Women went about with oranges and ginger-beer, and there was a terrible consumption of nuts going on. Pick the prettiest ones and easy to grow because she has never done it before and lived in India which is different. No other activity was like it. Do it yourself garden stepping stones it the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a sofa, and a look of pain came into his face. What she thought was that she would like to know if she was going to nice people, who would be polite to her and give her her own way as her Ayah and the other native servants had done. Give my love to mother and every one of you.

Next, you'll have to answer the question: Do you want my concrete stepping stone path to be straight or winding? Where aesthetic concerns play an important role, most people choose the winding-path style this holds true in garden areas, too. The exception would be for paths following the more formal, balanced design typical of paths leading from the street to the front door. To lay out a winding path, use old garden hoses to define the sides; guided by the hoses, spray-paint the lines in. For the straight-path style, use stakes and string for layout.

The next question you have to tackle is: Do you want my concrete stepping stone path to have an informal or formal design? How you answer this question may depend on whether you prefer informal or formal landscape design , in general. Essentially, there are two basic approaches to laying such paths in lawns. One approach the "informal" is to excavate only those spots where the concrete stepping stones will rest, allowing the grass to continue to grow between them.

The other, more "formal" approach involves excavating the whole path. With the preliminary considerations out of the way, you can begin to implement your informal path design. How many concrete stepping stones will be needed? Well, this question will be answered by figuring the length of your path, and the spacing you desire. You'll want to space your concrete stepping stones in such a way as to accommodate the average human's stride.

Spacing them 24 inches on center is just about right for most people. Begin by placing a few of the concrete stepping stones on top of one-quarter of the projected path.

Then try them out. See if you can walk over them comfortably, using a normal gait. Adjust as necessary. If five concrete stepping stones were required to fill one-quarter of the path, then you know you'll need to make about 20 in all. So if you want to have all your concrete stepping stones formed first, before installation, go back to your molds and get busy.

Others may prefer to take it one piece at a time. She had never thought much about her looks, but she wondered if she was as unattractive as Ben Weatherstaff and she also wondered if she looked as sour as he had looked before the robin came. She actually began to wonder also if she was "nasty tempered. Suddenly a clear rippling little sound broke out near her and she turned round.

She was standing a few feet from a young apple-tree and the robin [Pg 52] had flown on to one of its branches and had burst out into a scrap of a song. Ben Weatherstaff laughed outright. Tha' said it almost like Dickon talks to his wild things on th' moor.

Dickon's wanderin' about everywhere. Th' very blackberries an' heather-bells knows him. I warrant th' foxes shows him where their cubs lies an' th' skylarks doesn't hide their nests from him.

Mary would have liked to ask some more ques [Pg 53] tions. She was almost as curious about Dickon as she was about the deserted garden. But just that moment the robin, who had ended his song, gave a little shake of his wings, spread them and flew away. He had made his visit and had other things to do. If he's courtin', he's makin' up to some young madam of a robin that lives among th' old rose-trees there.

There must be a door somewhere. Don't you be a meddlesome wench an' poke your nose where it's no cause to go. Here, I must go on with my work. Get you gone an' play you. I've no more time. And he actually stopped digging, threw his spade over his shoulder and walked off, without even glancing at her or saying good-by.

At first each day which passed by for Mary Lennox was exactly like the others. Every morning she awoke in her tapestried room and found Martha kneeling upon the hearth building her fire; every morning she ate her breakfast in the nursery which had nothing amusing in it; and after each breakfast she gazed out of the window across to the huge moor which seemed to spread out on all sides and climb up to the sky, and after she had stared for a while she realized that if she did not go out she would have to stay in and do nothing—and so she went out.

She did not know that this was the best thing she could have done, and she did not know that, when she began to walk quickly or even run along the paths and down the avenue, she was stirring her slow blood and making herself stronger by fighting with the wind which swept down from the moor.

She ran only to make herself warm, and she hated the wind which rushed at her face and roared and held her back as if it were some giant she could not see. But after a few days spent almost entirely out of doors she wakened one morning knowing what it was to be hungry, and when she sat down to her breakfast she did not glance disdainfully at her porridge and push it away, but took up her spoon and began to eat it and went on eating it until her bowl was empty.

