The sun shone down for nearly a week on the secret garden. The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in, no one knew where she was.
Each day when she skipped on her rope to the garden, Mary was greeted with new green things peeking up from the ground. It seemed magical and strange the way the sun would seep through the thick wild overgrowth and cast a veil on the damp earth. On this day, the sun had reached the high point in the sky and it shone into Mistress Mary's garden in a way that filled her with an overwhelming joy. She had the urge to cry out in glee, but she knew that she mustn't—one of the gardeners may hear her nearby. But the warm light shining on the things peering from the ground made her want to be like them, to bask in the sun and feel herself become Alive. Forgotten was the letter she had written to Dickon and the strange cries of the night before. She stripped off her dress and lay against the cool soil in her white petticoat, content in the knowledge that nobody could find her in her state of undress.
But the thin layer of cotton still seemed stifling and ridiculous. Everything in nature was bare, why shouldn't she be? It seemed logical to pull her undergarments over her head and shake out her hair, which was growing thick. The feeling of the sun kissing her body made Mary shiver in delight. She ran her hands down her slender chest, over the small buds, down to the sapling forest which glittered in the light. This was a new feeling for Mary, like so much else that had happened in the past month. When she ran back to the house for dinner, her cheeks were so red and her eyes were so bright, and she had so many twigs in her hair that Martha didn't know what to think!
