Page 32 - Secret Garden

In fact, Mr Robin followed Mary about that day. Outside the locked garden, he even showed her a pile of loose earth wriggly with tasty worms.
“No worms for me, thank you, Mr Robin!”
But when he had finished flinging the soil about, there was something else
sticking out of the earth – a metal loop. Mary reached down and pulled . . . a rusty old key!
Mary was almost scared. “Oh, Mr Robin! It is! It must be! The key to the locked garden!”
What happened next was almost like magic.
A sudden gust of wind swung aside some loose ivy. Mary saw something under it: the knob of a door.
She took hold of the ivy and began to tug. Her heart thumped, her hands shook. The robin chirruped and bobbed, as if he was excited, too.
Her fingers found a rusty iron hole. It was the lock of the door which had been closed for ten years. Mary tried the key. It fitted . . . but it took
both hands to turn it.
Checking that no one was coming, Mary
breathed deep and pushed open the door, slowly – slowly. Then
she slipped through, shut it behind her and stood with her back against it, gasping with
excitement . . .