Ten years was a long time, Mary thought. She had been born ten years ago. She walked away, thinking. She had begun to like the gardens, and the robin, and Martha and
Dickon and their mother. Before she came to Yorkshire, she had not liked anybody.
She was walking beside the long wall of the secret garden, when a most wonderful thing happened. She suddenly realized the robin was following her. She felt very pleased and excited by this, and cried out, 'You like me,
don't you? And I like you too!' As he hopped along beside her, she hopped and sang too, to show him that she was his friend. Just then he stopped at a place where a dog had dug a hole in the ground. As Mary looked at the hole, she noticed something almost buried there. She put her hand in and pulled it out. It was an old key.
'Perhaps it's been buried for ten years,' she whispered to herself. 'Perhaps it's the
key to the secret garden!'
She looked at it for a long time. How lovely it would be to find the garden, and see what had happened to it
in the last ten years! She could play in it all by herself, and nobody would know she was there. She put the
key safely in her pocket.