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Listening Work Station

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"I SHALL LIVE FOREVER-AND EVER-AND EVER!"

Read by Natasha.

But they were obliged to wait more than a week because first there came
some very windy days and then Colin was threatened with a cold, which
two things happening one after the other would no doubt have thrown him
into a rage but that there was so much careful and mysterious planning
to do and almost every day Dickon came in, if only for a few minutes,
to talk about what was happening on the moor and in the lanes and
hedges and on the borders of streams. The things he had to tell about
otters' and badgers' and water-rats' houses, not to mention birds'
nests and field-mice and their burrows, were enough to make you almost
tremble with excitement when you heard all the intimate details from an
animal charmer and realized with what thrilling eagerness and anxiety
the whole busy underworld was working.

"They're same as us," said Dickon, "only they have to build their homes
every year. An' it keeps 'em so busy they fair scuffle to get 'em
done."

The most absorbing thing, however, was the preparations to be made
before Colin could be transported with sufficient secrecy to the
garden. No one must see the chair-carriage and Dickon and Mary after
they turned a certain corner of the shrubbery and entered upon the walk
outside the ivied walls. As each day passed, Colin had become more and
more fixed in his feeling that the mystery surrounding the garden was
one of its greatest charms. Nothing must spoil that. No one must ever
suspect that they had a secret. People must think that he was simply
going out with Mary and Dickon because he liked them and did not object
to their looking at him. They had long and quite delightful talks
about their route. They would go up this path and down that one and
cross the other and go round among the fountain flower-beds as if they
were looking at the "bedding-out plants" the head gardener, Mr. Roach,
had been having arranged. That would seem such a rational thing to do
that no one would think it at all mysterious. They would turn into the
shrubbery walks and lose themselves until they came to the long walls.
It was almost as serious and elaborately thought out as the plans of
march made by great generals in time of war.

Rumors of the new and curious things which were occurring in the
invalid's apartments had of course filtered through the servants' hall
into the stable yards and out among the gardeners, but notwithstanding
this, Mr. Roach was startled one day when he received orders from
Master Colin's room to the effect that he must report himself in the
apartment no outsider had ever seen, as the invalid himself desired to
speak to him.

"Well, well," he said to himself as he hurriedly changed his coat,
"what's to do now? His Royal Highness that wasn't to be looked at
calling up a man he's never set eyes on."

Mr. Roach was not without curiosity. He had never caught even a
glimpse of the boy and had heard a dozen exaggerated stories about his
uncanny looks and ways and his insane tempers. The thing he had heard
oftenest was that he might die at any moment and there had been
numerous fanciful descriptions of a humped back and helpless limbs,
given by people who had never seen him.

"Things are changing in this house, Mr. Roach," said Mrs. Medlock, as
she led him up the back staircase to the corridor on to which opened
the hitherto mysterious chamber.

"Let's hope they're changing for the better, Mrs. Medlock," he answered.

"They couldn't well change for the worse," she continued; "and queer as
it all is there's them as finds their duties made a lot easier to stand
up under. Don't you be surprised, Mr. Roach, if you find yourself in
the middle of a menagerie and Martha Sowerby's Dickon more at home than
you or me could ever be."

There really was a sort of Magic about Dickon, as Mary always privately
believed. When Mr. Roach heard his name he smiled quite leniently.

"He'd be at home in Buckingham Palace or at the bottom of a coal mine,"
he said. "And yet it's not impudence, either. He's just fine, is that
lad."

It was perhaps well he had been prepared or he might have been
startled. When the bedroom door was opened a large crow, which seemed
quite at home perched on the high back of a carven chair, announced the
entrance of a visitor by saying "Caw-Caw" quite loudly. In spite of
Mrs. Medlock's warning, Mr. Roach only just escaped being sufficiently
undignified to jump backward.

The young Rajah was neither in bed nor on his sofa. He was sitting in
an armchair and a young lamb was standing by him shaking its tail in
feeding-lamb fashion as Dickon knelt giving it milk from its bottle. A
squirrel was perched on Dickon's bent back attentively nibbling a nut.
The little girl from India was sitting on a big footstool looking on.

"Here is Mr. Roach, Master Colin," said Mrs. Medlock.

The young Rajah turned and looked his servitor over-at least that was
what the head gardener felt happened.

"Oh, you are Roach, are you?" he said. "I sent for you to give you
some very important orders."

