The Secret Garden quotes

There would be a new Ayah, and perhaps she would know some new stories. Mary had been rather tired of the old ones. She did not cry because her nurse had died.

She was not an affectionate child and had never cared much for anyone.

The noise and hurrying about and wailing over the cholera had frightened her, and she had been angry because no one seemed to remember that she was alive. Everyone was too panic-stricken to think of a little girl no one was fond of.

The young man whose name was Barney looked at her very sadly. Mary even thought she saw him wink his eyes as if to wink tears away.

“Poor little kid!” he said. “There is nobody left to come.”

It was in that strange and sudden way that Mary found out that she had neither father nor mother left;

Since she had been living in other people’s houses and had had no Ayah, she had begun to feel lonely and to think queer thoughts which were new to her.

She had begun to wonder why she had never seemed to belong to anyone even when her father and mother had been alive.

Other children seemed to belong to their fathers and mothers, but she had never seemed to really be anyone’s little girl. She had had servants, and food and clothes, but no one had taken any notice of her.

Mistress Mary went a step nearer to the robin and looked at him very hard.

She had not known before that this was one of the things which made her feel sour and cross.

She seemed to find it out when the robin looked at her and she looked at the robin.

“Tha’ an’ me are a good bit alike,” he said. “We was wove out of th’ same cloth.

We’re neither of us good lookin’ an’ we’re both of us as sour as we look.

We’ve got the same nasty tempers, both of us, I’ll warrant.”

“Tha’ an’ me are a good bit alike,” he said. “We was wove out of th’ same cloth. We’re neither of us good lookin’ an’ we’re both of us as sour as we look. We’ve got the same nasty tempers, both of us, I’ll warrant.”

This was plain speaking, and Mary Lennox had never heard the truth about herself in her life.

Native servants always salaamed and submitted to you, whatever you did.

This gave her so much to think of that she began to be quite interested and feel that she was not sorry that she had come to Misselthwaite Manor. In India she had always felt hot and too languid to care much about anything.

The fact was that the fresh wind from the moor had begun to blow the cobwebs out of her young brain and to waken her up a little.

She stayed out of doors nearly all day, and when she sat down to her supper at night she felt hungry and drowsy and comfortable. She did not feel cross when Martha chattered away.

“There now,” she said. “I’ve talked broad Yorkshire again like Mrs. Medlock said I mustn’t. ‘Nowt o’ th’ soart’ means ‘nothin’-of-the-sort,’ ” slowly and carefully, “but it takes so long to say it.

Yorkshire’s th’ sunniest place on earth when it is sunny.

I told thee tha’d like th’ moor after a bit.

Then she slipped through it, and shut it behind her, and stood with her back against it, looking about her and breathing quite fast with excitement, and wonder, and delight.

She was standing inside the secret garden.

It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place anyone could imagine.

The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses which were so thick that they were matted together. Mary Lennox knew they were roses because she had seen a great many roses in India.

“

Our Dickon can make a flower grow out of a brick walk. Mother says he just whispers things out o’ th’ ground.

”

“Eh!” said Martha. “It’s like she says: ‘

A woman as brings up twelve children learns something besides her A.B.C. Children’s as good as ’rithmetic to set you findin’ out things.

’ ”

“My word! There’s Mrs. Medlock’s bell,” said Martha, and she almost ran out of the room.

“It’s the strangest house anyone ever lived in,” said Mary drowsily

, as she dropped her head on the cushioned seat of the armchair near her. Fresh air, and digging, and skipping-rope had made her feel so comfortably tired that she fell asleep.

“That’s like him,” snapped Ben Weatherstaff. “Makin’ up to th’ women folk just for vanity an’ flightiness. There’s nothin’ he wouldn’t do for th’ sake o’ showin’ off an’ flirtin’ his tail-feathers.

He’s as full o’ pride as an egg’s full o’ meat.

”

“It’s this,” she said. “

It’s a secret garden, and I’m the only one in the world who wants it to be alive.

”

“It’s rare good for thee,” he said, nodding his head wisely. “

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 get out on th’ moor many a day when it’s rainin’ an’ I lie under a bush an’ listen to th’ soft swish o’ drops on th’ heather an’ I just sniff an’ sniff. My nose end fair quivers like a rabbit’s, mother says.”

“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.

“If tha’ was a missel thrush an’ showed me where thy nest was, does tha’ think I’d tell anyone? Not me,” he said. “

Tha’ art as safe as a missel thrush.

”

It was pouring down in torrents and the wind was “wuthering” round the corners and in the chimneys of the huge old house. Mary sat up in bed and felt miserable and angry.

“The rain is as contrary as I ever was,” she said. “It came because it knew I did not want it.”

She threw herself back on her pillow and buried her face. She did not cry, but she lay and hated the sound of the heavily beating rain, she hated the wind and its “wuthering.” She could not go to sleep again.

“

It sounds just like a person lost on the moor and wandering on and on crying,

” she said.

Mary had not known that she herself had been spoiled, but she could see quite plainly that this mysterious boy had been.

He thought that the whole world belonged to him.

How peculiar he was and how coolly he spoke of not living.

“

It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine, and things pushing up and working under the earth

,” said Mary. “If the garden was a secret and we could get into it we could watch the things grow bigger every day, and see how many roses are alive. Don’t you see?

“See here,” she said. “

Don’t let us talk about dying; I don’t like it. Let us talk about living.

