Kitabı oku: «Таинственный сад / The secret garden», sayfa 12

“I’m Dickon,” the boy said. “I know you’re Miss Mary.”

“Did you get Martha’s letter?” she asked.

He nodded his head.

“That’s why I’m here.”

He took something which was lying on the ground beside him.

“I’ve got the garden tools. A little spade and rake and a fork and hoe. Eh! They are good. There’s a trowel, too. And some seeds.”

“Will you show the seeds to me?” Mary said.

They sat down and he took a clumsy little brown paper package out of his coat pocket. He untied the string and inside there were many smaller packages with a picture of a flower on each one.

He stopped and turned his head quickly.

“Where’s that robin?” he said.

The chirp came from a thick holly bush.

“Aye,” said Dickon, “he’s calling someone. He says ‘Here I am. Look at me.’ There he is in the bush. Whose is he?”

“He’s Ben Weatherstaff’s, but I think he knows me a little,” answered Mary.

“Aye, he knows you,” said Dickon. “And he likes you. He’ll tell me all about you in a minute.”

He moved quite close to the bush with the slow movement. Then he made a sound almost like the robin’s own twitter. The robin listened a few seconds, intently, and then answered.

“He’s a friend of yours,” chuckled Dickon.

“Do you understand everything birds say?” said Mary.

“I think I do, and they think I do,” he said. “I’ve lived on the moor with them so long. I’ve watched them a lot. I think I’m one of them. Sometimes I think perhaps I’m a bird, or a fox, or a rabbit, or a squirrel, or even a beetle.”

He laughed and came back to the log and began to talk about the flower seeds. He told her how to plant them, and watch them, and feed and water them.

“Look,” he said suddenly. “I’ll plant them for you myself. Where is your garden?”

She turned red and then pale.

“I don’t know anything about boys,” she said slowly. “Can you keep a secret, if I tell you one? It’s a great secret.”

Dickon rubbed his hand over his head again, but he answered quite good-humoredly.

“I’m keeping secrets all the time,” he said. “Aye, I can keep secrets.”

“I’ve stolen a garden,” she said very fast. “It isn’t mine. It isn’t anybody’s. Nobody wants it, nobody cares for it, nobody ever goes into it. Perhaps everything is dead in it already; I don’t know.”

Dickon’s curious blue eyes grew rounder and rounder.

“Eh-h-h!” he said.

“I’ve nothing to do,” said Mary. “Nothing belongs to me. I found it myself and I got into it myself. I was only just like the robin.”

“Where is it?” asked Dickon.

Mary got up from the log at once.

“Come with me and I’ll show you,” she said.

She led him round the laurel path and to the walk where the ivy grew so thickly. Dickon followed her with a queer look on his face. He moved softly. When she stepped to the wall and lifted the hanging ivy he started. There was a door and Mary pushed it slowly open and they passed in together.

“It’s this,” she said. “It’s a secret garden, and I’m the only one in the world who wants it to be alive.”

Dickon looked round it, and round and round again.

“Eh!” he almost whispered, “it is a queer, pretty place! It’s like a dream.”