The Secret Garden

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

But now the world seemed to be changing and getting nicer.

If no one found out about the secret garden, she should en...

She began to feel hot and as contrary as she had ever felt in her life.

"When it looks a bit greenish an' juicy like that, it's wick," he explained. "When th' inside is dry an' breaks easy, like this here piece I've cut off, it's done for.

Noted

"There's naught as nice as th' smell o' good clean earth, except th' smell o' fresh growin' things when th' rain falls on 'em.

"I'll come every day if tha' wants me, rain or shine," he answered stoutly.

Aw

And they laughed so that in the end they were making as much noise as if they had been two ordinary healthy natural ten-year-old creatures—instead of a hard, little, unloving girl and a sickly boy who believed that he was going to die.

The garden had reached the time when every day and every night it seemed as if Magicians were passing through it drawing loveliness out of the earth and the boughs with wands.

Dr. Craven felt rather alarmed. If this tiresome hysterical boy should chance to get well he himself would lose all chance of inheriting Misselthwaite; but he was not an unscrupulous man, though he was a weak one, and he did not intend to let him run into actual danger.

"When I lie by myself and remember I begin to have pains everywhere and I think of things that make me begin to scream because I hate them so. If there was a doctor anywhere who could make you forget you were ill instead of remembering it I would have him brought here." And

Mrs. Medlock smiled. She was fond of Susan Sowerby. "She's got a way with her, has Susan,"

Is she in love with her or smthn

Colin had never talked to a boy in his life and he was so overwhelmed by his own pleasure and curiosity that he did not even think of speaking.

One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back and looks up

"Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world," he said wisely one day, "but people don't know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment."

When he held up his head and fixed his strange eyes on you it seemed as if you believed him almost in spite of yourself

I would never have let him come to see me if he had not been an animal charmer—which is a boy charmer, too, because a boy is an animal.

One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body.

Two things cannot be in one place. "Where, you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow."

But, strange as it seemed to him, there were minutes—sometimes half-hours—when, without his knowing why, the black burden seemed to lift itself again and he knew he was a living man and not a dead one. Slowly—slowly—for no reason that he knew of—he was "coming alive" with the garden.

"Perhaps," he thought, "my body is growing stronger." It was growing stronger but—because of the rare peaceful hours when his thoughts were changed—his soul was slowly growing stronger, too.