Mary went downstairs and wandered through the great empty gardens. Many of the fruit and vegetable gardens had walls round them, but there were no locked doors. She
saw an old man digging in one of the vegetable gardens, but he looked cross and unfriendly, so she walked on.
'How ugly it all looks in winter!' she thought. 'But what a mystery the locked garden is! Why did my uncle bury the key? If he loved his wife, why did he hate her garden?
Perhaps I'll never know. I don't suppose I'll like him if I ever
meet him. And he won't like me, so I won't be able to ask him.'
Just then she noticed a robin singing to her from a tree on the other side of a wall. 'I think that tree's in the secret garden!' she told herself. 'There's an extra wall here, and
there's no way in.'
She went back to where the gardener was digging, and spoke to him. At first he answered in a very bad-tempered
way, but suddenly the robin flew down near them, and the old man began to smile. He
looked a different person then, and Mary thought how much
nicer people looked when they smiled. The gardener spoke gently
Just then she noticed a robin. to the robin, and the 14
Mary in Yorkshire
pretty little bird hopped on the ground near them.
'He's my friend, he is,' said the old man. 'There aren't any other robins in the garden, so he's a bit lonely.' He spoke in strong Yorkshire dialect, so Mary had to listen carefully to
understand him.
She looked very hard at the robin. 'I'm lonely too,' she said. She had not realized this before.
'What's your name?' she asked the gardener.
'Ben Weatherstaff. I'm lonely myself. The robin's my only friend, you see.'
'I haven't got any friends at all,' said Mary.
Yorkshire people always say what they are thinking, and old Ben was a Yorkshire moor man. 'We're alike, you and me,' he told Mary. 'We're not pretty to look at, and we're
both very disagreeable.'
Nobody had ever said this to Mary before. 'Am I really as ugly and disagreeable as Ben?' she wondered.
Suddenly the robin flew to a tree near Mary and started singing to her. Ben laughed loudly.
'Well!' he said. 'He wants to be your friend!'
'Oh! Would you please be my friend?' she whispered to the robin. She spoke in a soft, quiet voice and old Ben looked at her in surprise.
'You said that really nicely!' he said. 'You sound like Dickon, when he talks to animals on the moor.'
'Do you know Dickon?' asked Mary. But just then the robin flew away. 'Oh look, he's flown into the garden with no door! Please, Ben, how can I get into it?'