“I turned round the wrong corner,” explained Mary.  “I didn’t know which way to go and I heard some one crying.”

She quite hated Mrs. Medlock at the moment, but she hated her more the next.

“You didn’t hear anything of the sort,” said the housekeeper.  “You come along back to your own nursery or I’ll box your ears.”

And she took her by the arm and half pushed, half pulled her up one passage and down another until she pushed her in at the door of her own room.

“Now,” she said, “you stay where you’re told to stay or you’ll find yourself locked up.  The master had better get you a governess, same as he said he would.  You’re one that needs some one to look sharp after you.  I’ve got enough to do.”

She went out of the room and slammed the door after her, and Mary went and sat on the hearth-rug, pale with rage.  She did not cry, but ground her teeth.

“There was some one crying—­there was—­there was!” she said to herself.

She had heard it twice now, and sometime she would find out.  She had found out a great deal this morning.  She felt as if she had been on a long journey, and at any rate she had had something to amuse her all the time, and she had played with the ivory elephants and had seen the gray mouse and its babies in their nest in the velvet cushion.

CHAPTER VII

THE KEY OF THE GARDEN

Two days after this, when Mary opened her eyes she sat upright in bed immediately, and called to Martha.

“Look at the moor!  Look at the moor!”

The rain-storm had ended and the gray mist and clouds had been swept away in the night by the wind.  The wind itself had ceased and a brilliant, deep blue sky arched high over the moorland.  Never, never had Mary dreamed of a sky so blue.  In India skies were hot and blazing; this was of a deep cool blue which almost seemed to sparkle like the waters of some lovely bottomless lake, and here and there, high, high in the arched blueness floated small clouds of snow-white fleece.  The far-reaching world of the moor itself looked softly blue instead of gloomy purple-black or awful dreary gray.

“Aye,” said Martha with a cheerful grin.  “Th’ storm’s over for a bit.  It does like this at this time o’ th’ year.  It goes off in a night like it was pretendin’ it had never been here an’ never meant to come again.  That’s because th’ springtime’s on its way.  It’s a long way off yet, but it’s comin’.”

“I thought perhaps it always rained or looked dark in England,” Mary said.

“Eh! no!” said Martha, sitting up on her heels among her black lead brushes.  “Nowt o’ th’ soart!”

“What does that mean?” asked Mary seriously.  In India the natives spoke different dialects which only a few people understood, so she was not surprised when Martha used words she did not know.