Are things stirring down below in the dark in that garden where he
lives? Mary inquired.
What garden? grunted Weatherstaff, becoming surly again.
The one where the old rose-trees are. She could not help asking,
because she wanted so much to know. Are all the flowers dead, or do
some of them come again in the summer? Are there ever any roses?
Ask him, said Ben Weatherstaff, hunching his shoulders toward the
robin. He s the only one as knows. No one else has seen inside it for
ten year .
Ten years was a long time, Mary thought. She had been born ten years
ago.
She walked away, slowly thinking. She had begun to like the garden just
as she had begun to like the robin and Dickon and Martha s mother. She
was beginning to like Martha, too. That seemed a good many people to
like when you were not used to liking. She thought of the robin as one
of the people. She went to her walk outside the long, ivy-covered wall
over which she could see the tree-tops; and the second time she walked
up and down the most interesting and exciting thing happened to her,
and it was all through Ben Weatherstaff s robin.
She heard a chirp and a twitter, and when she looked at the bare
flower-bed at her left side there he was hopping about and pretending
to peck things out of the earth to persuade her that he had not
followed her. But she knew he had followed her and the surprise so
filled her with delight that she almost trembled a little.
You do remember me! she cried out. You do! You are prettier than
anything else in the world!
She chirped, and talked, and coaxed and he hopped, and flirted his tail
and twittered. It was as if he were talking. His red waistcoat was like
satin and he puffed his tiny breast out and was so fine and so grand
and so pretty that it was really as if he were showing her how
important and like a human person a robin could be. Mistress Mary
forgot that she had ever been contrary in her life when he allowed her
51