the gust of wind swung aside some loose ivy
trails, and more suddenly still she jumped toward it and caught it in
her hand. This she did because she had seen something under it--a
round knob which had been covered by the leaves hanging over it. It
was the knob of a door.

She put her hands under the leaves and began to pull and push them
aside. Thick as the ivy hung, it nearly all was a loose and swinging
curtain, though some had crept over wood and iron. Mary's heart began
to thump and her hands to shake a little in her delight and excitement.
The robin kept singing and twittering away and tilting his head on one
side, as if he were as excited as she was. What was this under her
hands which was square and made of iron and which her fingers found a
hole in?

It was the lock of the door which had been closed ten years and she put
her hand in her pocket, drew out the key and found it fitted the
keyhole. She put the key in and turned it. It took two hands to do
it, but it did turn.

And then she took a long breath and looked behind her up the long walk
to see if any one was coming. No one was coming. No one ever did
come, it seemed, and she took another long breath, because she could
not help it, and she held back the swinging curtain of ivy and pushed
back the door which opened slowly--slowly.

Then she slipped through it, and shut it behind her, and stood with her
back against it, looking about her and breathing quite fast with
excitement, and wonder, and delight.

She was standing inside the secret garden.

CHAPTER IX

THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANY ONE EVER LIVED IN

It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could
imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the
leafless stems of climbing roses which were so thick that they were
matted together. 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
rosebushes 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