Page:The Secret Garden.djvu/127

Rh During that week of sunshine, she became more intimate with Ben Weatherstaff. She surprised him several times by seeming to start up beside him as if she sprang out of the earth. The truth was that she was afraid that he would pick up his tools and go away if he saw her coming, so she always walked toward him as silently as possible. But, in fact, he did not object to her as strongly as he had at first. Perhaps he was secretly rather flattered by her evident desire for his elderly company. Then, also, she was more civil than she had been. He did not know that when she first saw him she spoke to him as she would have spoken to a native, and had not known that a cross, sturdy old Yorkshire man was not accustomed to salaam to his masters, and be merely commanded by them to do things.

“Tha’rt like th’ robin,” he said to her one morning when he lifted his head and saw her standing by him. “I never knows when I shall see thee or which side tha’ll come from.”

“He’s friends with me now,” said Mary.

“That’s like him,” snapped Ben Weatherstaff. “Makin’ up to th’ women folk just for vanity an’ flightiness. There’s nothin’ he wouldn’t do for th’ sake o’ showin’ off an’ flirtin’ his tail-feathers. He’s as full o’ pride as an egg’s full o’ meat.”

He very seldom talked much and sometimes