"Very good, sir," answered Roach, wondering if he was to receive
instructions to fell all the oaks in the park or to transform the
orchards into water-gardens.

"I am going out in my chair this afternoon," said Colin. "If the fresh
air agrees with me I may go out every day. When I go, none of the
gardeners are to be anywhere near the Long Walk by the garden walls.
No one is to be there. I shall go out about two o'clock and everyone
must keep away until I send word that they may go back to their work."

"You say, 'You have my permission to go,'" answered Mary.

The Rajah waved his hand.

"You have my permission to go, Roach," he said. "But, remember, this
is very important."

"Caw-Caw!" remarked the crow hoarsely but not impolitely.

"Very good, sir. Thank you, sir," said Mr. Roach, and Mrs. Medlock
took him out of the room.

Outside in the corridor, being a rather good-natured man, he smiled
until he almost laughed.

"My word!" he said, "he's got a fine lordly way with him, hasn't he?
You'd think he was a whole Royal Family rolled into one-Prince Consort
and all.".

"Eh!" protested Mrs. Medlock, "we've had to let him trample all over
every one of us ever since he had feet and he thinks that's what folks
was born for."

"Perhaps he'll grow out of it, if he lives," suggested Mr. Roach.

Inside the room Colin was leaning back on his cushions.

"It's all safe now," he said. "And this afternoon I shall see it-this
afternoon I shall be in it!"

"What big eyes you've got, Colin," she said. "When you are thinking
they get as big as saucers. What are you thinking about now?"

"I can't help thinking about what it will look like," he answered.

"The garden?" asked Mary.

"The springtime," he said. "I was thinking that I've really never seen
it before. I scarcely ever went out and when I did go I never looked
at it. I didn't even think about it."

"I never saw it in India because there wasn't any," said Mary.

Shut in and morbid as his life had been, Colin had more imagination
than she had and at least he had spent a good deal of time looking at
wonderful books and pictures.

"That morning when you ran in and said 'It's come! It's come!', you made
me feel quite queer. It sounded as if things were coming with a great
procession and big bursts and wafts of music. I've a picture like it
in one of my books-crowds of lovely people and children with garlands
and branches with blossoms on them, everyone laughing and dancing and
crowding and playing on pipes. That was why I said, 'Perhaps we shall
hear golden trumpets' and told you to throw open the window."

They both laughed but it was not because the idea was laughable but
because they both so liked it.

"This is one of his good days, sir," she said to Dr. Craven, who
dropped in to inspect him. "He's in such good spirits that it makes
him stronger."

"I'll call in again later in the afternoon, after he has come in," said
Dr. Craven. "I must see how the going out agrees with him. I wish,"
in a very low voice, "that he would let you go with him."

"I'd rather give up the case this moment, sir, than even stay here
while it's suggested," answered the nurse. With sudden firmness.

"I hadn't really decided to suggest it," said the doctor, with his
slight nervousness. "We'll try the experiment. Dickon's a lad I'd
trust with a new-born child."

"You have my permission to go," he said, and they both disappeared
quickly and it must be confessed giggled when they were safely inside
the house.

Dickon began to push the wheeled chair slowly and steadily. Mistress
Mary walked beside it and Colin leaned back and lifted his face to the
sky. The arch of it looked very high and the small snowy clouds seemed
like white birds floating on outspread wings below its crystal
blueness. The wind swept in soft big breaths down from the moor and
was strange with a wild clear scented sweetness. Colin kept lifting
his thin chest to draw it in, and his big eyes looked as if it were
they which were listening-listening, instead of his ears.

"There are so many sounds of singing and humming and calling out," he
said. "What is that scent the puffs of wind bring?"

"It's gorse on th' moor that's openin' out," answered Dickon. "Eh! th'
bees are at it wonderful today."

Not a human creature was to be caught sight of in the paths they took.
In fact every gardener or gardener's lad had been witched away. But
they wound in and out among the shrubbery and out and round the
fountain beds, following their carefully planned route for the mere
mysterious pleasure of it. But when at last they turned into the Long
Walk by the ivied walls the excited sense of an approaching thrill made
them, for some curious reason they could not have explained, begin to
speak in whispers.

"That's what I thought," said Mary.

Then there was a lovely breathless silence and the chair wheeled on.

"That is the garden where Ben Weatherstaff works," said Mary.