There's been twelve in our cottage as had th' stomach an' nothin' to put in it. You go on playin' you out o' doors every day an' you'll get some flesh on your bones an' you won't be so yeller.

They just runs about an' shouts an' looks at things. Mary did not shout, but she looked at things. There was nothing else to do. She walked round and round the gardens and wandered about the paths in the park. Sometimes she looked for Ben Weatherstaff, but though several times she saw him at work he was too busy to look at her or was too surly.

Once when she was walking toward him he picked up his spade and turned away as if he did it on purpose. One place she went to oftener than to any other. It was the long walk outside the gardens with the walls round them. There were bare flower-beds on either side of it and against the walls ivy grew thickly. There was one part of the wall where the creeping dark green leaves were more bushy than elsewhere. It seemed as if for a long time that part had been neglected. The rest of it had been clipped and made to look neat, but at this lower end of the walk it had not been trimmed at all.

A few days after she had talked to Ben Weatherstaff Mary stopped to notice this and wondered why it was so. She had just paused and was looking up at a long spray of ivy swinging in the wind when she saw a gleam of scarlet and heard a brilliant chirp, and there, on the top of the wall, [Pg 58] perched Ben Weatherstaff's robin redbreast, tilting forward to look at her with his small head on one side.

He did answer. He twittered and chirped and hopped along the wall as if he were telling her all sorts of things. It seemed to Mistress Mary as if she understood him, too, though he was not speaking in words. It was as if he said:. Isn't the wind nice? Isn't the sun nice? Isn't everything nice? Let us both chirp and hop and twitter. Come on! Mary began to laugh, and as he hopped and took little flights along the wall she ran after him. Poor little thin, sallow, ugly Mary—she actually looked almost pretty for a moment.

I like you! But the robin seemed to be quite satisfied and chirped and whistled back at her. At last he spread his wings and made a darting flight to the top of a tree, where he perched and sang loudly. That reminded Mary of the first time she had seen him. He had been swinging on a tree-top then and she had been standing in the orchard. Now she was on the other side of the orchard and standing in the path outside a wall—much lower down—and there was the same tree inside.

He lives in there. How I wish I could see what it is like! She ran up the walk to the green door she had entered the first morning. Then she ran down the path through the other door and then into the orchard, and when she stood and looked up there was the tree on the other side of the wall, and there was the robin just finishing his song and beginning to preen his feathers with his beak.

She walked round and looked closely at that side of the orchard wall, but she only found what she had found before—that there was no door in it. Then she ran through the kitchen-gardens again and out into the walk outside the long ivy-covered wall, and she walked to the end of it and looked at it, but there was no door; and then she [Pg 60] walked to the other end, looking again, but there was no door.

But there must have been one ten years ago, because Mr. Craven buried the key. This gave her so much to think of that she began to be quite interested and feel that she was not sorry that she had come to Misselthwaite Manor.

In India she had always felt hot and too languid to care much about anything. The fact was that the fresh wind from the moor had begun to blow the cobwebs out of her young brain and to waken her up a little. She stayed out of doors nearly all day, and when she sat down to her supper at night she felt hungry and drowsy and comfortable.

She did not feel cross when Martha chattered away. She felt as if she rather liked to hear her, and at last she thought she would ask her a question. She asked it after she had finished her supper and had sat down on the hearth-rug before the fire.

She had made Martha stay with her and Martha had not objected at all. She was very young, and used to a crowded cottage full of brothers and sisters, and she found it dull in the great servants' [Pg 61] hall down-stairs where the footman and upper-housemaids made fun of her Yorkshire speech and looked upon her as a common little thing, and sat and whispered among themselves.

Martha liked to talk, and the strange child who had lived in India, and been waited upon by "blacks," was novelty enough to attract her. That was just the way with me when I first heard about it. Mary did not know what "wutherin'" meant until she listened, and then she understood.

