out of the room.
It s the strangest house anyone ever lived in, said Mary drowsily, as
she dropped her head on the cushioned seat of the armchair near her.
Fresh air, and digging, and skipping-rope had made her feel so
comfortably tired that she fell asleep.
CHAPTER X.
DICKON
The sun shone down for nearly a week on the secret garden. The Secret
Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked
the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful
old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like
being shut out of the world in some fairy place. The few books she had
read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret
gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them
for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid. She
had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming
wider awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite. She was beginning
to like to be out of doors; she no longer hated the wind, but enjoyed
it. She could run faster, and longer, and she could skip up to a
hundred. The bulbs in the secret garden must have been much astonished.
Such nice clear places were made round them that they had all the
breathing space they wanted, and really, if Mistress Mary had known it,
they began to cheer up under the dark earth and work tremendously. The
sun could get at them and warm them, and when the rain came down it
could reach them at once, so they began to feel very much alive.
Mary was an odd, determined little person, and now she had something
interesting to be determined about, she was very much absorbed, indeed.
She worked and dug and pulled up weeds steadily, only becoming more
pleased with her work every hour instead of tiring of it. It seemed to
her like a fascinating sort of play. She found many more of the
sprouting pale green points than she had ever hoped to find. They
seemed to be starting up everywhere and each day she was sure she found
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