. Mary Lennox knew they were roses because she had seen a great
many roses in India. All the ground was covered with grass of a wintry
brown and out of it grew clumps of bushes which were surely rose-bushes
if they were alive. There were numbers of standard roses which had so
spread their branches that they were like little trees. There were other
trees in the garden, and one of the things which made the place look
strangest and loveliest was that climbing roses had run all over them
and swung down long tendrils which made light swaying curtains, and here
and there they had caught at each other or at a far-reaching branch and
had crept from one tree to another and made lovely bridges of
themselves. There were neither leaves nor roses on them now and Mary did
not know whether they were dead or alive, but their thin gray or brown
branches and sprays looked like a sort of hazy mantle spreading over
everything, walls, and trees, and even brown grass, where they had
fallen from their fastenings and run along the ground. It was this hazy
tangle from tree to tree which made it all look so mysterious. Mary had
thought it must be different from other gardens which had not been left
all by themselves so long; and indeed it was different from any other
place she had ever seen in her life.

"How still it is!" she whispered. "How still!"

Then she waited a moment and listened at the stillness. The robin, who
had flown to his tree-top, was still as all the rest. He did not even
flutter his wings; he sat without stirring, and looked at Mary.

"No wonder it is still," she whispered again. "I am the first person who
has spoken in here for ten years."

She moved away from the door, stepping as softly as if she were afraid
of awakening some one. She was glad that there was grass under her feet
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