It must mean that hollow shuddering sort of roar which rushed round and round the house as if the giant no one could see were buffeting it and beating at the walls and windows to try to break in. But one knew he could not get in, and somehow it made one feel very safe and warm inside a room with a red coal fire.

She intended to know if Martha did. Medlock said it's not to be talked about. There's lots o' things in this place that's not to be talked over. That's Mr. Craven's orders. His troubles are none servants' business, he says. But for th' garden he wouldn't Do It Yourself Garden Stepping Stones Amazon be like he is. It was Mrs. Craven's garden that she had made when first they were married an' she just loved it, an' they used to 'tend the flowers themselves. An' none o' th' gardeners was ever let to go in. Him an' her used to go in an' shut th' door an' stay there hours an' hours, readin' an' talkin'.

An' she was just a bit of a girl an' there was an old tree with a branch bent like a seat on it. An' she made roses grow over it an' she used to sit there. But one day when she was sittin' there th' branch broke an' she fell on th' ground an' was hurt so bad that next day she died.

Th' doctors thought he'd go out o' his mind an' die, too. That's why he hates it. No one's never gone in since, an' he won't let any one talk about it. Mary did not ask any more questions. She looked at the red fire and listened to the wind "wutherin'. At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor.

She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for some one. She was getting on. But as she was listening to the wind she began to listen to something else.

She did not know what it was, because at first she could scarcely distinguish it from the wind itself. It was a curious sound—it seemed almost as if a child were crying somewhere. Sometimes the wind sounded rather like a child crying, but presently Mistress Mary felt quite sure that this sound was inside the house, not outside it. It was far away, but it was inside.

She turned round and looked at Martha. Sometimes it sounds like as if some one was Do It Yourself Garden Stepping Stones Quart lost on th' moor an' wailin'. It's got all sorts o' sounds. And at that very moment a door must have been [Pg 64] opened somewhere down-stairs; for a great rushing draft blew along the passage and the door of the room they sat in was blown open with a crash, and as they both jumped to their feet the light was blown out and the crying sound was swept down the far corridor so that it was to be heard more plainly than ever.

It is some one crying—and it isn't a grown-up person. Martha ran and shut the door and turned the key, but before she did it they both heard the sound of a door in some far passage shutting with a bang, and then everything was quiet, for even the wind ceased "wutherin'" for a few moments.

She's had th' toothache all day. But something troubled and awkward in her manner made Mistress Mary stare very hard at her. She did not believe she was speaking the truth. The next day the rain poured down in torrents again, and when Mary looked out of her window the moor was almost hidden by gray mist and cloud.

There could be no going out to-day. Mother's a good-tempered woman but she gets fair moithered. The biggest ones goes out in th' cow-shed and plays there.

Dickon he doesn't mind th' wet. He goes out just th' same as if th' sun was shinin'. He says he sees things on rainy days as doesn't show when it's fair weather.

He once found a little fox cub half drowned in its hole and he brought it home in th' bosom of his shirt to keep it warm. Its mother had been killed nearby an' th' hole was swum out an' th' rest o' th' litter was dead. He's got it at home now. He found a [Pg 66] half-drowned young crow another time an' he brought it home, too, an' tamed it. It's named Soot because it's so black, an' it hops an' flies about with him everywhere. The time had come when Mary had forgotten to resent Martha's familiar talk.

She had even begun to find it interesting and to be sorry when she stopped or went away. The stories she had been told by her Ayah when she lived in India had been quite unlike those Martha had to tell about the moorland cottage which held fourteen people who lived in four little rooms and never had quite enough to eat. The children seemed to tumble about and amuse themselves like a litter of rough, good-natured collie puppies.

Mary was most attracted by the mother and Dickon. When Martha told stories of what "mother" said or did they always sounded comfortable.

Tha'st old enough to be learnin' thy book a good bit now. Medlock'd let thee go into th' library, there's thousands o' books there. Mary did not ask where the library was, because she was suddenly inspired by a new idea. She made up her mind to go and find it herself.

