Name: Part 3 - The Secret Garden Audiobook by Frances Hodgson Burnett (Chs 20-27)
Uploaded: 2017-01-25T06:10:10.000Z
Duration: 2 h 21 min 15 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

CHAPTER XX "I SHALL LIVE FOREVER--AND EVER--AND EVER!"

But they were obliged to wait more than a week because first there came some very

windy days and then Colin was threatened with a cold, which two things happening one

after the other would no doubt have thrown

him into a rage but that there was so much careful and mysterious planning to do and

almost every day Dickon came in, if only for a few minutes, to talk about what was

happening on the moor and in the lanes and hedges and on the borders of streams.

The things he had to tell about otters' and badgers' and water-rats' houses, not to

mention birds' nests and field-mice and their burrows, were enough to make you

heard all the intimate details from an animal charmer and realized with what

thrilling eagerness and anxiety the whole busy underworld was working.

"They're same as us," said Dickon, "only they have to build their homes every year.

An' it keeps 'em so busy they fair scuffle to get 'em done."

The most absorbing thing, however, was the preparations to be made before Colin could

be transported with sufficient secrecy to the garden.

No one must see the chair-carriage and Dickon and Mary after they turned a certain

corner of the shrubbery and entered upon the walk outside the ivied walls.

As each day passed, Colin had become more and more fixed in his feeling that the

mystery surrounding the garden was one of its greatest charms.

No one must ever suspect that they had a secret.

People must think that he was simply going out with Mary and Dickon because he liked

them and did not object to their looking at him.

They had long and quite delightful talks about their route.

They would go up this path and down that one and cross the other and go round among

the fountain flower-beds as if they were looking at the "bedding-out plants" the

head gardener, Mr. Roach, had been having arranged.

That would seem such a rational thing to do that no one would think it at all

They would turn into the shrubbery walks and lose themselves until they came to the

It was almost as serious and elaborately thought out as the plans of march made by

Rumors of the new and curious things which were occurring in the invalid's apartments

had of course filtered through the servants' hall into the stable yards and

notwithstanding this, Mr. Roach was startled one day when he received orders

from Master Colin's room to the effect that he must report himself in the apartment no

outsider had ever seen, as the invalid himself desired to speak to him.

"Well, well," he said to himself as he hurriedly changed his coat, "what's to do

His Royal Highness that wasn't to be looked at calling up a man he's never set eyes

on." Mr. Roach was not without curiosity.

He had never caught even a glimpse of the boy and had heard a dozen exaggerated

stories about his uncanny looks and ways and his insane tempers.

The thing he had heard oftenest was that he might die at any moment and there had been

numerous fanciful descriptions of a humped back and helpless limbs, given by people

"Things are changing in this house, Mr. Roach," said Mrs. Medlock, as she led him

up the back staircase to the corridor on to which opened the hitherto mysterious

"Let's hope they're changing for the better, Mrs. Medlock," he answered.

"They couldn't well change for the worse," she continued; "and queer as it all is

there's them as finds their duties made a lot easier to stand up under.

Don't you be surprised, Mr. Roach, if you find yourself in the middle of a menagerie

and Martha Sowerby's Dickon more at home than you or me could ever be."

There really was a sort of Magic about Dickon, as Mary always privately believed.

When Mr. Roach heard his name he smiled quite leniently.

"He'd be at home in Buckingham Palace or at the bottom of a coal mine," he said.

"And yet it's not impudence, either. He's just fine, is that lad."

It was perhaps well he had been prepared or he might have been startled.

When the bedroom door was opened a large crow, which seemed quite at home perched on

the high back of a carven chair, announced the entrance of a visitor by saying "Caw--

In spite of Mrs. Medlock's warning, Mr. Roach only just escaped being sufficiently

undignified to jump backward. The young Rajah was neither in bed nor on

He was sitting in an armchair and a young lamb was standing by him shaking its tail

in feeding-lamb fashion as Dickon knelt giving it milk from its bottle.

A squirrel was perched on Dickon's bent back attentively nibbling a nut.

The little girl from India was sitting on a big footstool looking on.

"Here is Mr. Roach, Master Colin," said Mrs. Medlock.

The young Rajah turned and looked his servitor over--at least that was what the

"Oh, you are Roach, are you?" he said. "I sent for you to give you some very

"Very good, sir," answered Roach, wondering if he was to receive instructions to fell

all the oaks in the park or to transform the orchards into water-gardens.

"I am going out in my chair this afternoon," said Colin.

"If the fresh air agrees with me I may go out every day.

When I go, none of the gardeners are to be anywhere near the Long Walk by the garden

I shall go out about two o'clock and everyone must keep away until I send word

"Very good, sir," replied Mr. Roach, much relieved to hear that the oaks might remain

"Mary," said Colin, turning to her, "what is that thing you say in India when you

have finished talking and want people to go?"

"You say, 'You have my permission to go,'" answered Mary.

The Rajah waved his hand. "You have my permission to go, Roach," he

"But, remember, this is very important." "Caw--Caw!" remarked the crow hoarsely but

Thank you, sir," said Mr. Roach, and Mrs. Medlock took him out of the room.

Outside in the corridor, being a rather good-natured man, he smiled until he almost

"My word!" he said, "he's got a fine lordly way with him, hasn't he?

You'd think he was a whole Royal Family rolled into one--Prince Consort and all.".

"Eh!" protested Mrs. Medlock, "we've had to let him trample all over every one of us