![]() ![]() Our Dickon he said our cottage was good enough for a king.” An’ th’ cottage all smelt o’ nice, clean hot bakin’ an’ there was a good fire, an’ they just shouted for joy. “I had ‘em all pipin’ hot when they came in from playin’ on th’ moor. She had even made each of the children a doughcake with a bit of brown sugar in it. Her mother had been glad to see her and they had got the baking and washing all out of the way. She was full of stories of the delights of her day out. A man gave me a ride in his cart an’ I did enjoy myself.” “Eh! it was pretty on th’ moor with th’ birds gettin’ up an’ th’ rabbits scamperin’ about an’ th’ sun risin’. Medlock had allowed Martha to sleep all night at the cottage, but she was back at her work in the morning with cheeks redder than ever and in the best of spirits. She took the key in her pocket when she went back to the house, and she made up her mind that she would always carry it with her when she went out, so that if she ever should find the hidden door she would be ready. It seemed so silly, she said to herself, to be near it and not be able to get in. ![]() Something of her contrariness came back to her as she paced the walk and looked over it at the tree-tops inside. Howsoever carefully she looked she could see nothing but thickly growing, glossy, dark green leaves. No one but herself ever seemed to come there, so she could walk slowly and look at the wall, or, rather, at the ivy growing on it. She put the key in her pocket and walked up and down her walk. Already she felt less “contrary,” though she did not know why. In India she had always been too hot and languid and weak to care much about anything, but in this place she was beginning to care and to want to do new things. Just as it had given her an appetite, and fighting with the wind had stirred her blood, so the same things had stirred her mind. There is no doubt that the fresh, strong, pure air from the moor had a great deal to do with it. Living as it were, all by herself in a house with a hundred mysteriously closed rooms and having nothing whatever to do to amuse herself, had set her inactive brain to working and was actually awakening her imagination. The thought of that pleased her very much. Besides that, if she liked it she could go into it every day and shut the door behind her, and she could make up some play of her own and play it quite alone, because nobody would ever know where she was, but would think the door was still locked and the key buried in the earth. ![]() It seemed as if it must be different from other places and that something strange must have happened to it during ten years. It was because it had been shut up so long that she wanted to see it. All she thought about the key was that if it was the key to the closed garden, and she could find out where the door was, she could perhaps open it and see what was inside the walls, and what had happened to the old rose-trees. As I have said before, she was not a child who had been trained to ask permission or consult her elders about things. She turned it over and over, and thought about it. You should visit Browse Happy and update your internet browser today! The embedded audio player requires a modern internet browser. ![]()
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