She was not troubled about Mrs. Medlock seemed always to be in her comfortable housekeeper's sitting-room down-stairs. In this queer place one scarcely ever saw any one at all. In fact, there was no one to see but the servants, and when their master was away they lived a luxurious life below stairs, where there was a huge kitchen hung about with shining brass and pewter, and a large servants' hall where there were four or five abundant meals eaten every day, and where a great deal of lively romping went on when Mrs.

Medlock was out of the way. Mary's meals were served regularly, and Martha waited on her, but no one troubled themselves about her in the least. Medlock came and looked at her every day or two, but no one inquired what she did or told her what to do.

She supposed that perhaps this was the English way [Pg 68] of treating children. In India she had always been attended by her Ayah, who had followed her about and waited on her, hand and foot. She had often been tired of her company. Now she was followed by nobody and was learning to dress herself because Martha looked as though she thought she was silly and stupid when she wanted to have things handed to her and put on. Sometimes tha' looks fair soft in th' head.

Mary had worn her contrary scowl for an hour after that, but it made her think several entirely new things. She stood at the window for about ten minutes this morning after Martha had swept up the hearth for the last time and gone down-stairs. She was thinking over the new idea which had come to her when she heard of the library. She did not care very much about the library itself, because she had read very few books; but to hear of it brought back to her mind the hundred rooms with closed doors.

She wondered if they were all really locked and what she would find if she could get into any of them. Were there a hundred really? Why shouldn't she go and see how many doors [Pg 69] she could count? It would be something to do on this morning when she could not go out.

She had never been taught to ask permission to do things, and she knew nothing at all about authority, so she would not have thought it necessary to ask Mrs. Medlock if she might walk about the house, even if she had seen her.

She opened the door of the room and went into the corridor, and then she began her wanderings. It was a long corridor and it branched into other corridors and it led her up short flights of steps which mounted to others again. There were doors and doors, and there were pictures on the walls. Sometimes they were pictures of dark, curious landscapes, but oftenest they were portraits of men and women in queer, grand costumes made of satin and velvet.

She found herself in one long gallery whose walls were covered with these portraits. She had never thought there could be so many in any house. She walked slowly down this place and stared at the faces which also seemed to stare at her. She felt as if they were wondering what a little girl from India was doing in their house. Some were pictures of children—little girls in thick satin frocks which reached to their feet and stood out about them, and boys with puffed sleeves and lace collars and long hair, or with big ruffs around their necks.

She always [Pg 70] stopped to look at the children, and wonder what their names were, and where they had gone, and why they wore such odd clothes.

There was a stiff, plain little girl rather like herself. She wore a green brocade dress and held a green parrot on her finger. Her eyes had a sharp, curious look. Surely no other little girl ever spent such a queer morning. It seemed as if there was no one in all the huge rambling house but her own small self, wandering about up-stairs and down, through narrow passages and wide ones, where it seemed to her that no one but herself had ever walked.

Since so many rooms had been built, people must have lived in them, but it all seemed so empty that she could not quite believe it true. It was not until she climbed to the second floor that she thought of turning the handle of a door. All the doors were shut, as Mrs. Medlock had said they were, but at last she put her hand on the handle of one of them and turned it. She was almost frightened for a moment when she felt that it turned without difficulty and that when she pushed upon the door itself it slowly and heavily opened.

It was a massive door and opened into a big bedroom. There were embroidered hang [Pg 71] ings on the wall, and inlaid furniture such as she had seen in India stood about the room. A broad window with leaded panes looked out upon the moor; and over the mantel was another portrait of the stiff, plain little girl who seemed to stare at her more curiously than ever. After that she opened more doors and more. She saw so many rooms that she became quite tired and began to think that there must be a hundred, though she had not counted them.

In all of them there were old pictures or old tapestries with strange scenes worked on them. There were curious pieces of furniture and curious ornaments in nearly all of them.

In one room, which looked like a lady's sitting-room, the hangings were all embroidered velvet, and in a cabinet were about a hundred little elephants made of ivory. They were of different sizes, and some had their mahouts or palanquins on their backs. Some were much bigger than the others and some were so tiny that they seemed only babies. Mary had seen carved ivory in India and she knew all about elephants. She opened the door of the cabinet and stood on a footstool and played with these for quite a long time.

