After another week of rain the high arch of blue sky appeared again and
the sun which poured down was quite hot.  Though there had been no
chance to see either the secret garden or Dickon, Mistress Mary had
enjoyed herself very much.  The week had not seemed long.  She had
spent hours of every day with Colin in his room, talking about Rajahs
or gardens or Dickon and the cottage on the moor.  They had looked at
the splendid books and pictures and sometimes Mary had read things to
Colin, and sometimes he had read a little to her.  When he was amused
and interested she thought he scarcely looked like an invalid at all,
except that his face was so colorless and he was always on the sofa.

"You are a sly young one to listen and get out of your bed to go
following things up like you did that night," Mrs. Medlock said once.
"But there's no saying it's not been a sort of blessing to the lot of
us.  He's not had a tantrum or a whining fit since you made friends.
The nurse was just going to give up the case because she was so sick of
him, but she says she doesn't mind staying now you've gone on duty with
her," laughing a little.

In her talks with Colin, Mary had tried to be very cautious about the
secret garden.  There were certain things she wanted to find out from
him, but she felt that she must find them out without asking him direct
questions.  In the first place, as she began to like to be with him,
she wanted to discover whether he was the kind of boy you could tell a
secret to.  He was not in the least like Dickon, but he was evidently
so pleased with the idea of a garden no one knew anything about that
she thought perhaps he could be trusted.  But she had not known him
long enough to be sure.  The second thing she wanted to find out was
this: If he could be trusted--if he really could--wouldn't it be
possible to take him to the garden without having any one find it out?
The grand doctor had said that he must have fresh air and Colin had
said that he would not mind fresh air in a secret garden.  Perhaps if
he had a great deal of fresh air and knew Dickon and the robin and saw
things growing he might not think so much about dying.  Mary had seen
herself in the glass sometimes lately when she had realized that she
looked quite a different creature from the child she had seen when she
arrived from India.  This child looked nicer.  Even Martha had seen a
change in her.

"Th' air from th' moor has done thee good already," she had said.
"Tha'rt not nigh so yeller and tha'rt not nigh so scrawny.  Even tha'
hair doesn't slamp down on tha' head so flat.  It's got some life in it
so as it sticks out a bit."

"It's like me," said Mary.  "It's growing stronger and fatter.  I'm
sure there's more of it."

"It looks it, for sure," said Martha, ruffling it up a little round her
face.  "Tha'rt not half so ugly when it's that way an' there's a bit o'
red in tha' cheeks."

If gardens and fresh air had been good for her perhaps they would be
good for Colin.  But then, if he hated people to look at him, perhaps
he would not like to see Dickon.

"Why does it make you angry when you are looked at?" she inquired one
day.

"I always hated it," he answered, "even when I was very little.  Then
when they took me to the seaside and I used to lie in my carriage
everybody used to stare and ladies would stop and talk to my nurse and
then they would begin to whisper and I knew then they were saying I
shouldn't live to grow up.  Then sometimes the ladies would pat my
cheeks and say 'Poor child!' Once when a lady did that I screamed out
loud and bit her hand.  She was so frightened she ran away."

"She thought you had gone mad like a dog," said Mary, not at all
admiringly.

"I don't care what she thought," said Colin, frowning.

"I wonder why you didn't scream and bite me when I came into your
room?" said Mary.  Then she began to smile slowly.

"I thought you were a ghost or a dream," he said.  "You can't bite a
ghost or a dream, and if you scream they don't care."

"Would you hate it if--if a boy looked at you?" Mary asked uncertainly.

He lay back on his cushion and paused thoughtfully.

"There's one boy," he said quite slowly, as if he were thinking over
every word, "there's one boy I believe I shouldn't mind.  It's that boy
who knows where the foxes live--Dickon."

"I'm sure you wouldn't mind him," said Mary.

"The birds don't and other animals," he said, still thinking it over,
"perhaps that's why I shouldn't. He's a sort of animal charmer and I am
a boy animal."

Then he laughed and she laughed too; in fact it ended in their both
laughing a great deal and finding the idea of a boy animal hiding in
his hole very funny indeed.

What Mary felt afterward was that she need not fear about Dickon.

On that first morning when the sky was blue again Mary wakened very
early.  The sun was pouring in slanting rays through the blinds and
there was something so joyous in the sight of it that she jumped out of
bed and ran to the window.  She drew up the blinds and opened the
window itself and a great waft of fresh, scented air blew in upon her.
The moor was blue and the whole world looked as if something Magic had
happened to it.  There were tender little fluting sounds here and there
and everywhere, as if scores of birds were beginning to tune up for a
concert.  Mary put her hand out of the window and held it in the sun.

"It's warm--warm!" she said.  "It will make the green points push up
and up and up, and it will make the bulbs and roots work and struggle
with all their might under the earth."

She kneeled down and leaned out of the window as far as she could,
breathing big breaths and sniffing the air until she laughed because
she remembered what Dickon's mother had said about the end of his nose
quivering like a rabbit's. "It must be very early," she said.  "The
little clouds are all pink and I've never seen the sky look like this.
No one is up.  I don't even hear the stable boys."

A sudden thought made her scramble to her feet.

"I can't wait! I am going to see the garden!"

She had learned to dress herself by this time and she put on her
clothes in five minutes.  She knew a small side door which she could
unbolt herself and she flew downstairs in her stocking feet and put on
her shoes in the hall.  She unchained and unbolted and unlocked and
when the door was open she sprang across the step with one bound, and
there she was standing on the grass, which seemed to have turned green,
and with the sun pouring down on her and warm sweet wafts about her and
the fluting and twittering and singing coming from every bush and tree.
She clasped her hands for pure joy and looked up in the sky and it was
so blue and pink and pearly and white and flooded with springtime light
that she felt as if she must flute and sing aloud herself and knew that
thrushes and robins and skylarks could not possibly help it.  She ran
around the shrubs and paths towards the secret garden.

"It is all different already," she said.  "The grass is greener and
things are sticking up everywhere and things are uncurling and green
buds of leaves are showing.  This afternoon I am sure Dickon will come."

The long warm rain had done strange things to the herbaceous beds which
bordered the walk by the lower wall.  There were things sprouting and
pushing out from the roots of clumps of plants and there were actually
here and there glimpses of royal purple and yellow unfurling among the
stems of crocuses.  Six months before Mistress Mary would not have seen
how the world was waking up, but now she missed nothing.

When she had reached the place where the door hid itself under the ivy,
she was startled by a curious loud sound.  It was the caw--caw of a
crow and it came from the top of the wall, and when she looked up,
there sat a big glossy-plumaged blue-black bird, looking down at her
very wisely indeed.  She had never seen a crow so close before and he
made her a little nervous, but the next moment he spread his wings and
flapped away across the garden.  She hoped he was not going to stay
inside and she pushed the door open wondering if he would.  When she
got fairly into the garden she saw that he probably did intend to stay
because he had alighted on a dwarf apple-tree and under the apple-tree
was lying a little reddish animal with a Bushy tail, and both of them
were watching the stooping body and rust-red head of Dickon, who was
kneeling on the grass working hard.

Mary flew across the grass to him.

"Oh, Dickon! Dickon!" she cried out.  "How could you get here so early!
How could you! The sun has only just got up!"

He got up himself, laughing and glowing, and tousled; his eyes like a
bit of the sky.

"Eh!" he said.  "I was up long before him.  How could I have stayed
abed! Th' world's all fair begun again this mornin', it has.  An' it's
workin' an' hummin' an' scratchin' an' pipin' an' nest-buildin' an'
breathin' out scents, till you've got to be out on it 'stead o' lyin'
on your back.  When th' sun did jump up, th' moor went mad for joy, an'
I was in the midst of th' heather, an' I run like mad myself, shoutin'
an' singin'. An' I come straight here.  I couldn't have stayed away.
Why, th' garden was lyin' here waitin'!"

Mary put her hands on her chest, panting, as if she had been running
herself.

"Oh, Dickon! Dickon!" she said.  "I'm so happy I can scarcely breathe!"

Seeing him talking to a stranger, the little bushy-tailed animal rose
from its place under the tree and came to him, and the rook, cawing
once, flew down from its branch and settled quietly on his shoulder.

"This is th' little fox cub," he said, rubbing the little reddish
animal's head.  "It's named Captain.  An' this here's Soot.  Soot he
flew across th' moor with me an' Captain he run same as if th' hounds
had been after him.  They both felt same as I did."

Neither of the creatures looked as if he were the least afraid of Mary.
When Dickon began to walk about, Soot stayed on his shoulder and
Captain trotted quietly close to his side.

"See here!" said Dickon.  "See how these has pushed up, an' these an'
these! An' Eh! Look at these here!"

He threw himself upon his knees and Mary went down beside him.  They
had come upon a whole clump of crocuses burst into purple and orange
and gold.  Mary bent her face down and kissed and kissed them.

"You never kiss a person in that way," she said when she lifted her
head.  "Flowers are so different."

He looked puzzled but smiled.

"Eh!" he said, "I've kissed mother many a time that way when I come in
from th' moor after a day's roamin' an' she stood there at th' door in
th' sun, lookin' so glad an' comfortable." They ran from one part of
the garden to another and found so many wonders that they were obliged
to remind themselves that they must whisper or speak low.  He showed
her swelling leafbuds on rose branches which had seemed dead.  He
showed her ten thousand new green points pushing through the mould.
They put their eager young noses close to the earth and sniffed its
warmed springtime breathing; they dug and pulled and laughed low with
rapture until Mistress Mary's hair was as tumbled as Dickon's and her
cheeks were almost as poppy red as his.

There was every joy on earth in the secret garden that morning, and in
the midst of them came a delight more delightful than all, because it
was more wonderful.  Swiftly something flew across the wall and darted
through the trees to a close grown corner, a little flare of
red-breasted bird with something hanging from its beak.  Dickon stood
quite still and put his hand on Mary almost as if they had suddenly
found themselves laughing in a church.

"We munnot stir," he whispered in broad Yorkshire.  "We munnot scarce
breathe.  I knowed he was mate-huntin' when I seed him last.  It's Ben
Weatherstaff's robin.  He's buildin' his nest.  He'll stay here if us
don't fight him." They settled down softly upon the grass and sat there
without moving.

