Page 53 - Secret Garden

clean through when his wife died. Happened here, in this garden.
Her was sat on yon low branch there, like it was a swing: her babby due
any day.But the branch snapped, and down she fell. Them saved th’babe, but not th’mother. Folk say Mr Craven can’t bear to look at the boy ‘cos
his eyes are so like hers. An’ he’s scared Colin will die or grow up like him – full o’ dark. Blames hisself, though it were none of his doin’.”
“Colin won’t even sit up for fear of falling to pieces. I think he’s scaring himself.”
Dickon nodded his head wisely. “Tha’s thinking that if he was out here now, watching the spring, he’d not be thinking of dyin’.”
Mary’s plan poured out of her like birdsong – and she had not even known she had a plan! “A chair with wheels . . . you pushing. Colin tells the gardeners to keep away, so nobody sees where we go . . . and we wrap him up warm and then . . .”
In Dickon’s head the thing was done already. “Us’d just be three children watchin’ the springtime.” He whistled softly, and Mr Robin cocked his head. “Now don’t tha’ go telling
on us, friend.”
But Mary knew that Mr Robin would not tell their secret for all the
worms in the world.