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e heard people say I shan't. At first they thought I was too little to understand and now they think I don't hear. But I do. My doctor is my father's cousin. He is quite poor and if I die he will have all Misselthwaite when my father is dead. I should think he wouldn't want me to live." "Do you want to live?" inquired Mary. "No," he answered, in a cross, tired fashion. "But I don't want to die. When I feel ill I lie here and think about it until I cry and cry." "I have heard you crying three times," Mary said, "but I did not know who it was. Were you crying about that?" She did so want him to forget the garden. "I dare say," he answered. "Let us talk about something else. Talk about that garden. Don't you want to see it?" "Yes," answered Mary, in quite a low voice. "I do," he went on persistently. "I don't think I ever really wanted to see anything before, but I want to see that garden. I want the key dug up. I want the door unlocked. I would let them take me there in my chair. That would be getting fresh air. I am going to make them open the door." He had become quite excited and his strange eyes began to shine like stars and looked more immense than ever. "They have to please me," he said. "I will make them take me there and I will let you go, too." Mary's hands clutched each other. Everything would be spoiled--everything! Dickon would never come back. She would never again feel like a missel thrush with a safe-hidden nest. "Oh, don't--don't--don't--don't do that!" she cried out. He stared as if he thought she had gone crazy! "Why?" he exclaimed. "You said you wanted to see it." "I do," she answered almost with a sob in her throat, "but if you make them open the door and take you in like that it will never be a secret again." He leaned still farther forward. "A secret," he said. "What do you mean? Tell me." Mary's words almost tumbled over one another. "You see--you see," she panted, "if no one knows but ourselves--if there was a door, hidden somewhere under the ivy--if there was--and we could find it; and if we could slip through it together and shut it behind us, and no one knew any one was inside and we called it our garden and pretended that--that we were missel thrushes and it was our nest, and if we played there almost every day and dug and planted seeds and made it all come alive--" "Is it dead?" he interrupted her. "It soon will be if no one cares for it," she went o
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