"Us mustn't seem as if us was watchin' him too close," said Dickon.
"He'd be out with us for good if he got th' notion us was interferin'
now.  He'll be a good bit different till all this is over.  He's
settin' up housekeepin'.  He'll be shyer an' readier to take things
ill.  He's got no time for visitin' an' gossipin'. Us must keep still a
bit an' try to look as if us was grass an' trees an' bushes.  Then when
he's got used to seein' us I'll chirp a bit an' he'll know us'll not be
in his way."

Mistress Mary was not at all sure that she knew, as Dickon seemed to,
how to try to look like grass and trees and bushes.  But he had said
the queer thing as if it were the simplest and most natural thing in
the world, and she felt it must be quite easy to him, and indeed she
watched him for a few minutes carefully, wondering if it was possible
for him to quietly turn green and put out branches and leaves.  But he
only sat wonderfully still, and when he spoke dropped his voice to such
a softness that it was curious that she could hear him, but she could.

"It's part o' th' springtime, this nest-buildin' is," he said.  "I
warrant it's been goin' on in th' same way every year since th' world
was begun.  They've got their way o' thinkin' and doin' things an' a
body had better not meddle.  You can lose a friend in springtime easier
than any other season if you're too curious."

"If we talk about him I can't help looking at him," Mary said as softly
as possible.  "We must talk of something else.  There is something I
want to tell you."

"He'll like it better if us talks o' somethin' else," said Dickon.
"What is it tha's got to tell me?"

"Well--do you know about Colin?" she whispered.

He turned his head to look at her.

"What does tha' know about him?" he asked.

"I've seen him.  I have been to talk to him every day this week.  He
wants me to come.  He says I'm making him forget about being ill and
dying," answered Mary.

Dickon looked actually relieved as soon as the surprise died away from
his round face.

"I am glad o' that," he exclaimed.  "I'm right down glad.  It makes me
easier.  I knowed I must say nothin' about him an' I don't like havin'
to hide things."

"Don't you like hiding the garden?" said Mary.

"I'll never tell about it," he answered.  "But I says to mother,
'Mother,' I says, 'I got a secret to keep.  It's not a bad 'un, tha'
knows that.  It's no worse than hidin' where a bird's nest is.  Tha'
doesn't mind it, does tha'?'"

Mary always wanted to hear about mother.

"What did she say?" she asked, not at all afraid to hear.

Dickon grinned sweet-temperedly.

"It was just like her, what she said," he answered.  "She give my head
a bit of a rub an' laughed an' she says, 'Eh, lad, tha' can have all
th' secrets tha' likes.  I've knowed thee twelve year'.'"

"How did you know about Colin?" asked Mary.

"Everybody as knowed about Mester Craven knowed there was a little lad
as was like to be a cripple, an' they knowed Mester Craven didn't like
him to be talked about.  Folks is sorry for Mester Craven because Mrs.
Craven was such a pretty young lady an' they was so fond of each other.
Mrs. Medlock stops in our cottage whenever she goes to Thwaite an' she
doesn't mind talkin' to mother before us children, because she knows us
has been brought up to be trusty.  How did tha' find out about him?
Martha was in fine trouble th' last time she came home.  She said tha'd
heard him frettin' an' tha' was askin' questions an' she didn't know
what to say."

Mary told him her story about the midnight wuthering of the wind which
had wakened her and about the faint far-off sounds of the complaining
voice which had led her down the dark corridors with her candle and had
ended with her opening of the door of the dimly lighted room with the
carven four-posted bed in the corner.  When she described the small
ivory-white face and the strange black-rimmed eyes Dickon shook his
head.

"Them's just like his mother's eyes, only hers was always laughin',
they say," he said.  "They say as Mr. Craven can't bear to see him when
he's awake an' it's because his eyes is so like his mother's an' yet
looks so different in his miserable bit of a face."

"Do you think he wants to die?" whispered Mary.

"No, but he wishes he'd never been born.  Mother she says that's th'
worst thing on earth for a child.  Them as is not wanted scarce ever
thrives.  Mester Craven he'd buy anythin' as money could buy for th'
poor lad but he'd like to forget as he's on earth.  For one thing, he's
afraid he'll look at him some day and find he's growed hunchback."

"Colin's so afraid of it himself that he won't sit up," said Mary.  "He
says he's always thinking that if he should feel a lump coming he
should go crazy and scream himself to death."

"Eh! he oughtn't to lie there thinkin' things like that," said Dickon.
"No lad could get well as thought them sort o' things."

The fox was lying on the grass close by him, looking up to ask for a
pat now and then, and Dickon bent down and rubbed his neck softly and
thought a few minutes in silence.  Presently he lifted his head and
looked round the garden.

"When first we got in here," he said, "it seemed like everything was
gray.  Look round now and tell me if tha' doesn't see a difference."

Mary looked and caught her breath a little.

"Why!" she cried, "the gray wall is changing.  It is as if a green mist
were creeping over it.  It's almost like a green gauze veil."

"Aye," said Dickon.  "An' it'll be greener and greener till th' gray's
all gone.  Can tha' guess what I was thinkin'?"

"I know it was something nice," said Mary eagerly.  "I believe it was
something about Colin."

"I was thinkin' that if he was out here he wouldn't be watchin' for
lumps to grow on his back; he'd be watchin' for buds to break on th'
rose-bushes, an' he'd likely be healthier," explained Dickon.  "I was
wonderin' if us could ever get him in th' humor to come out here an'
lie under th' trees in his carriage."

"I've been wondering that myself.  I've thought of it almost every time
I've talked to him," said Mary.  "I've wondered if he could keep a
secret and I've wondered if we could bring him here without any one
seeing us.  I thought perhaps you could push his carriage.  The doctor
said he must have fresh air and if he wants us to take him out no one
dare disobey him.  He won't go out for other people and perhaps they
will be glad if he will go out with us.  He could order the gardeners
to keep away so they wouldn't find out."

Dickon was thinking very hard as he scratched Captain's back.

"It'd be good for him, I'll warrant," he said.  "Us'd not be thinkin'
he'd better never been born.  Us'd be just two children watchin' a
garden grow, an' he'd be another.  Two lads an' a little lass just
lookin' on at th' springtime.  I warrant it'd be better than doctor's
stuff."

"He's been lying in his room so long and he's always been so afraid of
his back that it has made him queer," said Mary.  "He knows a good many
things out of books but he doesn't know anything else.  He says he has
been too ill to notice things and he hates going out of doors and hates
gardens and gardeners.  But he likes to hear about this garden because
it is a secret.  I daren't tell him much but he said he wanted to see
it."

"Us'll have him out here sometime for sure," said Dickon.  "I could
push his carriage well enough.  Has tha' noticed how th' robin an' his
mate has been workin' while we've been sittin' here? Look at him
perched on that branch wonderin' where it'd be best to put that twig
he's got in his beak."

He made one of his low whistling calls and the robin turned his head
and looked at him inquiringly, still holding his twig.  Dickon spoke to
him as Ben Weatherstaff did, but Dickon's tone was one of friendly
advice.

"Wheres'ever tha' puts it," he said, "it'll be all right.  Tha' knew
how to build tha' nest before tha' came out o' th' egg.  Get on with
thee, lad.  Tha'st got no time to lose."

"Oh, I do like to hear you talk to him!" Mary said, laughing
delightedly.  "Ben Weatherstaff scolds him and makes fun of him, and he
hops about and looks as if he understood every word, and I know he
likes it.  Ben Weatherstaff says he is so conceited he would rather
have stones thrown at him than not be noticed."

Dickon laughed too and went on talking.

"Tha' knows us won't trouble thee," he said to the robin.  "Us is near
bein' wild things ourselves.  Us is nest-buildin' too, bless thee.
Look out tha' doesn't tell on us."

And though the robin did not answer, because his beak was occupied,
Mary knew that when he flew away with his twig to his own corner of the
garden the darkness of his dew-bright eye meant that he would not tell
their secret for the world.

After a week of rain, and Colin nearly constant, welcome company, Mary is able to return to the secret garden. To Mary, Colin doesn't seem at all ill when he is amused or engaged in something. Mrs. Medlock, though she is somewhat upset by Mary's subterfuge, tells her that the servants are delighted that she has begun visiting Colin, for he is much less difficult and unhappy; she jokes that Mary is like a second nurse. In her talks with Colin, Mary has attempted to be cautious in speaking of the secret garden. She is not yet certain whether he is trustworthy. Mary also wants to determine if it would be possible to take Colin into the garden without anyone knowing that she has done so: in this way he could get the fresh air and sunlight that he so sorely needs. These things have certainly had a remarkable effect upon her: she is already far healthier and happier than she was when she first arrived in England. If Colin could leave the manor, Mary thinks, he could also enjoy the invaluable company of Dickon and the robin. Colin has already said that he would not mind if Dickon looked upon him, for "He's a sort of animal charmer and  a boy animal." On the day of Mary's return to the secret garden, it seems as though spring has finally come to the moor to stay. The buds and shoots are forcing their way up through the soil, and birdsong fills the air. Dickon is already in the garden when she arrives, and he has brought his pet crow, Soot, and his pet fox, Captain, with him. A number of crocuses have come into bloom, and Mary bends to kiss them, much to Dickon's surprise. She remarks that one cannot kiss a person as one kisses a flower, and he replies that he has often kissed his mother with the same kind of simple delight. As the two excitedly wander around the garden, marveling at all the fresh growth, the robin redbreast appears. The robin is building a nest in the garden, and Mary and Dickon must keep very still, as though they themselves were trees, to avoid frightening him. Mary tells Dickon about her new friendship with Colin. Dickon is glad that he will no longer have to hide the fact of Colin from Mary, since he abhors keeping secrets. Everyone in Thwaite village knows of Colin, but they refrain from talking of him out of pity for the widowed Mr. Craven. Dickon remarks that Master Craven cannot look at his son while he is awake because his eyes are so like his mother's. Colin does not wish to die-instead, he wishes that he had never been born, for his father does not love or want him. Colin will never be well, Dickon declares, so long as he thinks of nothing but sickness and death. If only Colin could come to the garden, he would be waiting for the flowers to bloom, rather than for his body to weaken. Dickon and Mary resolve to find a means of bringing Colin to the secret garden.

