She put her hand accidentally upon the tapestry near her,and then sprang back, feeling quite startled.The tapestry was the covering of a door which fell open and showed her that there was another part of the corridor behind it, and Mrs. Medlock was coming up it with her bunch of keys in her hand and a very cross look on her face.
“What are you doing here?” she said, and she took Mary by the arm and pulled her away.“What did I tell you?”
“I turned round the wrong corner,” explained Mary.“I didn’t know which way to go and I heard someone crying.” She quite hated Mrs. Medlock at the moment,but she hated her more the next.
“You didn’t hear anything of the sort,” said the housekeeper.“You come along back to your own nursery or I’ll box your ears. ”
And she took her by the arm and half pushed,half pulled her up one passage and down another until she pushed her in at the door of her own room.
“Now,” she said, “you stay where you’re told to stay or you’ll find yourself locked up. The master had better get you a governess, same as he said he would. You’re one that needs someone to look sharp after you. I’ve got enough to do.”
She went out of the room and slammed the door after her,and Mary went and sat on the hearth-rug,pale with rage. She did not cry, but ground her teeth.
“There _was_ someone crying—there _was_—there _was!_” she said to herself.
She had heard it twice now,and sometime she would find out.She had found out a great deal this morning.She felt as if she had been on a long journey,and at any rate she had had something to amuse her all the time,and she had played with the ivory elephants and had seen the gray mouse and its babies in their nest in the velvet cushion.
CHAPTER VII. THE KEY TO THE GARDEN
Two days after this,when Mary opened her eyes she sat upright in bed immediately,and called to Martha.
“Look at the moor!Look at the moor!”
The rainstorm had ended and the gray mist and clouds had been swept away in the night by the wind. The wind itself had ceased and a brilliant, deep blue sky arched high over the moorland. Never, never had Mary dreamed of a sky so blue. In India skies were hot and blazing; this was of a deep cool blue which almost seemed to sparkle like the waters of some lovely bottomless lake, and here and there, high, high in the arched blueness floated small clouds of snow-white fleece. The far-reaching world of the moor itself looked softly blue instead of gloomy purple-black or awful dreary gray.
“Aye,” said Martha with a cheerful grin.“Th’ storm’s over for a bit.It does like this at this time o’ th’ year.It goes off in a night like it was pretendin’ it had never been here an’ never meant to come again. That’s because th’ springtime’s on its way. It’s a long way off yet, but it’s comin’.”
“I thought perhaps it always rained or looked dark in England, ” Mary said.
“Eh!no!” said Martha, sitting up on her heels among her black lead brushes. “Nowt o’ th’ soart!”
“What does that mean?” asked Mary seriously.In India the natives spoke different dialects which only a few people understood, so she was not surprised when Martha used words she did not know.
Martha laughed as she had done the first morning.
“There now,” she said.“I’ve talked broad Yorkshire again like Mrs.Medlock said I mustn’t.‘Nowt o’ th’ soart’ means ‘nothin’-of-the-sort,’” slowly and carefully,“but it takes so long to say it.Yorkshire’s th’ sunniest place on earth when it is sunny.I told thee tha’d like th’ moor after a bit.Just you wait till you see th’ gold-colored gorse blossoms an’ th’ blossoms o’ th’ broom, an’ th’ heather flowerin’, all purple bells, an’ hundreds o’ butterflies flutterin’ an’ bees hummin’ an’ skylarks soarin’ up an’ singin’. You’ll want to get out on it at sunrise an’ live out on it all day like Dickon does.”
“Could I ever get there?” asked Mary wistfully,looking through her window at the far-off blue.It was so new and big and wonderful and such a heavenly color.
“I don’t know,” answered Martha.“Tha’s never used tha’ legs since tha’ was born,it seems to me. Tha’ couldn’t walk five mile.It’s five mile to our cottage.”
“I should like to see your cottage.”
Martha stared at her a moment curiously before she took up her polishing brush and began to rub the grate again. She was thinking that the small plain face did not look quite as sour at this moment as it had done the first morning she saw it. It looked just a trifle like little Susan Ann’s when she wanted something very much.
“I’ll ask my mother about it,” she said.“She’s one o’ them that nearly always sees a way to do things.It’s my day out today an’ I’m goin’ home. Eh!I am glad. Mrs. Medlock thinks a lot o’ mother.Perhaps she could talk to her.”
“I like your mother,” said Mary.
“I should think tha’ did,” agreed Martha, polishing away.
“I’ve never seen her,” said Mary.
“No, tha’ hasn’t,” replied Martha.
She sat up on her heels again and rubbed the end of her nose with the back of her hand as if puzzled for a moment, but she ended quite positively.
“Well, she’s that sensible an’ hard workin’ an’ good-natured an’ clean that no one could help likin’ her whether they’d seen her or not. When I’m goin’ home to her on my day out I just jump for joy when I’m crossin’ the moor.”
“I like Dickon,” added Mary. “And I’ve never seen him.”
“Well,” said Martha stoutly,“I’ve told thee that th’ very birds likes him an’ th’ rabbits an’ wild sheep an’ ponies, an’ th’ foxes themselves. I wonder,” staring at her reflectively, “what Dickon would think of thee?”
“He wouldn’t like me,” said Mary in her stiff,cold little way. “No one does.”
Martha looked reflective again.
“How does tha’ like thysel’?” she inquired, really quite as if she were curious to know.
Mary hesitated a moment and thought it over.
“Not at all—really,” she answered.“But I never thought of that before.”
Martha grinned a little as if at some homely recollection.