making everything so splendid that I couldn’t lie still. I got up and looked out of the window. The room was quite light and there was a patch of moonlight on the curtain and somehow that made me go and pull the cord. She looked right down at me as if she were laughing because she was glad I was standing there. It made me like to look at her. I want to see her laughing like that all the time. I think she must have been a sort of Magic person perhaps.”

“You are so like her now,” said Mary, “that sometimes I think perhaps you are her ghost made into a boy.”

That idea seemed to impress Colin. He thought it over and then answered her slowly.

“If I were her ghost⁠—my father would be fond of me,” he said.

“Do you want him to be fond of you?” inquired Mary.

“I used to hate it because he was not fond of me. If he grew fond of me I think I should tell him about the Magic. It might make him more cheerful.”

XXVI “It’s Mother!”

Their belief in the Magic was an abiding thing. After the morning’s incantations Colin sometimes gave them Magic lectures.

“I like to do it,” he explained, “because when I grow up and make great scientific discoveries I shall be obliged to lecture about them and so this is practise. I can only give short lectures now because I am very young, and besides Ben Weatherstaff would feel as if he was in church and he would go to sleep.”

“Th’ best thing about lecturin’,” said Ben, “is that a chap can get up an’ say aught he pleases an’ no other chap can answer him back. I wouldn’t be agen’ lecturin’ a bit mysel’ sometimes.”

But when Colin held forth under his tree old Ben fixed devouring eyes on him and kept them there. He looked him over with critical affection. It was not so much the lecture which interested him as the legs which looked straighter and stronger each day, the boyish head which held itself up so well, the once sharp chin and hollow cheeks which had filled and rounded out and the eyes which had begun to hold the light he remembered in another pair. Sometimes when Colin felt Ben’s earnest gaze meant that he was much impressed he wondered what he was reflecting on and once when he had seemed quite entranced he questioned him.

“What are you thinking about, Ben Weatherstaff?” he asked.

“I was thinkin’,” answered Ben, “as I’d warrant tha’s gone up three or four pound this week. I was lookin’ at tha’ calves an’ tha’ shoulders. I’d like to get thee on a pair o’ scales.”

“It’s the Magic and⁠—and Mrs. Sowerby’s buns and milk and things,” said Colin. “You see the scientific experiment has succeeded.”

That morning Dickon was too late to hear the lecture. When he came he was ruddy with running and his funny face looked more twinkling than usual. As they had a good deal of weeding to do after the rains they fell to work. They always had plenty to do after a warm deep sinking rain. The moisture which was good for the flowers was also good for the weeds which thrust up tiny blades of grass and points of leaves which must be pulled up before their roots took too firm hold. Colin was as good at weeding as anyone in these days and he could lecture while he was doing it.

“The Magic works best when you work yourself,” he said this morning. “You can feel it in