This chapter marks the advent of spring: the world of the moor is described as "waking up" under its magical influence. As the landscape awakens, Colin and Mary do as well. Human beings and Nature are once again presented as being in directly reciprocal relationship. Mary flings on her clothes and rushes out to meet the spring with a vigor that she has not previously displayed; furthermore, she must "unchain and unbolt and unlock" a series of doors to do so, thus providing an echo of her entry into the secret garden. This echo links the arrival of spring with the opening of the garden: both are themselves forms of renaissance, and both contribute to Mary's rebirth. Dickon's remark that "the springtime would be better  than doctor's stuff" provides another instance of Christian Scientist tenets in the novel. Christian Science, as a philosophy, disapproves of medical intervention. According to Christian Science, no disease is truly corporeal , but is in fact the result of morbid and negative thinking. Colin must have contact with the life of the world if he is to go on living, because this contact will dispel his thoughts of death: Dickon  says that Colin "oughtn't to lie there thinking ... No lad could get well as thought them sorts of things." Susan Sowerby's comment that children who are unwanted never thrive is another permutation of this idea. Since both Colin and Mary have not been loved, both have had childhoods surrounded by a great deal of anxiety and negative thoughts--it is almost as though their parents wished that they would be ill. The fact that Christian Science tenets invariably come from the mouths of the Sowerbys  is an attempt on Hodgson Burnett's part to present these ideas as both "common sense"  and as the product of an unusually close relationship to nature. The author would like us to believe that the wisdom of Christian Science is therefore the wisdom of the world. The purity of Dickon is indicated in this chapter by his hatred of secrets: he is, in some sense, the spirit of frank and simple nature, and his is a native  honesty. By contrast, both Mary and Colin thrive upon secrets. Dickon and Mary's friendship grows in ardor and erotic overtones. Their work in the garden is compared to the work of "nest-building," which of course has implications of both marriage and reproduction. Furthermore, their seclusion in the secret garden conjures up that enjoyed by another couple: Master and Mistress Craven. This echo is strengthened by the fact that Mary bends down and kisses the newly opened crocuses, just as Mistress Craven kissed her roses. Dickon inspires "rapture" in her, a word which implies both ecstasy and a mystical experience. Dickon's intimate connection with divine nature brings Mary closer to knowledge of it.


They found a great deal to do that morning and Mary was late in
returning to the house and was also in such a hurry to get back to her
work that she quite forgot Colin until the last moment.

"Tell Colin that I can't come and see him yet," she said to Martha.
"I'm very busy in the garden."

Martha looked rather frightened.

"Eh! Miss Mary," she said, "it may put him all out of humor when I tell
him that."

But Mary was not as afraid of him as other people were and she was not
a self-sacrificing person.

"I can't stay," she answered.  "Dickon's waiting for me;" and she ran
away.

The afternoon was even lovelier and busier than the morning had been.
Already nearly all the weeds were cleared out of the garden and most of
the roses and trees had been pruned or dug about.  Dickon had brought a
spade of his own and he had taught Mary to use all her tools, so that
by this time it was plain that though the lovely wild place was not
likely to become a "gardener's garden" it would be a wilderness of
growing things before the springtime was over.

"There'll be apple blossoms an' cherry blossoms overhead," Dickon said,
working away with all his might.  "An' there'll be peach an' plum trees
in bloom against th' walls, an' th' grass'll be a carpet o' flowers."

The little fox and the rook were as happy and busy as they were, and
the robin and his mate flew backward and forward like tiny streaks of
lightning.  Sometimes the rook flapped his black wings and soared away
over the tree-tops in the park.  Each time he came back and perched
near Dickon and cawed several times as if he were relating his
adventures, and Dickon talked to him just as he had talked to the
robin.  Once when Dickon was so busy that he did not answer him at
first, Soot flew on to his shoulders and gently tweaked his ear with
his large beak.  When Mary wanted to rest a little Dickon sat down with
her under a tree and once he took his pipe out of his pocket and played
the soft strange little notes and two squirrels appeared on the wall
and looked and listened.

"Tha's a good bit stronger than tha' was," Dickon said, looking at her
as she was digging.  "Tha's beginning to look different, for sure."

Mary was glowing with exercise and good spirits.

"I'm getting fatter and fatter every day," she said quite exultantly.
"Mrs. Medlock will have to get me some bigger dresses.  Martha says my
hair is growing thicker.  It isn't so flat and stringy."

The sun was beginning to set and sending deep gold-colored rays
slanting under the trees when they parted.

"It'll be fine tomorrow," said Dickon.  "I'll be at work by sunrise."

"So will I," said Mary.

She ran back to the house as quickly as her feet would carry her.  She
wanted to tell Colin about Dickon's fox cub and the rook and about what
the springtime had been doing.  She felt sure he would like to hear.
So it was not very pleasant when she opened the door of her room, to
see Martha standing waiting for her with a doleful face.

"What is the matter?" she asked.  "What did Colin say when you told him
I couldn't come?"

"Eh!" said Martha, "I wish tha'd gone.  He was nigh goin' into one o'
his tantrums.  There's been a nice to do all afternoon to keep him
quiet.  He would watch the clock all th' time."

Mary's lips pinched themselves together.  She was no more used to
considering other people than Colin was and she saw no reason why an
ill-tempered boy should interfere with the thing she liked best.  She
knew nothing about the pitifulness of people who had been ill and
nervous and who did not know that they could control their tempers and
need not make other people ill and nervous, too.  When she had had a
headache in India she had done her best to see that everybody else also
had a headache or something quite as bad.  And she felt she was quite
right; but of course now she felt that Colin was quite wrong.

He was not on his sofa when she went into his room.  He was lying flat
on his back in bed and he did not turn his head toward her as she came
in.  This was a bad beginning and Mary marched up to him with her stiff
manner.

"Why didn't you get up?" she said.

"I did get up this morning when I thought you were coming," he
answered, without looking at her.  "I made them put me back in bed this
afternoon.  My back ached and my head ached and I was tired.  Why
didn't you come?" "I was working in the garden with Dickon," said Mary.

Colin frowned and condescended to look at her.

"I won't let that boy come here if you go and stay with him instead of
coming to talk to me," he said.

Mary flew into a fine passion.  She could fly into a passion without
making a noise.  She just grew sour and obstinate and did not care what
happened.

"If you send Dickon away, I'll never come into this room again!" she
retorted.

"You'll have to if I want you," said Colin.

"I won't!" said Mary.

"I'll make you," said Colin.  "They shall drag you in."

"Shall they, Mr. Rajah!" said Mary fiercely.  "They may drag me in but
they can't make me talk when they get me here.  I'll sit and clench my
teeth and never tell you one thing.  I won't even look at you.  I'll
stare at the floor!"

They were a nice agreeable pair as they glared at each other.  If they
had been two little street boys they would have sprung at each other
and had a rough-and-tumble fight.  As it was, they did the next thing
to it.

"You are a selfish thing!" cried Colin.

"What are you?" said Mary.  "Selfish people always say that.  Any one
is selfish who doesn't do what they want.  You're more selfish than I
am.  You're the most selfish boy I ever saw."

"I'm not!" snapped Colin.  "I'm not as selfish as your fine Dickon is!
He keeps you playing in the dirt when he knows I am all by myself.
He's selfish, if you like!"

Mary's eyes flashed fire.

"He's nicer than any other boy that ever lived!" she said.  "He's--he's
like an angel!" It might sound rather silly to say that but she did not
care.

"A nice angel!" Colin sneered ferociously.  "He's a common cottage boy
off the moor!"

"He's better than a common Rajah!" retorted Mary.  "He's a thousand
times better!"

Because she was the stronger of the two she was beginning to get the
better of him.  The truth was that he had never had a fight with any
one like himself in his life and, upon the whole, it was rather good
for him, though neither he nor Mary knew anything about that.  He
turned his head on his pillow and shut his eyes and a big tear was
squeezed out and ran down his cheek.  He was beginning to feel pathetic
and sorry for himself--not for any one else.

"I'm not as selfish as you, because I'm always ill, and I'm sure there
is a lump coming on my back," he said.  "And I am going to die besides."

"You're not!" contradicted Mary unsympathetically.

He opened his eyes quite wide with indignation.  He had never heard
such a thing said before.  He was at once furious and slightly pleased,
if a person could be both at one time.

"I'm not?" he cried.  "I am! You know I am! Everybody says so."

"I don't believe it!" said Mary sourly.  "You just say that to make
people sorry.  I believe you're proud of it.  I don't believe it! If
you were a nice boy it might be true--but you're too nasty!"

In spite of his invalid back Colin sat up in bed in quite a healthy
rage.

"Get out of the room!" he shouted and he caught hold of his pillow and
threw it at her.  He was not strong enough to throw it far and it only
fell at her feet, but Mary's face looked as pinched as a nutcracker.

"I'm going," she said.  "And I won't come back!" She walked to the door
and when she reached it she turned round and spoke again.

"I was going to tell you all sorts of nice things," she said.  "Dickon
brought his fox and his rook and I was going to tell you all about
them.  Now I won't tell you a single thing!"

She marched out of the door and closed it behind her, and there to her
great astonishment she found the trained nurse standing as if she had
been listening and, more amazing still--she was laughing.  She was a
big handsome young woman who ought not to have been a trained nurse at
all, as she could not bear invalids and she was always making excuses
to leave Colin to Martha or any one else who would take her place.
Mary had never liked her, and she simply stood and gazed up at her as
she stood giggling into her handkerchief..

"What are you laughing at?" she asked her.

"At you two young ones," said the nurse.  "It's the best thing that
could happen to the sickly pampered thing to have some one to stand up
to him that's as spoiled as himself;" and she laughed into her
handkerchief again.  "If he'd had a young vixen of a sister to fight
with it would have been the saving of him."

"Is he going to die?"

"I don't know and I don't care," said the nurse.  "Hysterics and temper
are half what ails him."

