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You're built to win it. Welcome to Snewscast. The podcast is designed to help you fall asleep. Find us on Snuescast.com and if you enjoy our show, please share us with a friend. This episode is brought to you by Tree Canopies. Tonight we'll read the next part to the Secret Garden, a novel by Francis Hodgson Bernat, published in 1911. If you'd like to listen to this story's episodes in order, go to snoozecast.com slash series. In the last episode, the children spend an absolutely glorious spring day together in the

secret garden.

Mary and Dickon learn that Colin always uses a wheelchair simply because he feels so tired

and weak, but not because he necessarily cannot walk.

Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. Relax your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now take a few deep breaths. children. The children were very quiet for a little while. The sun was dropping lower. It was that hour when everything stills itself. And they really had had a busy and exciting afternoon. Colin looked as if he were resting luxuriously. Even the creatures had ceased moving about, had drawn together and were resting near them. Soot had perched on a low branch and drawn up one leg and dropped the grey film drowsily over his eyes. Mary privately thought he looked as if he might snore in a minute. In the midst of this stillness, it was rather startling when Colin half-lifted his head and exclaimed in a loud, suddenly alarmed whisper, Who is that man? Dickin and Mary scrambled to their feet. Man, they both cried in low, quick voices. Colin pointed to the high wall. Look, he whispered excitedly. Just look!

Mary and Dickon wheeled about and looked. There was been weatherstaff's indignant face glaring at them over the wall from the top of the ladder. He actually shook his fist at Mary. If I wasn't a bat-chulder and that was a wretch of mine, he cried, I'd give thee a heighten." He mounted another step threateningly as if it were his energetic intention to jump down and deal with her. But as she came toward him, he evidently thought better of it, and stood on the top step of his ladder, shaking his fists down at her. I never thought much of thee, he harangued. I could not bite thee the first time I set eyes on thee, a scrawny buttermilk-faced young bism. I was asking questions and poking the nose where it wasn't wanted. If it hadn't been for the Robin, drag him,

Ben Weatherstaff called out Mary, finding her breath. She stood below him and called up to him with a sort of gasp. and weather staff. It was the Robin who showed me the way. Then it did seem as if Ben really would scramble down on her side of the wall. He was so outraged. The young baton, he called down at her, lay in the batoness on a robin, him showing thee the way. She could see his next words burst out because he was overpowered by curiosity. However, as this the world thou get in, it was the Robin who showed me the way, she protested obstinately. He didn't know he was doing it, but he did. And I can't tell you from here, while you're shaking your fist at me. He stopped shaking his fist very suddenly

at that very moment and his jaw actually dropped as he stared over her head at something He saw coming over the grass toward him.

At the first sound of his torrent of words, Colin had been so surprised that he had only sat up and listened as if he were spellbound. But in the midst of it he had recovered himself and beckoned imperiously to Dickon. "'We'll meet over there,' he commanded, "'we'll meet quite close and stop right in front of him. And this, if you please, this is what Ben weatherstaff beheld, and which made his jaw drop. A wheelchair with luxurious cushions and robes which came toward him looking rather like some sort of state coach because a young Raja leaned back in it, with royal command in his great, black-rimmed eyes, and a thin white hand extended hottily toward him. And it stopped right under Ben-weather's staff's nose. It was really no wonder his mouth dropped open. Do you know who I am? demanded the Raja. How been weather staff stared? His red old eyes fixed themselves on what was before him as if he were seeing a ghost. He gazed and gazed and gulped a lump down his throat and did not say a word. Do you know who I am, demanded calling still more empiriously. Answer. Ben weatherstaff put his gnarled hand up and passed it over his eyes and over his forehead. And then he did answer in a strange, shaky voice. Who the art? He said, I, that I do, with the mother's eyes staring at me out of the face. Lord knows how they come here, but there are to poor cripple.

Colin forgot that he had ever had a back. His face flushed garlic, and he sat bolt upright. I'm not a cripple.

He cried out furiously.

I'm not.

He's not, Crite Mary, almost shouting up the wall in her fierce indignation. He's not got a lump as big as a pin. I looked and there was none there, not one. When weatherstaff passed his hand over his forehead again and gazed as if he could never gaze enough. His hand shook and his mouth shook and his voice shook. He was an ignorant old man and attackedless old man, and he could

only remember the things he had heard. The-the-hasn't got to crooked back. He said, horsely. No, shouted Colin.

The hasn't got crooked legs.

Quavered Ben more orsly yet. It was too much. The strength which Colin usually threw into his tantrums rushed through him now in a new way. Never yet had he been accused of crooked legs, even in whispers, and the perfectly simple belief in their existence, which was revealed by Ben-Wetherstaff's voice was more than Rajav Flash and Blood could endure. His anger and insulted pride made him forget everything but this one moment and filled him with a power he had never known before. And almost unnatural strength. Come here, he shouted to Dickens, and he actually began to tear the coverings off his lower limbs, and disentangle himself. Come here, come here, this minute.

Dickon was by his side in a second. Mary caught her breath in a short gasp, and felt herself turn pale. He can do it, he can do it, he can. She gabbled over to herself under her breath as fast as she ever could. There was a brief fierce scramble. The rugs were tossed on the ground. Dick and held Collins' arm. The thin legs were out. the thin feet were on the grass. Colin was standing upright, upright, as straight as an arrow, and looking strangely tall. His head thrown back, his strange eyes flashing lightning. Look at me, he flung up at Ben Weatherstaff. Just look at me,, just look at me.

He's as straight as I am. Cryticken? He's as straight as any lad in Yorkshire. What Ben weather staff did, Mary thought queer beyond measure. He choked and gulped, and suddenly tears ran down his weather-wrinkle cheeks as he struck his old hands together. He burst forth, the lies folk tells, the artist thin as a laugh and as white as a rath.

But there's not a knob on thee. Thel'd make a man yet. God bless thee. Dickin' held Collins' arm strongly, but the boy had not begun to falter. He stood straighter and straighter and looked Ben weather staff in the face. I'm your master," he said, when my father is away. And you are to obey me. This is my garden. Don't dare to say a word about it. You get down from that ladder and go out to the long walk and Miss Mary will meet you and bring you here. I want to talk to you. We did not want you, but now you will have to be in on the secret. Be quick.

Ben weatherstaff's crab-dold face was still wet with that one queer rush of tears. It seemed as if he could not take his eyes from thin, straight, Colin, standing on his own feet with his head thrown back.

...