CHAPTER IV 30
would not be ponies or sheep. They would be different from the birds in India and it might amuse her to look at them.
Martha found her coat and hat for her and a pair of stout little boots and she showed her her way down-stairs.
" If tha ' goes round that way tha ' ll come to th ' gardens," she said, pointing to a gate in a wall of shrubbery. " There ' s lots o ' flowers in summer-time, but there ' s nothin ' bloomin ' now." She seemed to hesitate a second before she added, " One of th ' gardens is locked up. No one has been in it for ten years."
" Why?" asked Mary in spite of herself. Here was another locked door added to the hundred in the strange house.
" Mr. Craven had it shut when his wife died so sudden. He won ' t let no one go inside. It was her garden. He locked th ' door an ' dug a hole and buried th ' key. There ' s Mrs. Medlock ' s bell ringing--I must run."
After she was gone Mary turned down the walk which led to the door in the shrubbery. She could not help thinking about the garden which no one had been into for ten years. She wondered what it would look like and whether there were any flowers still alive in it. When she had passed through the shrubbery gate she found herself in great gardens, with wide lawns and winding walks with clipped borders. There were trees, and flower-beds, and evergreens clipped into strange shapes, and a large pool with an old gray fountain in its midst. But the flower-beds were bare and wintry and the fountain was not playing. This was not the garden which was shut up. How could a garden be shut up? You could always walk into a garden.
She was just thinking this when she saw that, at the end of the path she was following, there seemed to be a long wall, with ivy growing over it. She was not familiar enough with England to know that she was coming upon the kitchen-gardens where the vegetables and fruit were growing. She went toward the wall and found that there was a green door in the ivy, and that it stood open. This was not the closed garden, evidently, and she could go