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 beginning to like to
be out of doors; she no longer hated the wind, but
enjoyed it. She could run faster, and longer, and
she could skip up to a hundred. The bulbs in the
secret garden must have been much astonished.
Such nice clear places were made round them that
they had all the breathing space they wanted, and
really, if Mistress Mary had known it, they began

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v?