to draw closer and closer to him, and bend down and talk and try to
make something like robin sounds.
Oh! to think that he should actually let her come as near to him as
that! He knew nothing in the world would make her put out her hand
toward him or startle him in the least tiniest way. He knew it because
he was a real person only nicer than any other person in the world. She
was so happy that she scarcely dared to breathe.
The flower-bed was not quite bare. It was bare of flowers because the
perennial plants had been cut down for their winter rest, but there
were tall shrubs and low ones which grew together at the back of the
bed, and as the robin hopped about under them she saw him hop over a
small pile of freshly turned up earth. He stopped on it to look for a
worm. The earth had been turned up because a dog had been trying to dig
up a mole and he had scratched quite a deep hole.
Mary looked at it, not really knowing why the hole was there, and as
she looked she saw something almost buried in the newly-turned soil. It
was something like a ring of rusty iron or brass and when the robin
flew up into a tree nearby she put out her hand and picked the ring up.
It was more than a ring, however; it was an old key which looked as if
it had been buried a long time.
Mistress Mary stood up and looked at it with an almost frightened face
as it hung from her finger.
Perhaps it has been buried for ten years, she said in a whisper.
Perhaps it is the key to the garden!
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY
She looked at the key quite a long time. She turned it over and over,
and thought about it. As I have said before, she was not a child who
had been trained to ask permission or consult her elders about things.
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