"What are hysterics?" asked Mary.

"You'll find out if you work him into a tantrum after this--but at any
rate you've given him something to have hysterics about, and I'm glad
of it."

Mary went back to her room not feeling at all as she had felt when she
had come in from the garden.  She was cross and disappointed but not at
all sorry for Colin.  She had looked forward to telling him a great
many things and she had meant to try to make up her mind whether it
would be safe to trust him with the great secret.  She had been
beginning to think it would be, but now she had changed her mind
entirely.  She would never tell him and he could stay in his room and
never get any fresh air and die if he liked! It would serve him right!
She felt so sour and unrelenting that for a few minutes she almost
forgot about Dickon and the green veil creeping over the world and the
soft wind blowing down from the moor.

Martha was waiting for her and the trouble in her face had been
temporarily replaced by interest and curiosity.  There was a wooden box
on the table and its cover had been removed and revealed that it was
full of neat packages.

"Mr. Craven sent it to you," said Martha.  "It looks as if it had
picture-books in it."

Mary remembered what he had asked her the day she had gone to his room.
"Do you want anything--dolls--toys--books?" She opened the package
wondering if he had sent a doll, and also wondering what she should do
with it if he had.  But he had not sent one.  There were several
beautiful books such as Colin had, and two of them were about gardens
and were full of pictures.  There were two or three games and there was
a beautiful little writing-case with a gold monogram on it and a gold
pen and inkstand.

Everything was so nice that her pleasure began to crowd her anger out
of her mind.  She had not expected him to remember her at all and her
hard little heart grew quite warm.

"I can write better than I can print," she said, "and the first thing I
shall write with that pen will be a letter to tell him I am much
obliged."

If she had been friends with Colin she would have run to show him her
presents at once, and they would have looked at the pictures and read
some of the gardening books and perhaps tried playing the games, and he
would have enjoyed himself so much he would never once have thought he
was going to die or have put his hand on his spine to see if there was
a lump coming.  He had a way of doing that which she could not bear.
It gave her an uncomfortable frightened feeling because he always
looked so frightened himself.  He said that if he felt even quite a
little lump some day he should know his hunch had begun to grow.
Something he had heard Mrs. Medlock whispering to the nurse had given
him the idea and he had thought over it in secret until it was quite
firmly fixed in his mind.  Mrs. Medlock had said his father's back had
begun to show its crookedness in that way when he was a child.  He had
never told any one but Mary that most of his "tantrums" as they called
them grew out of his hysterical hidden fear.  Mary had been sorry for
him when he had told her.

"He always began to think about it when he was cross or tired," she
said to herself.  "And he has been cross today.  Perhaps--perhaps he
has been thinking about it all afternoon."

She stood still, looking down at the carpet and thinking.

"I said I would never go back again--" she hesitated, knitting her
brows--"but perhaps, just perhaps, I will go and see--if he wants
me--in the morning.  Perhaps he'll try to throw his pillow at me again,
but--I think--I'll go."

When Mary goes back to the manor for lunch, Martha tells her that Colin is anxiously awaiting her visit. Mary replies that she cannot possibly see him at the moment, as Dickon is waiting for her; with that, she rushes back to the garden. Martha warns her that Colin is going to be thrown into a terrible humor if she refuses him. Martha is sitting in Mary's room upon her return. Mary is greatly irritated to hear that Colin has nearly thrown a tantrum in waiting for her. Neither of the children is accustomed to considering the needs of anyone but themselves, and Mary does not see how her own selfishness, in wanting Dickon's company as Colin wants hers, is like Colin's. Mary goes to see Colin in his room, and finds him lying very still in bed. His stillness is ominous, as he had begun to sit up on the divan during their week indoors; the divan is far better than the bed for his weakened back. Colin threatens to forbid Dickon to come to Misselthwaite if Mary elects to spend time with him rather than with Colin. Mary is furious, and tells Colin that she will never speak to him again if he interferes with her friendship with Dickon. The two have a heated argument about Dickon: Colin calls him common , to which Mary replies that he is an angel, "a thousand times better than a common rajah. This is the first time anyone has argued with Colin in all his life. When Colin reminds Mary that he is going to die, she replies vehemently that he isn't dying at all-he is merely feeling sorry for himself and pleading for sympathy and attention. She storms out of his room and discovers Colin's nurse, who, having found their argument terribly amusing, is laughing to herself in the hallway. Mary finds a number of packages, sent to her by Master Craven, waiting for her in her room. There are a number of beautiful picture books, and a few games, and a golden pen and inkstand. Mary is delighted that he has remembered her at all. As she is contemplating showing her lovely gifts to Colin, she remembers that he once told her that his hysterical tantrums come upon him whenever he imagines that he can feel the beginnings of a lump on his back. His nervousness especially happens when he is cross or tired, and Mary realizes that he may have been thinking of his hump, and of his imminent death, during all the hours he was awaiting her return to Misselthwaite. Mary decides that she may relent, and see Colin in the morning


She had got up very early in the morning and had worked hard in the
garden and she was tired and sleepy, so as soon as Martha had brought
her supper and she had eaten it, she was glad to go to bed.  As she
laid her head on the pillow she murmured to herself:

"I'll go out before breakfast and work with Dickon and then
afterward--I believe--I'll go to see him."

She thought it was the middle of the night when she was awakened by
such dreadful sounds that she jumped out of bed in an instant.  What
was it--what was it? The next minute she felt quite sure she knew.
Doors were opened and shut and there were hurrying feet in the
corridors and some one was crying and screaming at the same time,
screaming and crying in a horrible way.

"It's Colin," she said.  "He's having one of those tantrums the nurse
called hysterics.  How awful it sounds."

As she listened to the sobbing screams she did not wonder that people
were so frightened that they gave him his own way in everything rather
than hear them.  She put her hands over her ears and felt sick and
shivering.

"I don't know what to do.  I don't know what to do," she kept saying.
"I can't bear it."

Once she wondered if he would stop if she dared go to him and then she
remembered how he had driven her out of the room and thought that
perhaps the sight of her might make him worse.  Even when she pressed
her hands more tightly over her ears she could not keep the awful
sounds out.  She hated them so and was so terrified by them that
suddenly they began to make her angry and she felt as if she should
like to fly into a tantrum herself and frighten him as he was
frightening her.  She was not used to any one's tempers but her own.
She took her hands from her ears and sprang up and stamped her foot.

"He ought to be stopped! Somebody ought to make him stop!  Somebody
ought to beat him!" she cried out.

Just then she heard feet almost running down the corridor and her door
opened and the nurse came in.  She was not laughing now by any means.
She even looked rather pale.

"He's worked himself into hysterics," she said in a great hurry.
"He'll do himself harm.  No one can do anything with him.  You come and
try, like a good child.  He likes you."

"He turned me out of the room this morning," said Mary, stamping her
foot with excitement.

The stamp rather pleased the nurse.  The truth was that she had been
afraid she might find Mary crying and hiding her head under the
bed-clothes.

"That's right," she said.  "You're in the right humor.  You go and
scold him.  Give him something new to think of.  Do go, child, as quick
as ever you can."

It was not until afterward that Mary realized that the thing had been
funny as well as dreadful--that it was funny that all the grown-up
people were so frightened that they came to a little girl just because
they guessed she was almost as bad as Colin himself.

She flew along the corridor and the nearer she got to the screams the
higher her temper mounted.  She felt quite wicked by the time she
reached the door.  She slapped it open with her hand and ran across the
room to the four-posted bed.

"You stop!" she almost shouted.  "You stop! I hate you!  Everybody
hates you! I wish everybody would run out of the house and let you
scream yourself to death! You will scream yourself to death in a
minute, and I wish you would!" A nice sympathetic child could neither
have thought nor said such things, but it just happened that the shock
of hearing them was the best possible thing for this hysterical boy
whom no one had ever dared to restrain or contradict.

He had been lying on his face beating his pillow with his hands and he
actually almost jumped around, he turned so quickly at the sound of the
furious little voice.  His face looked dreadful, white and red and
swollen, and he was gasping and choking; but savage little Mary did not
care an atom.

"If you scream another scream," she said, "I'll scream too--and I can
scream louder than you can and I'll frighten you, I'll frighten you!"

He actually had stopped screaming because she had startled him so.  The
scream which had been coming almost choked him.  The tears were
streaming down his face and he shook all over.

"I can't stop!" he gasped and sobbed.  "I can't--I can't!"

"You can!" shouted Mary.  "Half that ails you is hysterics and
temper--just hysterics--hysterics--hysterics!" and she stamped each
time she said it.

"I felt the lump--I felt it," choked out Colin.  "I knew I should.  I
shall have a hunch on my back and then I shall die," and he began to
writhe again and turned on his face and sobbed and wailed but he didn't
scream.

"You didn't feel a lump!" contradicted Mary fiercely.  "If you did it
was only a hysterical lump.  Hysterics makes lumps.  There's nothing
the matter with your horrid back--nothing but hysterics! Turn over and
let me look at it!"

She liked the word "hysterics" and felt somehow as if it had an effect
on him.  He was probably like herself and had never heard it before.

"Nurse," she commanded, "come here and show me his back this minute!"

The nurse, Mrs. Medlock and Martha had been standing huddled together
near the door staring at her, their mouths half open.  All three had
gasped with fright more than once.  The nurse came forward as if she
were half afraid.  Colin was heaving with great breathless sobs.

"Perhaps he--he won't let me," she hesitated in a low voice.

Colin heard her, however, and he gasped out between two sobs:

"Sh-show her! She-she'll see then!"

It was a poor thin back to look at when it was bared.  Every rib could
be counted and every joint of the spine, though Mistress Mary did not
count them as she bent over and examined them with a solemn savage
little face.  She looked so sour and old-fashioned that the nurse
turned her head aside to hide the twitching of her mouth.  There was
just a minute's silence, for even Colin tried to hold his breath while
Mary looked up and down his spine, and down and up, as intently as if
she had been the great doctor from London.

"There's not a single lump there!" she said at last.  "There's not a
lump as big as a pin--except backbone lumps, and you can only feel them
because you're thin.  I've got backbone lumps myself, and they used to
stick out as much as yours do, until I began to get fatter, and I am
not fat enough yet to hide them.  There's not a lump as big as a pin!
If you ever say there is again, I shall laugh!"

