that part had been neglected. The rest of it had been clipped and made
to look neat, but at this lower end of the walk it had not been trimmed
at all.
A few days after she had talked to Ben Weatherstaff, Mary stopped to
notice this and wondered why it was so. She had just paused and was
looking up at a long spray of ivy swinging in the wind when she saw a
gleam of scarlet and heard a brilliant chirp, and there, on the top of
the wall, perched Ben Weatherstaff s robin redbreast, tilting forward
to look at her with his small head on one side.
Oh! she cried out, is it you is it you? And it did not seem at all
queer to her that she spoke to him as if she were sure that he would
understand and answer her.
He did answer. He twittered and chirped and hopped along the wall as if
he were telling her all sorts of things. It seemed to Mistress Mary as
if she understood him, too, though he was not speaking in words. It was
as if he said:
Good morning! Isn t the wind nice? Isn t the sun nice? Isn t
everything nice? Let us both chirp and hop and twitter. Come on! Come
on!
Mary began to laugh, and as he hopped and took little flights along the
wall she ran after him. Poor little thin, sallow, ugly Mary she
actually looked almost pretty for a moment.
I like you! I like you! she cried out, pattering down the walk; and
she chirped and tried to whistle, which last she did not know how to do
in the least. But the robin seemed to be quite satisfied and chirped
and whistled back at her. At last he spread his wings and made a
darting flight to the top of a tree, where he perched and sang loudly.
That reminded Mary of the first time she had seen him. He had been
swinging on a tree-top then and she had been standing in the orchard.
Now she was on the other side of the orchard and standing in the path
outside a wall much lower down and there was the same tree inside.
It s in the garden no one can go into, she said to herself. It s the
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