one about not living to grow up. They don't
know I know that, so it is a sort of secret. But I
like this kind better."

"If you won't make them take you to the garden,"
pleaded Mary, "perhaps -- I feel almost
sure I can find out how to get in sometime. And
then -- if the doctor wants you to go out in your
chair, and if you can always do what you want to
do, perhaps -- perhaps we might find some boy
who would push you, and we could go alone and
it would always be a secret garden."

"I should -- like -- that," he said very slowly,
his eyes looking dreamy. "I should like that.
I should not mind fresh air in a secret garden."

Mary began to recover her breath and feel
safer because the idea of keeping the secret seemed
to please him. She felt almost sure that if she
kept on talking and could make him see the garden
in his mind as she had seen it he would like
it so much that he could not bear to think that
everybody might tramp into it when they chose.

"I'll tell you what I _think_ it would be like, if
we could go into it," she said. "It has been shut
up so long things have grown into a tangle perhaps."

He lay quite still and listened while she went
on talking about the roses which _might_ have clambered
from tree to tree and hung down -- about

[[167]]

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v?