The secret garden

CHAPTER IXTHE STRANGEST HOUSE ANY ONE EVER LIVED JNiIT was the sweetest, most mysterious-lookingplace any one could imagine. The high wallswhich shut it in were covered with the leaflessstems of climbing roses which were so thick thatthey were matted together. Mary Lennox knewthey were roses because she had seen a great manyroses in India. All the ground was covered withgrass of a wintry brown and out of itgrew clumpsof bushes which were surely rose-bushes if theywere alive. There were numbers of standardroses which had so spread their branches that theywere like little trees. There were other trees inthe garden, and one of the things which made theplace look strangest and loveliest was that climbingroses had run all over them and swung downlong tendrils which made light swaying curtains,and here and there they had caught at each otheror at a far-reaching branch and had crept from onetree to another and made lovely bridges of themselves.There were neither leaves nor roses onthem now and Mary did not know whether they97