No one but Colin himself knew what effect those crossly spoken childish
words had on him.  If he had ever had any one to talk to about his
secret terrors--if he had ever dared to let himself ask questions--if
he had had childish companions and had not lain on his back in the huge
closed house, breathing an atmosphere heavy with the fears of people
who were most of them ignorant and tired of him, he would have found
out that most of his fright and illness was created by himself.  But he
had lain and thought of himself and his aches and weariness for hours
and days and months and years.  And now that an angry unsympathetic
little girl insisted obstinately that he was not as ill as he thought
he was he actually felt as if she might be speaking the truth.

"I didn't know," ventured the nurse, "that he thought he had a lump on
his spine.  His back is weak because he won't try to sit up.  I could
have told him there was no lump there." Colin gulped and turned his
face a little to look at her.

"C-could you?" he said pathetically.

"Yes, sir."

"There!" said Mary, and she gulped too.

Colin turned on his face again and but for his long-drawn broken
breaths, which were the dying down of his storm of sobbing, he lay
still for a minute, though great tears streamed down his face and wet
the pillow.  Actually the tears meant that a curious great relief had
come to him.  Presently he turned and looked at the nurse again and
strangely enough he was not like a Rajah at all as he spoke to her.

"Do you think--I could--live to grow up?" he said.

The nurse was neither clever nor soft-hearted but she could repeat some
of the London doctor's words.

"You probably will if you will do what you are told to do and not give
way to your temper, and stay out a great deal in the fresh air."

Colin's tantrum had passed and he was weak and worn out with crying and
this perhaps made him feel gentle.  He put out his hand a little toward
Mary, and I am glad to say that, her own tantum having passed, she was
softened too and met him half-way with her hand, so that it was a sort
of making up.

"I'll--I'll go out with you, Mary," he said.  "I shan't hate fresh air
if we can find--" He remembered just in time to stop himself from
saying "if we can find the secret garden" and he ended, "I shall like
to go out with you if Dickon will come and push my chair.  I do so want
to see Dickon and the fox and the crow."

The nurse remade the tumbled bed and shook and straightened the
pillows.  Then she made Colin a cup of beef tea and gave a cup to Mary,
who really was very glad to get it after her excitement.  Mrs. Medlock
and Martha gladly slipped away, and after everything was neat and calm
and in order the nurse looked as if she would very gladly slip away
also.  She was a healthy young woman who resented being robbed of her
sleep and she yawned quite openly as she looked at Mary, who had pushed
her big footstool close to the four-posted bed and was holding Colin's
hand.

"You must go back and get your sleep out," she said.  "He'll drop off
after a while--if he's not too upset.  Then I'll lie down myself in the
next room."

"Would you like me to sing you that song I learned from my Ayah?" Mary
whispered to Colin.

His hand pulled hers gently and he turned his tired eyes on her
appealingly.

"Oh, yes!" he answered.  "It's such a soft song.  I shall go to sleep
in a minute."

"I will put him to sleep," Mary said to the yawning nurse.  "You can go
if you like."

"Well," said the nurse, with an attempt at reluctance.  "If he doesn't
go to sleep in half an hour you must call me."

"Very well," answered Mary.

The nurse was out of the room in a minute and as soon as she was gone
Colin pulled Mary's hand again.

"I almost told," he said; "but I stopped myself in time.  I won't talk
and I'll go to sleep, but you said you had a whole lot of nice things
to tell me.  Have you--do you think you have found out anything at all
about the way into the secret garden?"

Mary looked at his poor little tired face and swollen eyes and her
heart relented.

"Ye-es," she answered, "I think I have.  And if you will go to sleep I
will tell you tomorrow." His hand quite trembled.

"Oh, Mary!" he said.  "Oh, Mary! If I could get into it I think I
should live to grow up! Do you suppose that instead of singing the Ayah
song--you could just tell me softly as you did that first day what you
imagine it looks like inside? I am sure it will make me go to sleep."

"Yes," answered Mary.  "Shut your eyes."

He closed his eyes and lay quite still and she held his hand and began
to speak very slowly and in a very low voice.

"I think it has been left alone so long--that it has grown all into a
lovely tangle.  I think the roses have climbed and climbed and climbed
until they hang from the branches and walls and creep over the
ground--almost like a strange gray mist.  Some of them have died but
many--are alive and when the summer comes there will be curtains and
fountains of roses.  I think the ground is full of daffodils and
snowdrops and lilies and iris working their way out of the dark.  Now
the spring has begun--perhaps--perhaps--"

The soft drone of her voice was making him stiller and stiller and she
saw it and went on.

"Perhaps they are coming up through the grass--perhaps there are
clusters of purple crocuses and gold ones--even now.  Perhaps the
leaves are beginning to break out and uncurl--and perhaps--the gray is
changing and a green gauze veil is creeping--and creeping
over--everything. And the birds are coming to look at it--because it
is--so safe and still.  And perhaps--perhaps--perhaps--" very softly
and slowly indeed, "the robin has found a mate--and is building a nest."

And Colin was asleep.

That night, Mary is awakened by the sound of screams and cries from Colin's distant room. Initially, Mary is quite frightened by his cries, but grows more and more furious with Colin as his tantrum continues. Colin's nurse rushes to Mary's room and begs her to come and scold him, or at least distract him, before he does himself harm. Mary is much amused that all of the adults in the manor are turning to her for help-if only because they suspect that she is even more difficult than Colin himself. Mary bursts into Colin's chamber and, in a childish rage, tells him that she hates him, and hopes that he will indeed scream himself to death. Colin is so shocked that he stops screaming and simply gapes at her. He tells her that he is certain that his back is beginning to grow a hump, and that he soon will die. Mary scoffs at this idea, and demands to see Colin's back. He fearfully shows it to her. Mary, finding nothing whatsoever the matter, tells Colin that his back is perfectly straight, and she will laugh at him if he says otherwise. This ultimatum has a transformative effect on Colin, who has always been told how frail and doomed he is; Mary is the first to suggest that his illness is, perhaps, largely the work of his imagination. Colin takes Mary's hand and says that he will go out into the fresh air if she and Dickon agree to accompany him. Mary does agree, and lulls him to sleep with another story of the secret garden.

Colin and Mary are presented as being a perfect match for one another. This is true insofar as they are both appallingly difficult, with no concern for the wishes of others. Mary, in the words of the nurse, is "as spoiled as  himself"; her experience of being pampered is why she, and not the adults of the manor, is summoned to control him. It is important to note, however, that the Mary of this chapter is very different from the Mary whom the reader met at the beginning of the novel. She is capable, upon reflection, of feeling sympathy for Colin - she is even able to change her mind about whether or not she will continue to visit him. Such sympathy and consideration would have been unthinkable for "Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary. Mary is also good for Colin because she is bold enough  to contradict him when he says that he is going to become a hunchback and die an early death. It is essential he have his negative thoughts contradicted, so that positive ones may be put in their place; this opposition is one of the central tenets of both New Thought and Christian Science. Underlying this idea is the belief that nothing truly ails Colin's body - his disease is entirely a product of his mind. Mary's impassioned repetition of the word "hysterics" indicates that Hodgson Burnett's preoccupation with psychosomatic illness may have another, unacknowledged, source. In 1896, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and the neurologist Joseph Breuer published the Studies on Hysteria; the book was soon translated into a number of languages and gained in popularity all over the world. For Freud and Breuer, hysteria referred to a psychological disorder in which an idea or fantasy that had been repressed  by the mind found alternative expression in the body. While it might appear that the hysteric had an organic illness , Freud and Breuer maintained that its real source was in the hysteric's unconscious. For Freud, the hysteric's repressed fantasy was always sexual in nature; furthermore, he contended that the overwhelming majority of hysterics were women. Mary's calling Colin a "hysteric" therefore feminizes him - he is weak, and frightened, and bedridden. This gives the reader new insight into Mary's statement that Colin is "not at all like Dickon. Dickon is extremely strong, masculine, and vigorous - he is of the moor, while Colin is aligned with the feminine  Indian Rajah. It is almost as though Colin and Dickon are in an implicit battle for Mary's romantic affections--one which Colin is certain to lose. For Mary, Dickon is "an angel"--he is divine


Of course Mary did not waken early the next morning.  She slept late
because she was tired, and when Martha brought her breakfast she told
her that though.  Colin was quite quiet he was ill and feverish as he
always was after he had worn himself out with a fit of crying.  Mary
ate her breakfast slowly as she listened.

"He says he wishes tha' would please go and see him as soon as tha'
can," Martha said.  "It's queer what a fancy he's took to thee.  Tha'
did give it him last night for sure--didn't tha? Nobody else would have
dared to do it.  Eh! poor lad! He's been spoiled till salt won't save
him.  Mother says as th' two worst things as can happen to a child is
never to have his own way--or always to have it.  She doesn't know
which is th' worst.  Tha' was in a fine temper tha'self, too.  But he
says to me when I went into his room, 'Please ask Miss Mary if she'll
please come an' talk to me?' Think o' him saying please! Will you go,
Miss?" "I'll run and see Dickon first," said Mary.  "No, I'll go and
see Colin first and tell him--I know what I'll tell him," with a sudden
inspiration.

She had her hat on when she appeared in Colin's room and for a second
he looked disappointed.  He was in bed.  His face was pitifully white
and there were dark circles round his eyes.

"I'm glad you came," he said.  "My head aches and I ache all over
because I'm so tired.  Are you going somewhere?"

Mary went and leaned against his bed.

"I won't be long," she said.  "I'm going to Dickon, but I'll come back.
Colin, it's--it's something about the garden."

His whole face brightened and a little color came into it.

"Oh! is it?" he cried out.  "I dreamed about it all night I heard you
say something about gray changing into green, and I dreamed I was
standing in a place all filled with trembling little green leaves--and
there were birds on nests everywhere and they looked so soft and still.
I'll lie and think about it until you come back."