"Is it?" said Colin.

A few yards more and Mary whispered again.

"This is where the robin flew over the wall," she said.

"Is it?" cried Colin. "Oh! I wish he'd come again!"

"And that," said Mary with solemn delight, pointing under a big lilac
bush, "is where he perched on the little heap of earth and showed me
the key."

Then Colin sat up.

"Where? Where? There?" he cried, and his eyes were as big as the wolf's
in Red Riding-Hood, when Red Riding-Hood felt called upon to remark on
them. Dickon stood still and the wheeled chair stopped.

"Oh! is it-is it!" gasped Colin.

"And here is the handle, and here is the door. Dickon push him
in-push him in quickly!"

And Dickon did it with one strong, steady, splendid push.

But Colin had actually dropped back against his cushions, even though
he gasped with delight, and he had covered his eyes with his hands and
held them there shutting out everything until they were inside and the
chair stopped as if by magic and the door was closed. Not till then
did he take them away and look round and round and round as Dickon and
Mary had done. And over walls and earth and trees and swinging sprays
and tendrils the fair green veil of tender little leaves had crept, and
in the grass under the trees and the gray urns in the alcoves and here
and there everywhere were touches or splashes of gold and purple and
white and the trees were showing pink and snow above his head and there
were fluttering of wings and faint sweet pipes and humming and scents
and scents. And the sun fell warm upon his face like a hand with a
lovely touch. And in wonder Mary and Dickon stood and stared at him.
He looked so strange and different because a pink glow of color had
actually crept all over him-ivory face and neck and hands and all.

"I shall get well! I shall get well!" he cried out. "Mary! Dickon! I
shall get well! And I shall live forever and ever and ever!"

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The Secret Garden Chapter 20 - Storynory

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"I SHALL LIVE FOREVER-AND EVER-AND EVER!" Read by Natasha.

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Read by Storynory's one and only Natasha.

"IT HAS COME!"

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.

"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.

"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."

"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?"

"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.

"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."

"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."

"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.

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.

"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.

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

Mary was at his bedside again.

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!

"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."

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.

"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."

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

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.

"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'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."

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The Secret Garden Chapter 19 - Storynory

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Read by Storynory's one and only Natasha. "IT HAS COME!" 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.

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Natasha continues her reading of the classic serial.

"THA' MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME"

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!"

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The Secret Garden Chapter 18 - Storynory

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Natasha continues her reading of the classic serial. "THA' MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME" 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.

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Mary might not be the most soft-hearted of girls, but she is a good person to sooth a tantrum.

If you use iTunes, you can download all our Secret Garden Chapters here.

Read by Natasha.

A TANTRUM

"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."

"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."

"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.

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!"

"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.

"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.

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.

"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.

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The Secret Garden Chapter 17 - Storynory

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Mary might not be the most soft-hearted of girls, but she is a good person to sooth a tantrum. If you use iTunes, you can download all our Secret Garden Chapters here. Read by Natasha. A TANTRUM "I'll go out before breakfast and work with Dickon and then afterward-I believe-I'll go to see him."

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Suitable for grades 4 - 8, Rooting Out Words lets you determine the root & meaning of each word. Answer correctly to win. Play Rooting Out Words online, here.

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Skills: Author's Purpose, Reading Comprehension Try to figure out why the author wrote each passage.

This webpage makes extensive use of JavaScript. Please enable JavaScript in your web browser to view this page.

Pick your game piece and spin the spinner. Read each short story carefully to determine what the author's purpose in was in writing it: to entertain, inform, or persuade. If you are able to correctly determine why the short story was written, your game piece will move across the board.

Authors Purpose Game for Kids

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Authors Purpose | Free Reading Skills Game

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This webpage makes extensive use of JavaScript. Please enable JavaScript in your web browser to view this page. Pick your game piece and spin the spinner. Read each short story carefully to determine what the author's purpose in was in writing it: to entertain, inform, or persuade.

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Get all the chapters of The Secret Garden in iTunes.

Our very special reading of The Secret Garden continues.

Read by Natasha.

"I WON'T!" SAID MARY

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.

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

"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."

"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.

"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.

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The Secret Garden Chapter 16 - Storynory

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Get all the chapters of The Secret Garden in iTunes. Our very special reading of The Secret Garden continues. Read by Natasha. "I WON'T!" SAID MARY 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.