Page 40 - Secret Garden

“Come with me and I’ll show you.” She drew him by the hand.
There was a tangle of ivy, a door, a push, a creak of old hinges. “It’s this,”
Mary said in a whisper. “It’s my Secret Garden.”
Dickon looked all round him, then looked all over again. “’Tis like a
dream!” he said at last. “I knew of it . . . but I never thought to see it my own self.”
“Will there be roses ever again?” she whispered. “Are they all dead?” Dickon touched a brownish-green shoot. “There’s dead wood, but there’s
new, too. This one’s as wick as you or me!”
Mary was overjoyed. She had never heard the word “wick” but she
snapped it up as a magpie snatches up something shiny, and made it hers. “I’m glad it’s wick! It means alive, doesn’t it! I want
them all to be wick. Let’s count all the wick
ones there are!”
On their tour of the garden Dickon noticed where Mary had weeded.
“I thought tha’ knew nothin’ of gardening!”
“I don’t, but they had no room to breathe.”
Dickon beamed with pleasure. “Tha did right. They’ll grow now like Jack’s beanstalk. Tha’s done good work.” Again he looked round.