and that her steps made no sounds. She walked under one of the
fairy-like gray arches between the trees and looked up at the sprays
and tendrils which formed them.
I wonder if they are all quite dead, she said. Is it all a quite
dead garden? I wish it wasn t.
If she had been Ben Weatherstaff she could have told whether the wood
was alive by looking at it, but she could only see that there were only
gray or brown sprays and branches and none showed any signs of even a
tiny leaf-bud anywhere.
But she was _inside_ the wonderful garden and she could come through
the door under the ivy any time and she felt as if she had found a
world all her own.
The sun was shining inside the four walls and the high arch of blue sky
over this particular piece of Misselthwaite seemed even more brilliant
and soft than it was over the moor. The robin flew down from his
tree-top and hopped about or flew after her from one bush to another.
He chirped a good deal and had a very busy air, as if he were showing
her things. Everything was strange and silent and she seemed to be
hundreds of miles away from anyone, but somehow she did not feel lonely
at all. All that troubled her was her wish that she knew whether all
the roses were dead, or if perhaps some of them had lived and might put
out leaves and buds as the weather got warmer. She did not want it to
be a quite dead garden. If it were a quite alive garden, how wonderful
it would be, and what thousands of roses would grow on every side!
Her skipping-rope had hung over her arm when she came in and after she
had walked about for a while she thought she would skip round the whole
garden, stopping when she wanted to look at things. There seemed to
have been grass paths here and there, and in one or two corners there
were alcoves of evergreen with stone seats or tall moss-covered flower
urns in them.
As she came near the second of these alcoves she stopped skipping.
There had once been a flowerbed in it, and she thought she saw
something sticking out of the black earth some sharp little pale green
points. She remembered what Ben Weatherstaff had said and she knelt
61