When [Pg 72] she got tired she set the elephants in order and shut the door of the cabinet. In all her wanderings through the long corridors and the empty rooms, she had seen nothing alive; but in this room she saw something. Just after she had closed the cabinet door she heard a tiny rustling sound. It made her jump and look around at the sofa by the fireplace, from which it seemed to come. In the corner of the sofa there was a cushion, and in the velvet which covered it there was a hole, and out of the hole peeped a tiny head with a pair of frightened eyes in it.

Mary crept softly across the room to look. The bright eyes belonged to a little gray mouse, and the mouse had eaten a hole into the cushion and made a comfortable nest there. Six baby mice were cuddled up asleep near her. If there was no one else alive in the hundred rooms there were seven mice who did not look lonely at all.

She had wandered about long enough to feel too tired to wander any farther, and she turned back. Two or three times she lost her way by turning down the wrong corridor and was obliged to ramble up and down until she found the right one; but at last she reached her own floor again, [Pg 73] though she was some distance from her own room and did not know exactly where she was.

How still everything is! It was while she was standing here and just after she had said this that the stillness was broken by a sound. It was another cry, but not quite like the one she had heard last night; it was only a short one, a fretful, childish whine muffled by passing through walls.

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. 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.

The master had better get you a governess, same as he said he would. You're one that needs some one 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. 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.

Two days after this, when Mary opened her eyes she sat upright in bed immediately, and called to Martha. The rain-storm 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. 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 [Pg 76] meant to come again. That's because th' springtime's on its way. It's a long way off yet, but it's comin'. 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.

Medlock said I mustn't. 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. It was so new and big and wonderful and such a heavenly color.

Tha' couldn't walk five mile. It's five mile to our 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. It's my day out to-day an' I'm goin' home. I am glad. Medlock thinks a lot o' mother. Perhaps she could talk to her.

She sat up on her heels again and rubbed the [Pg 78] end of her nose with the back of her hand as if puzzled for a moment, but she ended quite positively. When I'm goin' home to her on my day out I just jump for joy when I'm crossin' th' moor. I wonder," staring at her reflectively, "what Dickon would think of thee? There tha' stands sayin' tha' doesn't like this one an' tha' doesn't like that one.

How does tha' like thysel'? She went away in high spirits as soon as she had given Mary her breakfast. She was going to walk five miles across the moor to the cottage, and she was going to help her mother with the washing and do the week's baking and enjoy herself thoroughly. Mary felt lonelier than ever when she knew she was no longer in the house. She went out into the garden as quickly as possible, and the first thing she did was to run round and round the fountain flower garden ten times.

She counted the times carefully and when she had finished she felt in better spirits. The sunshine made the whole place look different. The high, deep, blue sky arched over Misselthwaite as well as over the moor, and she kept lifting her face and looking up into it, trying to imagine what it would be like to lie down on one of the little snow-white clouds and float about.

She went into the first kitchen-garden and found Ben Weatherstaff working there with two other gardeners. The change in the weather seemed to have done him good. He spoke to her of his own accord. It's glad when plantin' time comes. It's dull in th' winter when it's got nowt to do. In th' flower gardens out there things will be stirrin' down below in th' dark. Th' sun's warmin' 'em. You'll see bits o' green spikes stickin' out o' th' black earth after a bit.

Everything is hot, and wet, and green after the rains in India," said Mary. They'll poke up a bit higher here, an' push out a spike more there, an' uncurl a leaf this day an' another that.

You watch 'em. Very soon she heard the soft rustling flight of wings again and she knew at once that the robin had come again. He was very pert and lively, [Pg 81] and hopped about so close to her feet, and put his head on one side and looked at her so slyly that she asked Ben Weatherstaff a question.

He's never seen a little wench here before, an' he's bent on findin' out all about thee. Tha's no need to try to hide anything from him. Are there ever any roses? No one else has seen inside it for ten year'. She walked away, slowly thinking. She had begun to like the garden just as she had begun to like the robin and Dickon and Martha's mother. That seemed a good many people to like—when you were not used to liking.

