Chapter 7 Chapter Seven The Key to the Garden

Two days later Mary opened her eyes, sat up straight and called Martha. "Look at the wilderness! Look at the wilderness!" The storm died away, and the night's wind swept away the gray mist and cloud.The wind had stopped, and a clear dark blue sky arched high over the fields.Mary had never, never dreamed of a sky so blue.In India, the sky is as hot as fire; and this cool dark blue shone like a bottomless lake.Here and there, in the high arched blue, floated little clouds like snow-white wool.The unreachable world in the wilderness is now a gentle blue, not a sombre purple-black, or a dreadfully desolate gray.

"Aha," Martha said with a grin, "the rain's gonna stop for a while. It's like this time of year. It stops overnight and acts like it never came and never comes again. It's because of the spring Already on the way. It's a long way to go, but it's coming." "I thought maybe it was always raining and dark in England." "Oh! No!" said Martha, sitting up among a pile of black lead brushes. "That's the sound." "What did you say?" Mary asked curiously.In India, the natives speak different dialects that few people understand, so she is not surprised that Masha cannot understand what she says.

Martha laughed, just as she had done that first morning. "Well," she said, "I was speaking flat Yorkshire, which Mrs. Medlock said I must never speak. 'That's the sound' means 'it's not like that at all,'" She said slowly and carefully, "But it's going to take a long time to say that. When it's sunny in Yorkshire, it's the sunniest place in the world. I told you you'd love the moors after a while. Wait until you see Golden gorse, heather—all purple bells, hundreds of butterflies flapping, bees buzzing, larks soaring into the sky and singing. You'd want to get out as soon as the sun comes up, like Dickon stays out on the moor all day."

"Can I go up there?" Mary asked cautiously.She looked at the blue in the distance through the window.It was so new, so big, and so wonderful, a heavenly color. "I don't know," answered Martha, "you haven't used your legs since you were born, and I see you can't walk five miles. My cottage is five miles from here." "I want to see your cottage." Martha stared at her curiously for a moment, then took her polishing brush and resumed grinding the mantelpiece.She was thinking that this flat little face just now looked less sour than the one she saw the first morning.This face looked a little bit like when little Susan Ann wanted something very badly.

"I'll go ask my mother," she said, "she's the kind of person who always finds a way out of things. I'm going out today, and I'm going home. Oh! Happy. Mrs. Medlock misses her mother. Maybe she can talk to mom." "I like your mother," said Mary. "I should have thought you would," Martha agreed, rubbing. "I've never seen her," said Mary. "No, you didn't," Martha replied. She sat up again, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand, seemingly confused for a moment, but finally she was sure. "Well, she is so sensible, diligent, kind, and clean. People who have seen her or not can't help liking her. When it's my turn to go out, I walk on the way home to see her, crossing the wilderness I couldn't help but jump for joy."

"I like Dickon," added Mary, "but I've never seen him." "Oh," said Martha firmly, "I told you every bird liked him, and rabbits, wild sheep, and those foxes. I was thinking," Martha stared at her thoughtfully. Look, "What would Dickon think of you?" "He won't like me," said Mary, with her rigid little air. "Nobody will." Martha looked thoughtful again. "Do you like yourself?" she asked, as if she really wanted to know. Mary hesitated for a moment, thinking over and over. "Not--really," she replied, "but I've never thought of it before."

Martha grinned slightly, as if recalling something domestic. "My mother told me that once," she said, "she was by the washtub, and I was in a bad mood, and she was saying bad things about people, and she came back to me and said, 'Nah, little bitch, nah! Just stand There, say you don’t like this, you don’t like that. Do you like yourself?’ made me laugh, and straight away woke me up." She took care of Marie's breakfast and left, in high spirits.She's going to cross the five miles of moor to get back to the cabin, she's going to help her mother wash up, she's going to help her bake her meals for the week, and she's going to thoroughly enjoy and enjoy herself.