In five minutes Mary was with Dickon in their garden.  The fox and the
crow were with him again and this time he had brought two tame
squirrels.  "I came over on the pony this mornin'," he said.  "Eh! he
is a good little chap--Jump is! I brought these two in my pockets.
This here one he's called Nut an' this here other one's called Shell."

When he said "Nut" one squirrel leaped on to his right shoulder and
when he said "Shell" the other one leaped on to his left shoulder.

When they sat down on the grass with Captain curled at their feet, Soot
solemnly listening on a tree and Nut and Shell nosing about close to
them, it seemed to Mary that it would be scarcely bearable to leave
such delightfulness, but when she began to tell her story somehow the
look in Dickon's funny face gradually changed her mind.  She could see
he felt sorrier for Colin than she did.  He looked up at the sky and
all about him.

"Just listen to them birds--th' world seems full of 'em--all whistlin'
an' pipin'," he said.  "Look at 'em dartin' about, an' hearken at 'em
callin' to each other.  Come springtime seems like as if all th'
world's callin'. The leaves is uncurlin' so you can see 'em--an', my
word, th' nice smells there is about!" sniffing with his happy
turned-up nose.  "An' that poor lad lyin' shut up an' seein' so little
that he gets to thinkin' o' things as sets him screamin'. Eh! my!  we
mun get him out here--we mun get him watchin' an listenin' an' sniffin'
up th' air an' get him just soaked through wi' sunshine.  An' we munnot
lose no time about it."

When he was very much interested he often spoke quite broad Yorkshire
though at other times he tried to modify his dialect so that Mary could
better understand.  But she loved his broad Yorkshire and had in fact
been trying to learn to speak it herself.  So she spoke a little now.

"Aye, that we mun," she said (which meant "Yes, indeed, we must").
"I'll tell thee what us'll do first," she proceeded, and Dickon
grinned, because when the little wench tried to twist her tongue into
speaking Yorkshire it amused him very much.  "He's took a graidely
fancy to thee.  He wants to see thee and he wants to see Soot an'
Captain.  When I go back to the house to talk to him I'll ax him if
tha' canna' come an' see him tomorrow mornin'--an'.  bring tha'
creatures wi' thee--an' then--in a bit, when there's more leaves out,
an' happen a bud or two, we'll get him to come out an' tha' shall push
him in his chair an' we'll bring him here an' show him everything."

When she stopped she was quite proud of herself.  She had never made a
long speech in Yorkshire before and she had remembered very well.

"Tha' mun talk a bit o' Yorkshire like that to Mester Colin," Dickon
chuckled.  "Tha'll make him laugh an' there's nowt as good for ill folk
as laughin' is.  Mother says she believes as half a hour's good laugh
every mornin' 'ud cure a chap as was makin' ready for typhus fever."

"I'm going to talk Yorkshire to him this very day," said Mary,
chuckling herself.

The garden had reached the time when every day and every night it
seemed as if Magicians were passing through it drawing loveliness out
of the earth and the boughs with wands.  It was hard to go away and
leave it all, particularly as Nut had actually crept on to her dress
and Shell had scrambled down the trunk of the apple-tree they sat under
and stayed there looking at her with inquiring eyes.  But she went back
to the house and when she sat down close to Colin's bed he began to
sniff as Dickon did though not in such an experienced way.

"You smell like flowers and--and fresh things," he cried out quite
joyously.  "What is it you smell of? It's cool and warm and sweet all
at the same time."

"It's th' wind from th' moor," said Mary.  "It comes o' sittin' on th'
grass under a tree wi' Dickon an' wi' Captain an' Soot an' Nut an'
Shell.  It's th' springtime an' out o' doors an' sunshine as smells so
graidely."

She said it as broadly as she could, and you do not know how broadly
Yorkshire sounds until you have heard some one speak it.  Colin began
to laugh.

"What are you doing?" he said.  "I never heard you talk like that
before.  How funny it sounds."

"I'm givin' thee a bit o' Yorkshire," answered Mary triumphantly.  "I
canna' talk as graidely as Dickon an' Martha can but tha' sees I can
shape a bit.  Doesn't tha' understand a bit o' Yorkshire when tha'
hears it? An' tha' a Yorkshire lad thysel' bred an' born! Eh! I wonder
tha'rt not ashamed o' thy face."

And then she began to laugh too and they both laughed until they could
not stop themselves and they laughed until the room echoed and Mrs.
Medlock opening the door to come in drew back into the corridor and
stood listening amazed.

"Well, upon my word!" she said, speaking rather broad Yorkshire herself
because there was no one to hear her and she was so astonished.
"Whoever heard th' like! Whoever on earth would ha' thought it!"

There was so much to talk about.  It seemed as if Colin could never
hear enough of Dickon and Captain and Soot and Nut and Shell and the
pony whose name was Jump.  Mary had run round into the wood with Dickon
to see Jump.  He was a tiny little shaggy moor pony with thick locks
hanging over his eyes and with a pretty face and a nuzzling velvet
nose.  He was rather thin with living on moor grass but he was as tough
and wiry as if the muscle in his little legs had been made of steel
springs.  He had lifted his head and whinnied softly the moment he saw
Dickon and he had trotted up to him and put his head across his
shoulder and then Dickon had talked into his ear and Jump had talked
back in odd little whinnies and puffs and snorts.  Dickon had made him
give Mary his small front hoof and kiss her on her cheek with his
velvet muzzle.

"Does he really understand everything Dickon says?" Colin asked.

"It seems as if he does," answered Mary.  "Dickon says anything will
understand if you're friends with it for sure, but you have to be
friends for sure."

Colin lay quiet a little while and his strange gray eyes seemed to be
staring at the wall, but Mary saw he was thinking.

"I wish I was friends with things," he said at last, "but I'm not.  I
never had anything to be friends with, and I can't bear people."

"Can't you bear me?" asked Mary.

"Yes, I can," he answered.  "It's funny but I even like you."

"Ben Weatherstaff said I was like him," said Mary.  "He said he'd
warrant we'd both got the same nasty tempers.  I think you are like him
too.  We are all three alike--you and I and Ben Weatherstaff.  He said
we were neither of us much to look at and we were as sour as we looked.
But I don't feel as sour as I used to before I knew the robin and
Dickon."

"Did you feel as if you hated people?"

"Yes," answered Mary without any affectation.  "I should have detested
you if I had seen you before I saw the robin and Dickon."

Colin put out his thin hand and touched her.

"Mary," he said, "I wish I hadn't said what I did about sending Dickon
away.  I hated you when you said he was like an angel and I laughed at
you but--but perhaps he is."

"Well, it was rather funny to say it," she admitted frankly, "because
his nose does turn up and he has a big mouth and his clothes have
patches all over them and he talks broad Yorkshire, but--but if an
angel did come to Yorkshire and live on the moor--if there was a
Yorkshire angel--I believe he'd understand the green things and know
how to make them grow and he would know how to talk to the wild
creatures as Dickon does and they'd know he was friends for sure."

"I shouldn't mind Dickon looking at me," said Colin; "I want to see
him."

"I'm glad you said that," answered Mary, "because--because--"

Quite suddenly it came into her mind that this was the minute to tell
him.  Colin knew something new was coming.

"Because what?" he cried eagerly.

Mary was so anxious that she got up from her stool and came to him and
caught hold of both his hands.

"Can I trust you? I trusted Dickon because birds trusted him.  Can I
trust you--for sure--for sure?" she implored.

Her face was so solemn that he almost whispered his answer.

"Yes--yes!"

"Well, Dickon will come to see you tomorrow morning, and he'll bring
his creatures with him."

"Oh! Oh!" Colin cried out in delight.

"But that's not all," Mary went on, almost pale with solemn excitement.
"The rest is better.  There is a door into the garden.  I found it.  It
is under the ivy on the wall."

If he had been a strong healthy boy Colin would probably have shouted
"Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!" but he was weak and rather hysterical; his
eyes grew bigger and bigger and he gasped for breath.

"Oh! Mary!" he cried out with a half sob.  "Shall I see it? Shall I get
into it? Shall I live to get into it?" and he clutched her hands and
dragged her toward him.

"Of course you'll see it!" snapped Mary indignantly.  "Of course you'll
live to get into it! Don't be silly!"

And she was so un-hysterical and natural and childish that she brought
him to his senses and he began to laugh at himself and a few minutes
afterward she was sitting on her stool again telling him not what she
imagined the secret garden to be like but what it really was, and
Colin's aches and tiredness were forgotten and he was listening
enraptured.

"It is just what you thought it would be," he said at last.  "It sounds
just as if you had really seen it.  You know I said that when you told
me first."

Mary hesitated about two minutes and then boldly spoke the truth.

"I had seen it--and I had been in," she said.  "I found the key and got
in weeks ago.  But I daren't tell you--I daren't because I was so
afraid I couldn't trust you--for sure!"

Mary wakes late the next morning, and Martha tells her that Colin wants very much to see her-he does not, however, command her to visit him, which is a great step for him. Mary goes to him briefly, to tell him that she may have found the secret garden; she then rushes out to find Dickon. Dickon is already in the secret garden when she arrives, surrounded by his wild pets: the fox, the crow, a moor pony named Jump, and two squirrels named Nut and Shell. Mary tells him the story of Colin's tantrum, and Dickon becomes even more determined to bring Colin to the garden. Mary replies, in Yorkshire dialect, that he and his pets ought first come to visit Colin in the manor house. Dickon agrees. Back at the manor, Mary tells Colin of this plan. The two speak of their mutual friendlessness, for they have always disliked people, and been disliked by them. They also speak of how this dislike is changing, for they are growing fond of each other, and of Dickon, and of the robin. Mary then finally trusts Colin enough to tell him that she and Dickon have been inside the secret garden, and that he may soon go there


Of course Dr. Craven had been sent for the morning after Colin had had
his tantrum.  He was always sent for at once when such a thing occurred
and he always found, when he arrived, a white shaken boy lying on his
bed, sulky and still so hysterical that he was ready to break into
fresh sobbing at the least word.  In fact, Dr. Craven dreaded and
detested the difficulties of these visits.  On this occasion he was
away from Misselthwaite Manor until afternoon.