She thought of the robin as one of the people. She went to her walk outside the long, ivy-covered wall over which she could see the tree-tops; and the second time she walked up and down the most interesting and exciting thing happened to her, and it was all through Ben Weatherstaff's robin. She heard a chirp and a twitter, and when she looked at the bare flower-bed at her left side there he was hopping about and pretending to peck things out of the earth to persuade her that he had not followed her.

But she knew he had followed her and the surprise so filled her with delight that she almost trembled a little. You are prettier than anything else in the world! She chirped, and talked, and coaxed and he hopped, and flirted his tail and twittered. It was as if he were talking. His red waistcoat was like satin and he puffed his tiny breast out and was so fine and so grand and so pretty that it was really as if he were showing her how important and like a human person a robin could be.

Mistress Mary forgot that she had ever been contrary in her life when he allowed her to draw closer and closer to [Pg 83] him, and bend down and talk and try to make something like robin sounds. He knew nothing in the world would make her put out her hand toward him or startle him in the least tiniest way. He knew it because he was a real person—only nicer than any other person in the world. She was so happy that she scarcely dared to breathe.

The flower-bed was not quite bare. It was bare of flowers because the perennial plants had been cut down for their winter rest, but there were tall shrubs and low ones which grew together at the back of the bed, and as the robin hopped about under them she saw him hop over a small pile of freshly turned up earth.

He stopped on it to look for a worm. The earth had been turned up because a dog had been trying to dig up a mole and he had scratched quite a deep hole. Mary looked at it, not really knowing why the hole was there, and as she looked she saw something almost buried in the newly-turned soil.

It was something like a ring of rusty iron or brass and when the robin flew up into a tree nearby she put out her hand and picked the ring up. It was more than a ring, however; it was an old key which looked as if it had been buried a long time.

Mistress Mary stood up and looked at it with [Pg 84] an almost frightened face as it hung from her finger. She looked at the key quite a long time.

She turned it over and over, and thought about it. As I have said before, she was not a child who had been trained to ask permission or consult her elders about things. All she thought about the key was that if it was the key to the closed garden, and she could find out where the door was, she could perhaps open it and see what was inside the walls, and what had happened to the old rose-trees.

It was because it had been shut up so long that she wanted to see it. It seemed as if it must be different from other places and that something strange must have happened to it during ten years. Besides that, if she liked it she could go into it every day and shut the door behind her, and she could make up some play of her own and play it quite alone, because nobody would ever know where she was, but would think the door was still locked and the key buried in the earth.

The thought of that pleased her very much. Living as it were, all by herself in a house with [Pg 86] a hundred mysteriously closed rooms and having nothing whatever to do to amuse herself, had set her inactive brain to working and was actually awakening her imagination.

There is no doubt that the fresh, strong, pure air from the moor had a great deal to do with it. Just as it had given her an appetite, and fighting with the wind had stirred her blood, so the same things had stirred her mind. In India she had always been too hot and languid and weak to care much about anything, but in this place she was beginning to care and to want to do new things. Already she felt less "contrary," though she did not know why.

She put the key in her pocket and walked up and down her walk. No one but herself ever seemed to come there, so she could walk slowly and look at the wall, or, rather, at the ivy growing on it. The ivy was the baffling thing. Howsoever carefully she looked she could see nothing but thickly-growing, glossy, dark green leaves. She was very much disappointed. Something of her contrariness came back to her as she paced the walk and looked over it at the tree-tops inside.

It seemed so silly, she said to herself, to be near it and not be able to get in. She took the key in her pocket when she went back to the house, and she made up her mind that she would always carry it with her when she went out, so that if she [Pg 87] ever should find the hidden door she would be ready. Medlock had allowed Martha to sleep all night at the cottage, but she was back at her work in the morning with cheeks redder than ever and in the best of spirits.

I didn't walk all th' way. A man gave me a ride in his cart an' I can tell you I did enjoy myself. She was full of stories of the delights of her day out. Her mother had been glad to see her and they had got the baking and washing all out of the way.

