The secret garden

IN THE GARDEN 363and ordered Pitcher to prepareEngland.for his return toIn a few days he was in Yorkshire again, andon his long railroad journeyhe found himselfin allthinking of his boy as he had never thoughtthe ten years past. During those years he hadonly wished to forget him. Now, though he didnot intend to think about him, memories of himconstantly drifted into his mind. He rememberedthe black days when he had raved like a madmanbecause the child was alive and the mother wasdead. He had refused to see it, and when he hadgone to look at it at last it had been such a weakwretched thing that every one had been sure itwould die in a few days. But to the surprise ofthose who took care of it the days passed and itlived and then every one believed it would be adeformed and crippled creature.He had not meant to be a bad father, but hehad not felt like a father at all. He had supplieddoctors and nurses and luxuries, but he had shrunkfrom the mere thought of the boy and had buried^himself in his own misery. The first time after a'year's absence he returned to Misselthwaite andthe small miserable looking thing languidly andindifferently lifted to his face the great gray eyeswith black lashes round them, so like and yet so