“Aye, he’s a friend o’ yours,” chuckled Dickon.

“Do you think he is?” cried Mary eagerly.  She did so want to know.  “Do you think he really likes me?”

“He wouldn’t come near thee if he didn’t,” answered Dickon.  “Birds is rare choosers an’ a robin can flout a body worse than a man.  See, he’s making up to thee now.  ‘Cannot tha’ see a chap?’ he’s sayin’.”

And it really seemed as if it must be true.  He so sidled and twittered and tilted as he hopped on his bush.

“Do you understand everything birds say?” said Mary.

Dickon’s grin spread until he seemed all wide, red, curving mouth, and he rubbed his rough head.

“I think I do, and they think I do,” he said.  “I’ve lived on th’ moor with ’em so long.  I’ve watched ’em break shell an’ come out an’ fledge an’ learn to fly an’ begin to sing, till I think I’m one of ’em.  Sometimes I think p’raps I’m a bird, or a fox, or a rabbit, or a squirrel, or even a beetle, an’ I don’t know it.”

He laughed and came back to the log and began to talk about the flower seeds again.  He told her what they looked like when they were flowers; he told her how to plant them, and watch them, and feed and water them.

“See here,” he said suddenly, turning round to look at her.  “I’ll plant them for thee myself.  Where is tha’ garden?”

Mary’s thin hands clutched each other as they lay on her lap.  She did not know what to say, so for a whole minute she said nothing.  She had never thought of this.  She felt miserable.  And she felt as if she went red and then pale.

“Tha’s got a bit o’ garden, hasn’t tha’?” Dickon said.

It was true that she had turned red and then pale.  Dickon saw her do it, and as she still said nothing, he began to be puzzled.

“Wouldn’t they give thee a bit?” he asked.  “Hasn’t tha’ got any yet?”

She held her hands even tighter and turned her eyes toward him.

“I don’t know anything about boys,” she said slowly.  “Could you keep a secret, if I told you one?  It’s a great secret.  I don’t know what I should do if any one found it out.  I believe I should die!” She said the last sentence quite fiercely.

Dickon looked more puzzled than ever and even rubbed his hand over his rough head again, but he answered quite good-humoredly.

“I’m keepin’ secrets all th’ time,” he said.  “If I couldn’t keep secrets from th’ other lads, secrets about foxes’ cubs, an’ birds’ nests, an’ wild things’ holes, there’d be naught safe on th’ moor.  Aye, I can keep secrets.”

Mistress Mary did not mean to put out her hand and clutch his sleeve but she did it.

“I’ve stolen a garden,” she said very fast.  “It isn’t mine.  It isn’t anybody’s.  Nobody wants it, nobody cares for it, nobody ever goes into it.  Perhaps everything is dead in it already; I don’t know.”

She began to feel hot and as contrary as she had ever felt in her life.