She had even made each of the children a dough-cake with a bit of brown sugar in it. An' th' cottage all smelt o' nice, clean hot bakin' an' there was a good fire, an' they just shouted for joy.

Our Dickon he said our cottage was good enough for a king to live in. In the evening they had all sat round the fire, and Martha and her mother had sewed patches on torn clothes and mended stockings and Martha had told them about the little girl who had come from India and who had been waited on all [Pg 88] her life by what Martha called "blacks" until she didn't know how to put on her own stockings.

I couldn't tell 'em enough. I dare say they would like to hear about riding on elephants and camels, and about the officers going to hunt tigers. Would tha' really do that, Miss? It would be same as a wild beast show like we heard they had in York once. Did Dickon and your mother like to hear you talk about me? She said, 'Hasn't Mr. Tell Do It Yourself Garden Stepping Stones Data me more about Mr.

Dorian Gray. How often do you see him? He is absolutely necessary to me. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, sketch from him.

Of course, I have done all that. But he is much more to me than a model or a sitter. There is nothing that art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my life. But in some curious way—I wonder will you understand me?

I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before. I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely visible presence of this lad—for he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty—his merely visible presence—ah!

I wonder can you realize all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of soul and body—how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void. You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such a huge price but which I would not part with?

It is one of the best things I have ever done. And why is it so? Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me. Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for and always missed.

Hallward got up from the seat and walked up and down the garden. After some time he came back. You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him. He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there. He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it, and I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes.

My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry—too much of myself! They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography.

We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.

It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. Tell me, is Dorian Gray very fond of you? The painter considered for a few moments. Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty.

That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man—that is the modern ideal.

And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. I think you will tire first, all the same. You will bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and seriously think that he has behaved very badly to you. The next time he calls, you will be perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great pity, for it will alter you.

What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.

As long as I live, the personality of Dorian Gray will dominate me. You change too often. There was a rustle of chirruping sparrows in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy, and the blue cloud-shadows chased themselves across the grass like swallows. How pleasant it was in the garden!

He pictured to himself with silent amusement the tedious luncheon that he had missed by staying so long with Basil Hallward. Each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives.

The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour. It was charming to have escaped all that! As he thought of his aunt, an idea seemed to strike him. She told me she had discovered a wonderful young man who was going to help her in the East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray. I am bound to state that she never told me he was good-looking.

Women have no appreciation of good looks; at least, good women have not. She said that he was very earnest and had a beautiful nature. I at once pictured to myself a creature with spectacles and lank hair, horribly freckled, and tramping about on huge feet. I wish I had known it was your friend. The painter turned to his servant, who stood blinking in the sunlight.

Gray to wait, Parker: I shall be in in a few moments. Then he looked at Lord Henry. Your aunt was quite right in what she said of him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many marvellous people in it.

Mind, Harry, I trust you. As they entered they saw Dorian Gray. They are perfectly charming. When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint blush coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up.

I have just been telling him what a capital sitter you were, and now you have spoiled everything. You are one of her favourites, and, I am afraid, one of her victims also.

We were to have played a duet together—three duets, I believe. I am far too frightened to call. She is quite devoted to you. The audience probably thought it was a duet.

When Aunt Agatha sits down to the piano, she makes quite enough noise for two people. Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. No wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him. Gray—far too charming. The painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his brushes ready.

Would you think it awfully rude of me if I asked you to go away? Besides, I want you to tell me why I should not go in for philanthropy.

It is so tedious a subject that one would have to talk seriously about it. But I certainly shall not run away, now that Do It Yourself Garden Stepping Stones Green you have asked me to stop. You have often told me that you liked your sitters to have some one to chat to.

Hallward bit his lip. Lord Henry took up his hat and gloves. I have promised to meet a man at the Orleans. Good-bye, Mr. Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon Street.

Write to me when you are coming. I should be sorry to miss you. You never open your lips while you are painting, and it is horribly dull standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant. Ask him to stay. I insist upon it. I beg you to stay. The painter laughed. Sit down again, Harry. He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the single exception of myself. Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais with the air of a young Greek martyr, and made a little moue of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he had rather taken a fancy.

