CHAPTER XI 88
Mistress Mary put her hand on his arm again without knowing it.
" Will there be roses?" she whispered. " Can you tell? I thought perhaps they were all dead."
" Eh! No! Not them--not all of ' em!" he answered. " Look here!"
He stepped over to the nearest tree--an old, old one with gray lichen all over its bark, but upholding a curtain of tangled sprays and branches. He took a thick knife out of his pocket and opened one of its blades.
" There ' s lots o ' ' dead wood as ought to be cut out," he said. " An ' there ' s a lot o ' old wood, but it made some new last year. This here ' s a new bit," and he touched a shoot which looked brownish green instead of hard, dry gray.
Mary touched it herself in an eager, reverent way. " That one?" she said. " Is that one quite alive--quite?" Dickon curved his wide smiling mouth.
" It ' s as wick as you or me," he said; and Mary remembered that Martha had told her that " wick " meant " alive " or " lively."
" I ' m glad it ' s wick!" she cried out in her whisper. " I want them all to be wick. Let us go round the garden and count how many wick ones there are."
She quite panted with eagerness, and Dickon was as eager as she was. They went from tree to tree and from bush to bush. Dickon carried his knife in his hand and showed her things which she thought wonderful.
" They ' ve run wild," he said, " but th ' strongest ones has fair thrived on it. The delicatest ones has died out, but th ' others has growed an ' growed, an ' spread an ' spread, till they ' s a wonder. See here!" and he pulled down a thick gray, dry-looking branch. " A body might think this was dead wood,