was because it had been shut up so long that she
wanted to see it. It seemed as if it must be different from other
places and that something strange must have happened to it during ten
years. Besides that, if she liked it she could go into it every day
and shut the door behind her, and she could make up some play of her
own and play it quite alone, because nobody would ever know where she
was, but would think the door was still locked and the key buried in
the earth. The thought of that pleased her very much.

Living as it were, all by herself in a house with a hundred
mysteriously closed rooms and having nothing whatever to do to amuse
herself, had set her inactive brain to working and was actually
awakening her imagination. There is no doubt that the fresh, strong,
pure air from the moor had a great deal to do with it. Just as it had
given her an appetite, and fighting with the wind had stirred her
blood, so the same things had stirred her mind. In India she had
always been too hot and languid and weak to care much about anything,
but in this place she was beginning to care and to want to do new
things. Already she felt less "contrary," though she did not know why.

She put the key in her pocket and walked up and down her walk. No one
but herself ever seemed to come there, so she could walk slowly and
look at the wall, or, rather, at the ivy growing on it. The ivy was
the baffling thing. Howsoever carefully she looked she could see
nothing but thickly growing, glossy, dark green leaves. She was very
much disappointed. Something of her contrariness came back to her as
she paced the walk and looked over it at the tree-tops inside. It
seemed so silly, she said to herself, to be near it and not be able to
get in. She took the key in her pocket when she went back to the
house, and she made up her mind that she would always carry it with her
when she went out, so that if she ever should find the hidden door she
would be ready.

Mrs. Medlock had allowed Martha to sleep all night at the cottage, but
she was back at her work in the morning with cheeks redder than ever
and in the best of spirits.

"I got up at four o'clock," she said. "Eh! it was pretty on th' moor
with th' birds gettin' up an' th' rabbits scamperin' about an' th' sun
risin'. I didn't walk all th' way. A man gave me a ride in his cart
an' I did enjoy myself."

She was full of stories of the delights of her day out. Her mother had
been gl