Mary Lennox opened the gate into the Secret Garden. No longer the scrawny, pale child who had arrived at Misslethwaite Manor from India, Mary bloomed with health and her eyes sparkled.
‘Come on, Colin. He’s already here!’ she called back to her cousin, Colin Craven, who was following behind her, walking slowly. He didn’t walk slowly because of his disability – that was long ago now – but because he was studying a bird’s nest that grew in the ivy on the wall.
Inside the Secret Garden, Dickon was waiting for them. Dickon’s pet fox rested at his feet. They both looked up, saw Mary and Colin, and the fox settled back down to rest. He was used to them by now. Dickon got to his feet.
‘There you are! I was beginning to think tha’d both forgotten me.’
‘We would never forget you!’ Mary protested.
‘It’ll be a while afore I can come again,’ said Dickon. ‘It’s a long way in winter when t’ weather’s cold and I need to help our mam. There’s firewood to fetch and other jobs to be done at home. This storm was the first of the winter but it won’t be the last.’
They looked around the garden at the damage the storm had done. The last of the autumn leaves had been whirled down by the wind, and the branches were empty and bare, silhouetted against the heavy grey of the November sky. It was hard to remember what the garden had looked like in summer, only a few short months ago, when every corner of the garden had brimmed with blossom and roses and the heady scent of the flowers had brought the bees to gather nectar for their honey.
‘I don’t like it in winter,’ Colin said. ‘It’s dismal and grey.’
‘Even if I know that underneath it everything is wick, it’s hard to wait for spring,’ Mary agreed.
‘Eh, now, don’t you fret. Winter doesn’t last forever, and it has a special magic.’ Dickon looked at the sky as if to conjure magic from it, and the fox gazed upwards too.
‘It does?’ said Colin. ‘I can’t see any. I just see cold rain and mud.’
‘The snow and the ice has an enchantment of its own,’ Dickon said. ‘My mother says snow brings brightness when the world seems darkest. Everything’s bright and fair when it snows, and it’s like a second spring of white blossom on the branches. Even if it doesn’t snow, winter brings frost ferns on the windows. Eh, there’s so much magic in winter – if tha knows how to look for ’t.’
‘We didn’t have winter in India,’ said Mary. ‘It was hot, always. I don’t like the cold.’
‘Then tha’s in for a long, miserable time of it!’ Dickon said, but his eyes twinkled as he spoke. ‘Though I reckon tha’ll find summat to please thee at Christmas!’
‘Not me. Not since Mama died,’ said Colin, sounding petulant. He had grown so much kinder and gentler since the Secret Garden had worked its magic, but still, at times, he could be the old Master Colin, quarrelsome and keen to have his own way. ‘We haven’t celebrated Christmas properly since then. Father won’t have it.’
‘Well, it seems I can’t find owt to please the pair of you!’ Dickon said, whistling to Fox, who was snuffling through the leaves and fallen branches under the big apple tree. ‘I mun be going. I’ll try and be up here again afore Christmas. But I’ll make no promises.’
‘Goodbye, Dickon,’ said Mary, sadly, for she did not have so many friends that she could easily spare one of her best.
She and Colin walked back along the broad gravel walk towards Misselthwaite Manor.
‘I don’t think I shall like it,’ said Mary, kicking at the leaves which had fallen onto the path, ‘when winter comes to the Secret Garden.’
Liz Taylorson 