n. "The bulbs will
live but the roses--"

He stopped her again as excited as she was herself.

"What are bulbs?" he put in quickly.

"They are daffodils and lilies and snowdrops. They are working in the
earth now--pushing up pale green points because the spring is coming."

"Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like? You don't see it in
rooms if you are ill."

"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine,
and things pushing up and working under the earth," said Mary. "If the
garden was a secret and we could get into it we could watch the things
grow bigger every day, and see how many roses are alive. Don't you see?
Oh, don't you see how much nicer it would be if it was a secret?"

He dropped back on his pillow and lay there with an odd expression on
his face.

"I never had a secret," he said, "except that one about not living to
grow up. They don't know I know that, so it is a sort of secret. But I
like this kind better."

"If you won't make them take you to the garden," pleaded Mary,
"perhaps--I feel almost sure I can find out how to get in sometime. And
then--if the doctor wants you to go out in your chair, and if you can
always do what you want to do, perhaps--perhaps we might find some boy
who would push you, and we could go alone and it would always be a
secret garden."

"I should--like--that," he said very slowly, his eyes looking dreamy. "I
should like that. I should not mind fresh air in a secret garden."

Mary began to recover her breath and feel safer because the idea of
keeping the secret seemed to please him. She felt almost sure that if
she kept on talking and could make him see the garden in his mind as she
had seen it he would like it so much that he could not bear to think
that everybody might tramp into it when they chose.

"I'll tell you what I _think_ it would be like, if we could go into it,"
she said. "It has been shut up so long things have grown into a tangle
perhaps."

He lay quite still and listened while she went on talking about the
roses which _might_ have clambered from tree to tree and hung
down--about the many birds which _might_ have built their nests there
because it was so safe. And then she told him about the robin and Ben
Weatherstaff, and there was so much to tell about the robin and it was
so easy and safe to talk about it that she ceased to feel afraid. The
robin pleased him so much that he smiled until he looked almost
beautiful, a