s gone Mary turned down the walk which led to the door in
the shrubbery. She could not help thinking about the garden which no
one had been into for ten years. She wondered what it would look like
and whether there were any flowers still alive in it. When she had
passed through the shrubbery gate she found herself in great gardens,
with wide lawns and winding walks with clipped borders. There were
trees, and flower-beds, and evergreens clipped into strange shapes, and
a large pool with an old gray fountain in its midst. But the
flower-beds were bare and wintry and the fountain was not playing.
This was not the garden which was shut up. How could a garden be shut
up? You could always walk into a garden.

She was just thinking this when she saw that, at the end of the path
she was following, there seemed to be a long wall, with ivy growing
over it. She was not familiar enough with England to know that she was
coming upon the kitchen-gardens where the vegetables and fruit were
growing. She went toward the wall and found that there was a green
door in the ivy, and that it stood open. This was not the closed
garden, evidently, and she could go into it.

She went through the door and found that it was a garden with walls all
round it and that it was only one of several walled gardens which
seemed to open into one another. She saw another open green door,
revealing bushes and pathways between beds containing winter
vegetables. Fruit-trees were trained flat against the wall, and over
some of the beds there were glass frames. The place was bare and ugly
enough, Mary thought, as she stood and stared about her. It might be
nicer in summer when things were green, but there was nothing pretty
about it now.

Presently an old man with a spade over his shoulder walked through the
door leading from the second garden. He looked startled when he saw
Mary, and then touched his cap. He had a surly old face, and did not
seem at all pleased to see her--but then she was displeased with his
garden and wore her "quite contrary" expression, and certainly did not
seem at all pleased to see him.

"What is this place?" she asked.

"One o' th' kitchen-gardens," he answered.

"What is that?" said Mary, pointing through the other green door.

"Another of 'em," shortly. "There's another on t'other side o' th'
wall an' there's th' orchard t'other side o' that."

"Can I go in them?" asked Mary.

"If tha' likes. But there's nowt