“Do you mean—­” Mary began.

“What I said Tuesday.  Ask her if you might be driven over to our cottage some day and have a bit o’ mother’s hot oat cake, an’ butter, an’ a glass o’ milk.”

It seemed as if all the interesting things were happening in one day.  To think of going over the moor in the daylight and when the sky was blue!  To think of going into the cottage which held twelve children!

“Does she think Mrs. Medlock would let me go?” she asked, quite anxiously.

“Aye, she thinks she would.  She knows what a tidy woman mother is and how clean she keeps the cottage.”

“If I went I should see your mother as well as Dickon,” said Mary, thinking it over and liking the idea very much.  “She doesn’t seem to be like the mothers in India.”

Her work in the garden and the excitement of the afternoon ended by making her feel quiet and thoughtful.  Martha stayed with her until tea-time, but they sat in comfortable quiet and talked very little.  But just before Martha went down-stairs for the tea-tray, Mary asked a question.

“Martha,” she said, “has the scullery-maid had the toothache again to-day?”

Martha certainly started slightly.

“What makes thee ask that?” she said.

“Because when I waited so long for you to come back I opened the door and walked down the corridor to see if you were coming.  And I heard that far-off crying again, just as we heard it the other night.  There isn’t a wind to-day, so you see it couldn’t have been the wind.”

“Eh!” said Martha restlessly.  “Tha’ mustn’t go walkin’ about in corridors an’ listenin’.  Mr. Craven would be that there angry there’s no knowin’ what he’d do.”

“I wasn’t listening,” said Mary.  “I was just waiting for you—­and I heard it.  That’s three times.”

“My word!  There’s Mrs. Medlock’s bell,” said Martha, and she almost ran out of the room.

“It’s the strangest house any one ever lived in,” said Mary drowsily, as she dropped her head on the cushioned seat of the armchair near her.  Fresh air, and digging, and skipping-rope had made her feel so comfortably tired that she fell asleep.

CHAPTER X

DICKON

The sun shone down for nearly a week on the secret garden.  The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it.  She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was.  It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place.  The few books she had read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret gardens in some of the stories.  Sometimes people went to sleep in them for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid.  She had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming wider awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite.  She was