Mary meets Dickon

Mary Lennox meets Dickon Sowerby for the first time in the wood near Misselthwaite Manor, an encounter that immediately establishes his extraordinary affinity with wild creatures and his natural, unselfconscious manner, and that marks the beginning of a transformative friendship grounded in shared secrets and the revival of the secret garden.

The Setting and First Sight

Mary had been skipping down a laurel-hedged walk that curved round the secret garden and ended at a gate opening into the wood. She heard a low, peculiar whistling sound and went through the gate to investigate. What she saw stopped her breath: a boy of about twelve was sitting under a tree, his back against the trunk, playing on a rough wooden pipe. He was a funny-looking boy, very clean, with a turned-up nose and cheeks as red as poppies. Never had Mary seen such round and such blue eyes in any boy's face. On the trunk of the tree he leaned against, a brown squirrel was clinging and watching him; from behind a bush nearby a cock pheasant was delicately stretching his neck to peep out; and quite near him two rabbits sat up, sniffing with tremulous noses. It appeared as if they were all drawing near to watch him and listen to the strange low little call his pipe seemed to make.

The Meeting and Mutual Recognition

When Dickon saw Mary, he held up his hand and spoke to her in a voice almost as low as and rather like his piping: "Don't tha' move. It'd flight 'em." Mary remained motionless. He stopped playing and began to rise from the ground so slowly that it scarcely seemed as though he were moving at all, but at last he stood on his feet. Then the squirrel scampered back up into the branches, the pheasant withdrew his head, and the rabbits dropped on all fours and began to hop away, though not at all as if they were frightened. "I'm Dickon," the boy said. "I know tha'rt Miss Mary." Mary realized that somehow she had known at first that he was Dickon—who else could have been charming rabbits and pheasants as the natives charm snakes in India? He had a wide, red, curving mouth and his smile spread all over his face. He explained that he had gotten up slowly because a quick move startles wild things; a body has to move gentle and speak low when wild things are about.

The Exchange and the Seeds of Trust

Dickon spoke to Mary not as if they had never seen each other before but as if he knew her quite well. Mary, knowing nothing about boys, spoke a little stiffly because she felt rather shy. She asked if he had gotten Martha's letter, and he nodded his curly, rust-colored head: "That's why I come." He stooped to pick up something that had been lying on the ground beside him when he piped—the garden tools and seeds. He had a little spade, a rake, a fork, a hoe, and a trowel, and the woman in the shop had thrown in a packet of white poppy and one of blue larkspur when he bought the other seeds. Mary wished she could talk as he did; his speech was so quick and easy, and it sounded as if he liked her and was not the least afraid she would not like him, though he was only a common moor boy in patched clothes with a funny face and a rough, rusty-red head. As she came closer she noticed a clean fresh scent of heather and grass and leaves about him, almost as if he were made of them. She liked it very much, and when she looked into his funny face with the red cheeks and round blue eyes she forgot that she had felt shy. "Let us sit down on this log and look at them," she said. They sat down, and he took a clumsy little brown paper package out of his coat pocket, untying the string to reveal ever so many neater and smaller packages with a picture of a flower on each one. He told her about mignonette and poppies, and then, hearing the robin's call, he identified the bird as Ben Weatherstaff's and declared that the robin had taken a fancy to Mary. "He wouldn't come near thee if he didn't," Dickon said. "Birds is rare choosers." When Mary asked if he understood everything birds say, Dickon's grin spread until he seemed all wide, red, curving mouth, and he rubbed his rough head. "I think I do, and they think I do," he said. "I've lived on th' moor with 'em so long. I've watched 'em break shell an' come out an' fledge an' learn to fly an' begin to sing, till I think I'm one of 'em. Sometimes I think p'raps I'm a bird, or a fox, or a rabbit, or a squirrel, or even a beetle, an' I don't know it."

The Revelation of the Secret Garden

Dickon then asked where Mary's garden was, and she clutched her hands, turned red and then pale, and finally confessed that she had stolen a garden—a secret garden that nobody wanted, nobody cared for, and nobody ever went into. She burst into passionate tears, and Dickon's curious blue eyes grew rounder and rounder. "Eh-h-h!" he said, drawing his exclamation out slowly, the way meaning both wonder and sympathy. Mary got up from the log, feeling contrary and obstinate, and led him round the laurel path to the walk where the ivy grew so thickly. She lifted the hanging ivy, revealing the door, pushed it slowly open, and they passed in together. "It's this," she said, waving her hand round defiantly. "It's a secret garden, and I'm the only one in the world who wants it to be alive." Dickon looked round and round about it, and round and round again. "Eh!" he almost whispered, "it is a queer, pretty place! It's like as if a body was in a dream."