And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed
new miracles. In the robin s nest there were Eggs and the robin s mate
sat upon them keeping them warm with her feathery little breast and
careful wings. At first she was very nervous and the robin himself was
indignantly watchful. Even Dickon did not go near the close-grown
corner in those days, but waited until by the quiet working of some
mysterious spell he seemed to have conveyed to the soul of the little
pair that in the garden there was nothing which was not quite like
themselves nothing which did not understand the wonderfulness of what
was happening to them the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking
beauty and solemnity of Eggs. If there had been one person in that
garden who had not known through all his or her innermost being that if
an Egg were taken away or hurt the whole world would whirl round and
crash through space and come to an end if there had been even one who
did not feel it and act accordingly there could have been no happiness
even in that golden springtime air. But they all knew it and felt it
and the robin and his mate knew they knew it.
At first the robin watched Mary and Colin with sharp anxiety. For some
mysterious reason he knew he need not watch Dickon. The first moment he
set his dew-bright black eye on Dickon he knew he was not a stranger
but a sort of robin without beak or feathers. He could speak robin
(which is a quite distinct language not to be mistaken for any other).
To speak robin to a robin is like speaking French to a Frenchman.
Dickon always spoke it to the robin himself, so the queer gibberish he
used when he spoke to humans did not matter in the least. The robin
thought he spoke this gibberish to them because they were not
intelligent enough to understand feathered speech. His movements also
were robin. They never startled one by being sudden enough to seem
dangerous or threatening. Any robin could understand Dickon, so his
presence was not even disturbing.
But at the outset it seemed necessary to be on guard against the other
two. In the first place the boy creature did not come into the garden
on his legs. He was pushed in on a thing with wheels and the skins of
wild animals were thrown over him. That in itself was doubtful. Then
when he began to stand up and move about he did it in a queer
unaccustomed way and the others seemed to have to help him. The robin
used to secrete himself in a bush and watch this anxiously, his head
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