"How is he?" he asked Mrs. Medlock rather irritably when he arrived.
"He will break a blood-vessel in one of those fits some day.  The boy
is half insane with hysteria and self-indulgence."

"Well, sir," answered Mrs. Medlock, "you'll scarcely believe your eyes
when you see him.  That plain sour-faced child that's almost as bad as
himself has just bewitched him.  How she's done it there's no telling.
The Lord knows she's nothing to look at and you scarcely ever hear her
speak, but she did what none of us dare do.  She just flew at him like
a little cat last night, and stamped her feet and ordered him to stop
screaming, and somehow she startled him so that he actually did stop,
and this afternoon--well just come up and see, sir.  It's past
crediting."

The scene which Dr. Craven beheld when he entered his patient's room
was indeed rather astonishing to him.  As Mrs. Medlock opened the door
he heard laughing and chattering.  Colin was on his sofa in his
dressing-gown and he was sitting up quite straight looking at a picture
in one of the garden books and talking to the plain child who at that
moment could scarcely be called plain at all because her face was so
glowing with enjoyment.

"Those long spires of blue ones--we'll have a lot of those," Colin was
announcing.  "They're called Del-phin-iums."

"Dickon says they're larkspurs made big and grand," cried Mistress
Mary.  "There are clumps there already."

Then they saw Dr. Craven and stopped.  Mary became quite still and
Colin looked fretful.

"I am sorry to hear you were ill last night, my boy," Dr. Craven said a
trifle nervously.  He was rather a nervous man.

"I'm better now--much better," Colin answered, rather like a Rajah.
"I'm going out in my chair in a day or two if it is fine.  I want some
fresh air."

Dr. Craven sat down by him and felt his pulse and looked at him
curiously.

"It must be a very fine day," he said, "and you must be very careful
not to tire yourself."

"Fresh air won't tire me," said the young Rajah.

As there had been occasions when this same young gentleman had shrieked
aloud with rage and had insisted that fresh air would give him cold and
kill him, it is not to be wondered at that his doctor felt somewhat
startled.

"I thought you did not like fresh air," he said.

"I don't when I am by myself," replied the Rajah; "but my cousin is
going out with me."

"And the nurse, of course?" suggested Dr. Craven.

"No, I will not have the nurse," so magnificently that Mary could not
help remembering how the young native Prince had looked with his
diamonds and emeralds and pearls stuck all over him and the great
rubies on the small dark hand he had waved to command his servants to
approach with salaams and receive his orders.

"My cousin knows how to take care of me.  I am always better when she
is with me.  She made me better last night.  A very strong boy I know
will push my carriage."

Dr. Craven felt rather alarmed.  If this tiresome hysterical boy should
chance to get well he himself would lose all chance of inheriting
Misselthwaite; but he was not an unscrupulous man, though he was a weak
one, and he did not intend to let him run into actual danger.

"He must be a strong boy and a steady boy," he said.  "And I must know
something about him.  Who is he? What is his name?"

"It's Dickon," Mary spoke up suddenly.  She felt somehow that everybody
who knew the moor must know Dickon.  And she was right, too.  She saw
that in a moment Dr. Craven's serious face relaxed into a relieved
smile.

"Oh, Dickon," he said.  "If it is Dickon you will be safe enough.  He's
as strong as a moor pony, is Dickon."

"And he's trusty," said Mary.  "He's th' trustiest lad i' Yorkshire."
She had been talking Yorkshire to Colin and she forgot herself.

"Did Dickon teach you that?" asked Dr. Craven, laughing outright.

"I'm learning it as if it was French," said Mary rather coldly.  "It's
like a native dialect in India.  Very clever people try to learn them.
I like it and so does Colin." "Well, well," he said.  "If it amuses you
perhaps it won't do you any harm.  Did you take your bromide last
night, Colin?"

"No," Colin answered.  "I wouldn't take it at first and after Mary made
me quiet she talked me to sleep--in a low voice--about the spring
creeping into a garden."

"That sounds soothing," said Dr. Craven, more perplexed than ever and
glancing sideways at Mistress Mary sitting on her stool and looking
down silently at the carpet.  "You are evidently better, but you must
remember--"

"I don't want to remember," interrupted the Rajah, appearing again.
"When I lie by myself and remember I begin to have pains everywhere and
I think of things that make me begin to scream because I hate them so.
If there was a doctor anywhere who could make you forget you were ill
instead of remembering it I would have him brought here." And he waved
a thin hand which ought really to have been covered with royal signet
rings made of rubies.  "It is because my cousin makes me forget that
she makes me better."

Dr. Craven had never made such a short stay after a "tantrum"; usually
he was obliged to remain a very long time and do a great many things.
This afternoon he did not give any medicine or leave any new orders and
he was spared any disagreeable scenes.  When he went downstairs he
looked very thoughtful and when he talked to Mrs. Medlock in the
library she felt that he was a much puzzled man.

"Well, sir," she ventured, "could you have believed it?"

"It is certainly a new state of affairs," said the doctor.  "And
there's no denying it is better than the old one."

"I believe Susan Sowerby's right--I do that," said Mrs. Medlock.  "I
stopped in her cottage on my way to Thwaite yesterday and had a bit of
talk with her.  And she says to me, 'Well, Sarah Ann, she mayn't be a
good child, an' she mayn't be a pretty one, but she's a child, an'
children needs children.' We went to school together, Susan Sowerby and
me."

"She's the best sick nurse I know," said Dr. Craven.  "When I find her
in a cottage I know the chances are that I shall save my patient."

Mrs. Medlock smiled.  She was fond of Susan Sowerby.

"She's got a way with her, has Susan," she went on quite volubly.
"I've been thinking all morning of one thing she said yesterday.  She
says, 'Once when I was givin' th' children a bit of a preach after
they'd been fightin' I ses to 'em all, "When I was at school my
jography told as th' world was shaped like a orange an' I found out
before I was ten that th' whole orange doesn't belong to nobody.  No
one owns more than his bit of a quarter an' there's times it seems like
there's not enow quarters to go round.  But don't you--none o'
you--think as you own th' whole orange or you'll find out you're
mistaken, an' you won't find it out without hard knocks."  'What
children learns from children,' she says, 'is that there's no sense in
grabbin' at th' whole orange--peel an' all.  If you do you'll likely
not get even th' pips, an' them's too bitter to eat.'"

"She's a shrewd woman," said Dr. Craven, putting on his coat.

"Well, she's got a way of saying things," ended Mrs. Medlock, much
pleased.  "Sometimes I've said to her, 'Eh! Susan, if you was a
different woman an' didn't talk such broad Yorkshire I've seen the
times when I should have said you was clever.'"

That night Colin slept without once awakening and when he opened his
eyes in the morning he lay still and smiled without knowing it--smiled
because he felt so curiously comfortable.  It was actually nice to be
awake, and he turned over and stretched his limbs luxuriously.  He felt
as if tight strings which had held him had loosened themselves and let
him go.  He did not know that Dr. Craven would have said that his
nerves had relaxed and rested themselves.  Instead of lying and staring
at the wall and wishing he had not awakened, his mind was full of the
plans he and Mary had made yesterday, of pictures of the garden and of
Dickon and his wild creatures.  It was so nice to have things to think
about.  And he had not been awake more than ten minutes when he heard
feet running along the corridor and Mary was at the door.  The next
minute she was in the room and had run across to his bed, bringing with
her a waft of fresh air full of the scent of the morning.

"You've been out! You've been out! There's that nice smell of leaves!"
he cried.

She had been running and her hair was loose and blown and she was
bright with the air and pink-cheeked, though he could not see it.

"It's so beautiful!" she said, a little breathless with her speed.
"You never saw anything so beautiful!  It has come! I thought it had
come that other morning, but it was only coming.  It is here now! It
has come, the Spring! Dickon says so!"

"Has it?" cried Colin, and though he really knew nothing about it he
felt his heart beat.  He actually sat up in bed.

"Open the window!" he added, laughing half with joyful excitement and
half at his own fancy.  "Perhaps we may hear golden trumpets!"

And though he laughed, Mary was at the window in a moment and in a
moment more it was opened wide and freshness and softness and scents
and birds' songs were pouring through.

"That's fresh air," she said.  "Lie on your back and draw in long
breaths of it.  That's what Dickon does when he's lying on the moor.
He says he feels it in his veins and it makes him strong and he feels
as if he could live forever and ever.  Breathe it and breathe it."

She was only repeating what Dickon had told her, but she caught Colin's
fancy.

"'Forever and ever'! Does it make him feel like that?" he said, and he
did as she told him, drawing in long deep breaths over and over again
until he felt that something quite new and delightful was happening to
him.

Mary was at his bedside again.

"Things are crowding up out of the earth," she ran on in a hurry.  "And
there are flowers uncurling and buds on everything and the green veil
has covered nearly all the gray and the birds are in such a hurry about
their nests for fear they may be too late that some of them are even
fighting for places in the secret garden.  And the rose-bushes look as
wick as wick can be, and there are primroses in the lanes and woods,
and the seeds we planted are up, and Dickon has brought the fox and the
crow and the squirrels and a new-born lamb."

And then she paused for breath.  The new-born lamb Dickon had found
three days before lying by its dead mother among the gorse bushes on
the moor.  It was not the first motherless lamb he had found and he
knew what to do with it.  He had taken it to the cottage wrapped in his
jacket and he had let it lie near the fire and had fed it with warm
milk.  It was a soft thing with a darling silly baby face and legs
rather long for its body.  Dickon had carried it over the moor in his
arms and its feeding bottle was in his pocket with a squirrel, and when
Mary had sat under a tree with its limp warmness huddled on her lap she
had felt as if she were too full of strange joy to speak.  A lamb--a
lamb! A living lamb who lay on your lap like a baby!

She was describing it with great joy and Colin was listening and
drawing in long breaths of air when the nurse entered.  She started a
little at the sight of the open window.  She had sat stifling in the
room many a warm day because her patient was sure that open windows
gave people cold.

"Are you sure you are not chilly, Master Colin?" she inquired.

"No," was the answer.  "I am breathing long breaths of fresh air.  It
makes you strong.  I am going to get up to the sofa for breakfast.  My
cousin will have breakfast with me."