He was so unlike Basil. They made a delightful contrast. And he had such a beautiful voice. As bad as Basil says? All influence is immoral—immoral from the scientific point of view. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. The aim of life is self-development. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar.

But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these are the two things that govern us.

But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals.

Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification.

Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.

It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it. Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think. For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips and eyes strangely bright. He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at work within him.

Yet they seemed to him to have come really from himself. Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us. Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them!

They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Was there anything so real as words?

Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood. He understood them now. Life suddenly became fiery-coloured to him. It seemed to him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not known it? With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him. He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing. He felt intensely interested.

He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced, and, remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen, a book which had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he wondered whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar experience.

He had merely shot an arrow into the air. Had it hit the mark? How fascinating the lad was! Hallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that had the true refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate comes only from strength. He was unconscious of the silence. The air is stifling here. But you never sat better. You were perfectly still. And I have caught the effect I wanted—the half-parted lips and the bright look in the eyes.

I suppose he has been paying you compliments. It is horribly hot in the studio. Basil, let us have something iced to drink, something with strawberries in it.

Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I will tell him what you want. I have got to work up this background, so I will join you later on. I have never been in better form for painting than I am to-day. This is going to be my masterpiece. It is my masterpiece as it stands. Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had been wine. He came close to him and put his hand upon his shoulder.

The lad started and drew back. He was bareheaded, and the leaves had tossed his rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads. There was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are suddenly awakened. His finely chiselled nostrils quivered, and some hidden nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left them trembling. You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know. Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away.

He could not help liking the tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. His romantic, olive-coloured face and worn expression interested him. There was something in his low languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His cool, white, flowerlike hands, even, had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own. But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid. Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself?

He had known Basil Hallward for months, but the friendship between them had never altered him. And, yet, what was there to be afraid of? He was not a schoolboy or a girl. It was absurd to be frightened. You really must not allow yourself to become sunburnt.

It would be unbecoming. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world.

Will it always be so? You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. You have. And beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon.

It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. You smile? People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible Yes, Mr.

Gray, the gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats.

Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age.

Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing A new Hedonism—that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol. With your personality there is nothing you could not do. The world belongs to you for a season The moment I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious of what you really are, of what you really might be. There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself.

I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will last—such a little time. The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again.

The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars.

But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.

There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth! Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment. Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe of the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield.

After a time the bee flew away. He saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian convolvulus. The flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to and fro. Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio and made staccato signs for them to come in.

They turned to each other and smiled. The light is quite perfect, and you can bring your drinks. They rose up and sauntered down the walk together. Two green-and-white butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of the garden a thrush began to sing. That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.

Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair and watched him. The sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the only sound that broke the stillness, except when, now and then, Hallward stepped back to look at his work from a distance. In the slanting beams that streamed through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden.

The heavy scent of the roses seemed to brood over everything. After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, looked for a long time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long time at the picture, biting the end of one of his huge brushes and frowning. Lord Henry came over and examined the picture. It was certainly a wonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well.

Gray, come over and look at yourself. I am awfully obliged to you. Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture and turned towards it. When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a moment with pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes, as if he had recognized himself for the first time. He stood there motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking to him, but not catching the meaning of his words.

The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before. He had listened to them, laughed at them, forgotten them.

They had not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description flashed across him.

Yes, there would be a day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his lips and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar his body. He would become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth. As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a knife and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. His eyes deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears.

He felt as if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart. It is one of the greatest things in modern art. I will give you anything you like to ask for it.

I must have it. I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give!

I would give my soul for that! Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. You like your art better than your friends. I am no more to you than a green bronze figure. Hardly as much, I dare say.

The painter stared in amazement. It was so unlike Dorian to speak like that. What had happened? He seemed quite angry. His face was flushed and his cheeks burning.

You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself. Hallward turned pale and caught his hand. I have never had such a friend as you, and I shall never have such another.

You are not jealous of material things, are you? I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it.

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