CHAPTER XI 93
Then Mary told him about Basil and his brothers and sisters in India and of how she had hated them and of their calling her " Mistress Mary Quite Contrary."
" They used to dance round and sing at me. They sang--
' Mistress Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With silver bells, and cockle shells, And marigolds all in a row.'
I just remembered it and it made me wonder if there were really flowers like silver bells."
She frowned a little and gave her trowel a rather spiteful dig into the earth. " I wasn ' t as contrary as they were." But Dickon laughed.
" Eh!" he said, and as he crumbled the rich black soil she saw he was sniffing up the scent of it, " there doesn ' t seem to be no need for no one to be contrary when there ' s flowers an ' such like, an ' such lots o ' friendly wild things runnin ' about makin ' homes for themselves, or buildin ' nests an ' singin ' an ' whistlin ', does there?"
Mary, kneeling by him holding the seeds, looked at him and stopped frowning.
" Dickon," she said. " You are as nice as Martha said you were. I like you, and you make the fifth person. I never thought I should like five people."
Dickon sat up on his heels as Martha did when she was polishing the grate. He did look funny and delightful, Mary thought, with his round blue eyes and red cheeks and happy looking turned-up nose.
" Only five folk as tha ' likes?" he said. " Who is th ' other four?"