Chapter IX

The Strangest House Any One Ever Lived In

It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking
place any one could imagine. The high walls
which shut it in were covered with the leafless
stems of climbing roses which were so thick that
they were matted together. Mary Lennox knew
they were roses because she had seen a great many
roses in India. All the ground was covered with
grass of a wintry brown and out of it grew clumps
of bushes which were surely rose-bushes if they
were alive. There were numbers of standard
roses which had so spread their branches that they
were like little trees. There were other trees in
the garden, and one of the things which made the
place look strangest and loveliest was that climbing
roses had run all over them and swung down
long tendrils which made light swaying curtains,
and here and there they had caught at each other
or at a far-reaching branch and had crept from one
tree to another and made lovely bridges of themselves.
There were neither leaves nor roses on
them now and Mary did not know whether they

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v?