Let us talk and talk about Dickon. And then we will look at your pictures.”

“The birds don’t and other animals,” he said, still thinking it over, “perhaps that’s why I shouldn’t.

He’s a sort of animal charmer and I am a boy animal.

”

There were things sprouting and pushing out from the roots of clumps of plants and there were actually here and there glimpses of royal purple and yellow unfurling among the stems of crocuses.

Six months before Mistress Mary would not have seen how the world was waking up, but now she missed nothing.

When she had reached the place where the door hid itself under the ivy, she was startled by a curious loud sound.

“Eh!” he said. “I was up long before him. How could I have stayed abed!

Th’ world’s all fair begun again this mornin’, it has.

An’ it’s workin’ an’ hummin’ an’ scratchin’ an’ pipin’ an’ nest-buildin’ an’ breathin’ out scents, till you’ve got to be out on it ’stead o’ lyin’ on your back.

“It’s part o’ th’ springtime, this nest-buildin’ is,” he said. “I warrant it’s been goin’ on in th’ same way every year since th’ world was begun. They’ve got their way o’ thinkin’ and doin’ things an’ a body had better not meddle.

You can lose a friend in springtime easier than any other season if you’re too curious.

”

“No, but he wishes he’d never been born. Mother she says that’s th’ worst thing on earth for a child.

Them as is not wanted scarce ever thrives.

Mester Craven he’d buy anythin’ as money could buy for th’ poor lad but he’d like to forget as he’s on earth. For one thing, he’s afraid he’ll look at him some day and find he’s growed hunchback.”

“It’d be good for him, I’ll warrant,” he said. “Us’d not be thinkin’ he’d better never been born.

Us’d be just two children watchin’ a garden grow, an’ he’d be another.

Two lads an’ a little lass just lookin’ on at th’ springtime. I warrant it’d be better than doctor’s stuff.”

She knew nothing about the pitifulness of people who had been ill and nervous and who did not know that they could control their tempers and need not make other people ill and nervous, too.

When she had had a headache in India she had done her best to see that everybody else also had a headache or something quite as bad.

And she felt she was quite right; but of course now she felt that Colin was quite wrong.

“What are you?” said Mary. “Selfish people always say that.

Anyone is selfish who doesn’t do what they want.

You’re more selfish than I am. You’re the most selfish boy I ever saw.”

“I don’t believe it!” said Mary sourly. “

You just say that to make people sorry. I believe you’re proud of it.

I don’t believe it! If you were a nice boy it might be true—but you’re too nasty!”

“You didn’t feel a lump!” contradicted Mary fiercely. “

If you did it was only a hysterical lump. Hysterics makes lumps.

There’s nothing the matter with your horrid back—nothing but hysterics! Turn over and let me look at it!”

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 and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until …

“Lots o’ fools,” said Ben. “

Th’ world’s full o’ jackasses brayin’ an’ they never bray nowt but lies.

What did tha’ shut thysel’ up for?”

Even Mary had found out that one of Colin’s chief peculiarities was that he did not know in the least what a rude little brute he was with his way of ordering people about.

He had lived on a sort of desert island all his life and as he had been the king of it he had made his own manners and had had no one to compare himself with.

Mary had indeed been rather like him herself and since she had been at Misselthwaite had gradually discovered that her own manners had not been of the kind which is usual or popular.

“Even if it isn’t real Magic,” Colin said, “we can pretend it is. Something is there—something!”

“It’s Magic,” said Mary, “but not black. It’s as white as snow.”

They always called it Magic and indeed it seemed like it in the months that followed—the wonderful months—the radiant months—the amazing ones. Oh! the things which happened in that garden!

“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.”

Sometimes since I’ve been in the garden I’ve looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something were pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast.

Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing.

Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden—in all the places.

“Weatherstaff,” he said, “that is disrespectful. You must not take liberties because you are in the secret.

However much the Magic works I shall not be a prizefighter. I shall be a Scientific Discoverer.

”

“Th’ more they laugh th’ better for ’em!” said Mrs. Sowerby, still laughing herself. “

Good healthy child laughin’s better than pills any day o’ th’ year.

That pair’ll plump up for sure.”

Mary became quite severe in her manner.

“It was something between a sneeze and a cough,” she replied with reproachful dignity, “and it got into my throat.”

“But,” she said afterward to Colin, “I couldn’t stop myself.

The first moment he set his dew-bright black eye on Dickon he knew he was not a stranger but a sort of robin without beak or feathers. He could speak robin (which is a quite distinct language not to be mistaken for any other).

To speak robin to a robin is like speaking French to a Frenchman.

Dickon always spoke it to the robin himself, so the queer gibberish he used when he spoke to humans did not matter in the least. The robin thought he spoke this gibberish to them because they were not intelligent enough to understand feathered speech.

“Look at that!” she said. “

This is a house of mystery, and those two children are the greatest mysteries in it.

”

“I like it. Perhaps it means just what I mean when I want to shout out that I am thankful to the Magic.” He stopped and thought in a puzzled way. “Perhaps they are both the same thing.

How can we know the exact names of everything?

Sing it again, Dickon. Let us try, Mary. I want to sing it, too. It’s my song. How does it begin? ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow’?”

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.

If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.

Much more surprising things can happen to anyone who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one.

Two things cannot be in one place.

“Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.”