dig and pull up weeds, and do whatever you tell me. Oh! do come, Dickon!”
“I’ll come every day if tha’ wants me, rain or shine,” he answered stoutly. “It’s th’ best fun I ever had in my life—shut in here an’ wakenin’ up a garden.”
“If you will come,” said Mary, “if you will help me to make it alive—I’ll—I don’t know what I’ll do,” she ended helplessly. What could you do for a boy like that?
“I’ll tell thee what tha’ll do,” said Dickon, with his happy grin. “Tha’ll get fat an’ tha’ll get as hungry as a young fox an’ tha’ll learn how to talk to th’ robin same as I do. Eh! we’ll have a lot o’ fun.”
He began to walk about, looking up in the trees and at the walls and bushes with a thoughtful expression.
“I wouldn’t want to make it look like a gardener’s garden, all clipped an’ spick an’ span, would you?” he said. “It’s nicer like this with things runnin’ wild, an’ swingin’ an’ catchin’ hold of each other.”
“Don’t let us make it tidy,” said Mary anxiously. “It wouldn’t seem like a secret garden if it was tidy.”
Dickon stood rubbing his rusty-red head with a rather puzzled look.