The nurse went away, concealing a smile, to give the order for two
breakfasts.  She found the servants' hall a more amusing place than the
invalid's chamber and just now everybody wanted to hear the news from
upstairs.  There was a great deal of joking about the unpopular young
recluse who, as the cook said, "had found his master, and good for
him." The servants' hall had been very tired of the tantrums, and the
butler, who was a man with a family, had more than once expressed his
opinion that the invalid would be all the better "for a good hiding."

When Colin was on his sofa and the breakfast for two was put upon the
table he made an announcement to the nurse in his most Rajah-like
manner.

"A boy, and a fox, and a crow, and two squirrels, and a new-born lamb,
are coming to see me this morning.  I want them brought upstairs as
soon as they come," he said.  "You are not to begin playing with the
animals in the servants' hall and keep them there.  I want them here."
The nurse gave a slight gasp and tried to conceal it with a cough.

"Yes, sir," she answered.

"I'll tell you what you can do," added Colin, waving his hand.  "You
can tell Martha to bring them here.  The boy is Martha's brother.  His
name is Dickon and he is an animal charmer."

"I hope the animals won't bite, Master Colin," said the nurse.

"I told you he was a charmer," said Colin austerely.  "Charmers'
animals never bite."

"There are snake-charmers in India," said Mary.  "And they can put
their snakes' heads in their mouths."

"Goodness!" shuddered the nurse.

They ate their breakfast with the morning air pouring in upon them.
Colin's breakfast was a very good one and Mary watched him with serious
interest.

"You will begin to get fatter just as I did," she said.  "I never
wanted my breakfast when I was in India and now I always want it."

"I wanted mine this morning," said Colin.  "Perhaps it was the fresh
air.  When do you think Dickon will come?"

He was not long in coming.  In about ten minutes Mary held up her hand.

"Listen!" she said.  "Did you hear a caw?"

Colin listened and heard it, the oddest sound in the world to hear
inside a house, a hoarse "caw-caw."

"Yes," he answered.

"That's Soot," said Mary.  "Listen again.  Do you hear a bleat--a tiny
one?"

"Oh, yes!" cried Colin, quite flushing.

"That's the new-born lamb," said Mary.  "He's coming."

Dickon's moorland boots were thick and clumsy and though he tried to
walk quietly they made a clumping sound as he walked through the long
corridors.  Mary and Colin heard him marching--marching, until he
passed through the tapestry door on to the soft carpet of Colin's own
passage.

"If you please, sir," announced Martha, opening the door, "if you
please, sir, here's Dickon an' his creatures."

Dickon came in smiling his nicest wide smile.  The new-born lamb was in
his arms and the little red fox trotted by his side.  Nut sat on his
left shoulder and Soot on his right and Shell's head and paws peeped
out of his coat pocket.

Colin slowly sat up and stared and stared--as he had stared when he
first saw Mary; but this was a stare of wonder and delight.  The truth
was that in spite of all he had heard he had not in the least
understood what this boy would be like and that his fox and his crow
and his squirrels and his lamb were so near to him and his friendliness
that they seemed almost to be part of himself.  Colin had never talked
to a boy in his life and he was so overwhelmed by his own pleasure and
curiosity that he did not even think of speaking.

But Dickon did not feel the least shy or awkward.  He had not felt
embarrassed because the crow had not known his language and had only
stared and had not spoken to him the first time they met.  Creatures
were always like that until they found out about you.  He walked over
to Colin's sofa and put the new-born lamb quietly on his lap, and
immediately the little creature turned to the warm velvet dressing-gown
and began to nuzzle and nuzzle into its folds and butt its tight-curled
head with soft impatience against his side.  Of course no boy could
have helped speaking then.

"What is it doing?" cried Colin.  "What does it want?"

"It wants its mother," said Dickon, smiling more and more.  "I brought
it to thee a bit hungry because I knowed tha'd like to see it feed."

He knelt down by the sofa and took a feeding-bottle from his pocket.

"Come on, little 'un," he said, turning the small woolly white head
with a gentle brown hand.  "This is what tha's after.  Tha'll get more
out o' this than tha' will out o' silk velvet coats.  There now," and
he pushed the rubber tip of the bottle into the nuzzling mouth and the
lamb began to suck it with ravenous ecstasy.

After that there was no wondering what to say.  By the time the lamb
fell asleep questions poured forth and Dickon answered them all.  He
told them how he had found the lamb just as the sun was rising three
mornings ago.  He had been standing on the moor listening to a skylark
and watching him swing higher and higher into the sky until he was only
a speck in the heights of blue.

"I'd almost lost him but for his song an' I was wonderin' how a chap
could hear it when it seemed as if he'd get out o' th' world in a
minute--an' just then I heard somethin' else far off among th' gorse
bushes.  It was a weak bleatin' an' I knowed it was a new lamb as was
hungry an' I knowed it wouldn't be hungry if it hadn't lost its mother
somehow, so I set off searchin'.  Eh! I did have a look for it.  I went
in an' out among th' gorse bushes an' round an' round an' I always
seemed to take th' wrong turnin'. But at last I seed a bit o' white by
a rock on top o' th' moor an' I climbed up an' found th' little 'un
half dead wi' cold an' clemmin'." While he talked, Soot flew solemnly
in and out of the open window and cawed remarks about the scenery while
Nut and Shell made excursions into the big trees outside and ran up and
down trunks and explored branches.  Captain curled up near Dickon, who
sat on the hearth-rug from preference.

They looked at the pictures in the gardening books and Dickon knew all
the flowers by their country names and knew exactly which ones were
already growing in the secret garden.

"I couldna' say that there name," he said, pointing to one under which
was written "Aquilegia," "but us calls that a columbine, an' that there
one it's a snapdragon and they both grow wild in hedges, but these is
garden ones an' they're bigger an' grander.  There's some big clumps o'
columbine in th' garden.  They'll look like a bed o' blue an' white
butterflies flutterin' when they're out."

"I'm going to see them," cried Colin.  "I am going to see them!"

"Aye, that tha' mun," said Mary quite seriously.  "An' tha' munnot lose
no time about it."

Dr. Craven arrives at the manor to examine Colin after his tantrum. Mrs. Medlock meets him in the hall, and informs him of the wondrous effect Mary has had upon him. The two adults go up to Colin's chamber to find him sitting up, laughing and talking freely with Mary. Dr. Craven warns Colin that his planned trip out of doors may exhaust him, to which Colin imperiously replies that it will do nothing of the sort. Colin tells the doctor that he will permit no one but Mary and Dickon to accompany him. Dr. Craven, although he is displeased by Colin's improved health , is relieved at the mention of Dickon's name. Dickon is famed upon the moor for his strength and trustworthiness. Colin again tells the doctor that Mary helps him to forget his illness, and it is this forgetting which makes him well. Downstairs, Mrs. Medlock tells Dr. Craven that she has spoken to Susan Sowerby of the new developments at Misselthwaite. Mrs. Sowerby was pleased to hear of them, and remarked that children need the company of other children to teach them that the world is not theirs alone. Mary returns to Colin's room, throws open the windows, and instructs him to breathe deeply of the fresh air of Spring. She tells him that the air of the moor makes Dickon feel as though "he could live forever and ever"; Colin is much taken with the idea of immortality, which, naturally, had never before occurred to him. Mary describes the new-growing spring plants for him, and mentions that Dickon has been caring for a newborn motherless lamb that he found upon the moor. The two children have breakfast brought to them in Colin's chamber, and Colin notifies the servants, in his most Rajah-like fashion, that Dickon and his menagerie are coming to visit him that afternoon. Dickon does indeed come, looking very much the animal charmer with his squirrels upon his shoulders, the fox and crow at his heels, and a newborn lamb in his arms. Colin is dumbfounded and made shy by how wondrous Dickon is. Dickon, for his part, is completely at ease, despite how out of place his moorland boots and rough clothes seem in the manor house. The three children speak again of the garden, and begin preparations to bring Colin there.

Colin's transformation is well underway by the outset of this chapter, as is indicated by his requesting, rather than commanding, Mary to come visit him. Like her, he is beginning to find things in the world worth his affection. He has become fond of her, and is astounded upon his first meeting with Dickon. Both Mary's and Dickon's effects upon Colin are described as magical: Mrs. Medlock remarks that it seems that Mary has "bewitched" Colin, while Dickon's powers as an animal charmer are shown to work on boys just as well. Dickon treats the manor house as merely another animal habitat: he is not discomfited by Colin's silence because "Creatures are always like that until they found out about you. The idea of Dickon as a "Yorkshire angel" is reinforced in this chapter in a number of ways. He is instantly at home in the manor  because he is, as a result of his connection to divine nature, above such class distinctions. His uncanny way with animals takes on certain Christian overtones with the acquisition of the baby lamb: lambs are, in Christian mythology, associated with the figure of Christ. The lamb, like Colin and Mary, is a motherless creature; the reader is led to understand that the adoption of motherless things is a habit of Dickon's. In the secret garden, his entourage of wild things recalls the animals of Eden. Christian overtones can also be found in the scene in which Mary throws open the window so that Colin may breathe in the springtime air. Colin's half-joking suggestion that they may "hear golden trumpets" recalls the golden trumpets that are believed by Christians to herald the entrance into paradise. Furthermore, Mary says that the spring air makes Dickon feel as though "he could live forever and ever and ever"; this clearly echoes the Christian belief that Paradise contains the promise of eternal life. Unlike conventional Christian myth, Paradise can be found on earth, in nature, as well as in heaven. This shift mirrors that made by Hodgson Burnett's system of New Thought, which held that divinity could be found in the landscape, in all natural living things. The coming of the spring is also associated with "Magic": "Every night it seemed as if Magicians were passing through  drawing loveliness out of the earth and boughs with wands. This image foreshadows the Christian significance that the notion of magic will acquire in later chapters. Mary begins to speak Yorkshire to Dickon in this chapter, which evidences her love for him, his speech, and the moor. Mary is, increasingly, of the moor, just as Dickon is a creature of it. Her adoption of Yorkshire also indicates that she and Dickon have now truly bound themselves in friendship: as Dickon says, "Anything will understand  if you're friends with it for sure