_live_ to get into it?" and he clutched her hands
and dragged her toward him.

"Of course you'll see it!" snapped Mary indignantly.
"Of course you'll live to get into it!
Don't be silly!"

And she was so un-hysterical and natural and
childish that she brought him to his senses and
he began to laugh at himself and a few minutes
afterward she was sitting on her stool again telling
him not what she imagined the secret garden to
be like but what it really was, and Colin's aches
and tiredness were forgotten and he was listening
enraptured.

"It is just what you thought it would be," he
said at last. "It sounds just as if you had really
seen it. You know I said that when you told me
first."

Mary hesitated about two minutes and then
boldly spoke the truth.

"I had seen it -- and I had been in," she said.
"I found the key and got in weeks ago. But I
daren't tell you -- I daren't because I was so
afraid I couldn't trust you -- _for_sure_!"

[[238]]

p237 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p238w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p239

v?