“Do you go and see those other roses now?” she asked.

“Not been this year.  My rheumatics has made me too stiff in th’ joints.”

He said it in his grumbling voice, and then quite suddenly he seemed to get angry with her, though she did not see why he should.

“Now look here!” he said sharply.  “Don’t tha’ ask so many questions.  Tha’rt th’ worst wench for askin’ questions I’ve ever come across.  Get thee gone an’ play thee.  I’ve done talkin’ for to-day.”

And he said it so crossly that she knew there was not the least use in staying another minute.  She went skipping slowly down the outside walk, thinking him over and saying to herself that, queer as it was, here was another person whom she liked in spite of his crossness.  She liked old Ben Weatherstaff.  Yes, she did like him.  She always wanted to try to make him talk to her.  Also she began to believe that he knew everything in the world about flowers.

There was a laurel-hedged walk which curved round the secret garden and ended at a gate which opened into a wood, in the park.  She thought she would skip round this walk and look into the wood and see if there were any rabbits hopping about.  She enjoyed the skipping very much and when she reached the little gate she opened it and went through because she heard a low, peculiar whistling sound and wanted to find out what it was.

It was a very strange thing indeed.  She quite caught her breath as she stopped to look at it.  A boy was sitting under a tree, with his back against it, playing on a rough wooden pipe.  He was a funny looking boy about twelve.  He looked very clean and his nose turned up and his cheeks were as red as poppies and never had Mistress Mary seen such round and such blue eyes in any boy’s face.  And on the trunk of the tree he leaned against, a brown squirrel was clinging and watching him, and from behind a bush nearby a cock pheasant was delicately stretching his neck to peep out, and quite near him were two rabbits sitting up and sniffing with tremulous noses—­and actually it appeared as if they were all drawing near to watch him and listen to the strange low little call his pipe seemed to make.

When he saw Mary he held up his hand and spoke to her in a voice almost as low as and rather like his piping.

“Don’t tha’ move,” he said.  “It’d flight ’em.”

Mary remained motionless.  He stopped playing his pipe and began to rise from the ground.  He moved so slowly that it scarcely seemed as though he were moving at all, but at last he stood on his feet and then the squirrel scampered back up into the branches of his tree, the pheasant withdrew his head and the rabbits dropped on all fours and began to hop away, though not at all as if they were frightened.

“I’m Dickon,” the boy said.  “I know tha’rt Miss Mary.”

Then Mary realized that somehow she had known at first that he was Dickon.  Who else could have been charming rabbits and pheasants as the natives charm snakes in India?  He had a wide, red, curving mouth and his smile spread all over his face.