Mary felt even more lonely when she knew she was not in the house.She went out to the garden as fast as she could, and the first thing she did was run ten laps around the garden with the fountain.She counted the laps carefully and felt better after finishing.The sun has changed the whole place.The dark blue high sky over the wilderness also arched over Misselwest Manor. She kept looking up and looking into the depths, imagining what it would be like to lie on those little white clouds and float around.She walked into the first vegetable garden and saw Ji Yuanben and two other gardeners working.It looks like the weather change is doing him a favor.He took the initiative to talk to her: "Spring is here," he said, "can't you smell it?"

Mary sniffed and thought she could smell it. "I smell something, nice, fresh, moist," she said. "It's good, fertile soil," he answered, digging. "It's in the right mood, ready to grow. It's time to sow, and it's happy. It's bored in winter when it has nothing to do. There's a garden over there." Inside, things grow in the dark under the ground. The sun warms them up. After a while, you can see some green shoots popping out." "What will it be?" Mary asked. "Crocuses, snowdrops, daffodils. Have you ever seen any of these flowers?"

"No. Everything is hot and humid in India, and everything is green after it rains," Mary said. "I thought things grew overnight." "These flowers won't grow overnight," Ji Yuanben said, "You have to wait. They will poke out a little higher here, and a spike will pop out there. You can watch them grow before your eyes." "I will," Mary replied. Soon she heard the faint flapping of wings, and she knew at once that the robin was coming.It was very neat and lively, jumping around next to her feet, tilting its head to one side, looking at her slyly, and she couldn't help asking Ji Yuanben a question.

"Do you think it remembers me?" she said. "Remember you!" Ji Yuanben said angrily, "It knows every cabbage stake in the garden, let alone people. It has never seen a little girl here. You don't need to hide anything from it." "In the garden where it lives, do things grow under the ground?" asked Mary. "What garden?" Old Ji muttered, becoming surly again. "The one with the old rose tree." She couldn't help asking, because she wanted to know so badly. "Are all the flowers dead, or will some of the summer come alive? Are there any roses?" "Ask it," Ji Yuanben said, shrugging at the robin, "it's the only 'person' who knows. No one has been inside in the past ten years." Ten years is a long time, Mary thought.She was born ten years ago. She walked away, thinking slowly.She came to love the garden as she had grown to love Robin and Dickon and Martha's mother.She also began to like Martha.It seems that there are better people for her to like-if you are not used to liking people.She thought the mockingbird was a person.She went for a walk outside the long ivy-covered wall, over the top of which she could see the tops of the trees; and on her second trip back and forth, something extremely interesting and exciting happened, all thanks to Ji Yuan Ben's robin. She heard a chirp, a twitter, and looked to the left at the blank flowerbed, where it was hopping around, pretending to peck in the dirt, and convinced her it wasn't following her.But she knew it had been following her, and the accident filled her with such joy that she almost trembled. "You really remember me!" she exclaimed. "You really! You're the most beautiful thing in the world!" She chirped, talked, and coaxed it, while it jumped, showed off its tail, and sang softly.It seems to be talking.His red waistcoat was like satin, and he puffed out his little breast, so delicate, so majestic, so beautiful, it really seemed to show how important a mockingbird can be, how much like a person.When it allowed Miss Mary to come closer and closer to her, Miss Mary forgot the moment when she was out of sorts, and bent over, talking, trying to make a sound like a robin. Oh!To think it could bring her so close!It knew that no reason in the world would let her reach out to it, or frighten it.It knows because it is a real human being - only kinder than the rest of the world.She was so happy that she could barely breathe. Flower beds are not completely blank.There were no flowers on it, because the perennials had been cut for the winter, but there were tall and low bushes in the beds, and when the robin hopped underneath, she saw it jump over a little pile of freshly turned dirt.It stops to look for bugs.The soil was turned up, because a dog tried to dig out the mole, and made a deep hole. Mary went to see, not quite sure why there was a hole there.She saw something almost buried in the freshly turned earth.Like a ring of rusted brass and iron, the robin flew up to a nearby tree, and she reached out and picked up the ring.But there's more than just the ring, it's an old key that seems to have been buried for a long time. Miss Mary stood up and stared almost in horror at the key dangling from her finger. "Maybe it's been buried for ten years," she whispered, "maybe it's the key to that garden!"