Music Welcome to snoozecast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find us on snoozecast.com and now also on the snoozecast YouTube channel where you can find playlists of different series including this one. If you'd like to get an email once a week with upcoming sleep stories and other news, subscribe to the snooze letter at snoozecast.com. This episode is brought to you by Apotted Rose. Tonight, we'll read the next part to The Secret Garden, a novel by Francis Hodgson Bernat published in 1911. In the last episode, the children are confronted by the Cantankerous Gardener Ben Weather Staff, who is angry to find them in the garden he has kept shut up for so long.

He had never seen Colin in person, but had only heard fanciful tales about the boy. They have a reckoning and Ben is commanded to keep their secret as well. Let's get cozy.

Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now take a few deep breaths. Mary thought that perhaps the sun held back from setting a few minutes just on purpose. Ben weather staff brought the rose in its pot from the greenhouse. He hobbled over the grass as fast as he could. He had begun to be excited too. Nelt down by the hole and broke the pot from the mold. Hear lad, he said, handing the plant to Colin, said it in the earth thyself same as the king does when he goes to a new place. The thin white hands shook a little, and Collins flushed grew deeper as he set the rows in the mold and held it while old Ben made firm the earth. It was filled in and pressed down and made steady. Mary was leaning forward on her hands and knees. Soot had flown down and marched forward to see what was being done. and and shell chattert about from the cherry tree. "'It's planted,' said Colin at last. And the sun is only slipping over the edge. Help me up, Dickin. I want to be standing when it goes. That's part of the magic. And Dickin helped him. And the magic, or whatever it was, so gave him strength that when the sun did slip over the edge and end the strange, lovely afternoon for them. There he actually stood on his two feet, laughing. Chapter 23 Magic Dr. Craven had been waiting some time at the house when they returned to it. He had indeed begun to wonder if it might not be wise to send someone out to explore the garden paths. When Colin was brought back to his room, the poor man looked him over seriously. "'You should not have stayed so long,' he said. "'You must not overexert yourself.' "'I am not tired at all,' said Colin. It has made me well. Tomorrow I am going out in the morning as well as in the afternoon.

I'm not sure I can allow that. Answer Dr. Craven. I'm afraid it would not be wise. It would not be wise to try to stop me," said Colin quite seriously. I am going. Even Mary had found out that one of Colin's chief peculiarities was that he did not know in the least what a rude little brute he was with his way of ordering people about. He had lived on a sort of desert island all his life, and as he had been the king of it, he had made his own manners and had no one to compare himself with. Mary had indeed been rather like him herself, and since she had been at Missothwait, had gradually discovered that her own manners had not been of the kind which is usual or popular. Having made this discovery, she naturally thought it of enough interest to communicate to Colin. So she sat and looked at him curiously for a few minutes after Dr. Craven had gone. She wanted to make him ask her why she was doing it, and of course she did. What are you looking at me for?" he said. I'm thinking that I am rather sorry for Dr. Craven. So am I, said Colin, calmly, but not without an air of some satisfaction. He won't get misalthweight at all now. I'm not going to die. I'm sorry for him because of that, of course," said Mary. But I was thinking just then that it must have been very horrid to have to be polite for ten years to a boy who was always rude. I would never have done it. Am I rude? Colin inquired undisturbedly. If he had been his own boy and he had been a slapping sort of man, said Mary, he would have slapped you. But he darren't, said Colin. No, he darren't. Answered Mistress Mary, thinking the thing out quite without prejudice. Nobody ever dared to do anything you didn't like, because you were going to die and things like that, you were such a poor thing.

But, announce Collins stubbornly, I am not going to be a poor thing. I won't let people think I'm one. I stood on my own feet this afternoon. It is always having your own way that has made you so strange.

Mary went on,

thinking aloud. Colin turned his head, frowning. Am I strange?

He demanded.

Yes, answered Mary.

Very.

But you needn't be cross.

She added impartially, because so am I strange and so has been weather staff. But I am not as strange as I was before I began to like people and before I found the garden.

I don't want to be strange," said Colin.

I'm not going to be.

And he frowned again with determination.

He was a very proud boy.

He lay thinking for a while. And then Mary saw his beautiful smile begin, and gradually change his whole face. "'I shall stop being strange,' he said. If I go every day to the garden, there is magic in there. Good magic, you know Mary. I am sure there is. So am I, said Mary. If it isn't real magic, Colin said. We can pretend it is. Something is there. Something. It's magic," said Mary. But not black magic. It's as white as snow. They always called it magic. And indeed, it seemed like it in the months that followed. the wonderful months, the radiant months, the amazing ones. Oh, the things which happened in that garden. If you have never had a garden, you cannot understand. And if you have had a garden, you will know that it would take a whole book to describe all that came to pass there. At first it seemed that green things would never cease pushing their way through the earth, in the grass, in the beds, even in the crevices of the walls. Then the green things began to show buds, and the buds began to unfurl and show color. Every shade of blue, every shade of purple, every tint and hue of crimson.

In its happy days, flowers had been tucked away into every inch and whole and corner. Ben weatherstaff had seen it done and had himself scraped out mortar from between the bricks of the wall and made pockets of

earth for lovely clinging things to grow on. Iris and white lilies rose out of the grass in sheaves, and the green alcoves filled themselves with amazing armies of the blue and white flower

lenses of tall delphiniums or column binds or bell flowers She was main fond of them she was Ben weather staff said She liked them things as was always pointing up at the blue sky, she used to tell. Not as she was one of them as looked down on the earth, not her. She just loved it. But she said as the blue sky always looked up so joyful. The seeds, Dickin and Mary had planted, grew as if fairies had tended them. Saddened poppies of all tints, danced in the breeze by the score. Galee defying flowers, which had lived in the garden for years, and which it might be confessed seemed rather to wonder how much new people had got there. And the roses, the roses, rising out of the grass, tangled round the sund sundial, Rheating the tree trunks and hanging from their branches. Climbing over the walls and spreading up them with long garlands falling in cascades. They came alive day by day, hour by hour. Fair fresh leaves and buds, and buds tiny at first, but swelling and working magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent, delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air. There. Colin saw it all, watching each change as it took place. Every morning he was brought out and every hour of each day when it didn't rain he spent in the garden. In great days, pleased him. He would lie on the grass, watching things growing, he said. If you watched long enough, he declared, you could see buts on sheath themselves. Also, you could make the acquaintance of strange, busy, insect things running about on various unknown but evidently serious errands. Sometimes carrying tiny scraps of straw, or feather, or food, or climbing blades of grass, as if they were trees from whose tops one could look out to explore the country. A mole throwing up its mound at the end of its burrow and making its way out at last with the long-nailed paws, which so like selfish hands had absorbed him one whole morning. Antsways, beetlesways, beesways, frogsways, birdsways, plantsways, gave gave him a whole new world to explore, and when Dickin revealed them all and added fox's ways, otter's ways, ferrets' ways, squirrel's ways, and trout and water rats and bachelors' ways, there was no end to the things to talk about and think over. And this was not the half of the magic, the fact that he had really once stood on his feet had set thinking tremendously, and when Mary told him of the spell she had worked, he was excited and approved of it greatly. He talked of it constantly. Of course, there must be lots of magic in the world. He said wisely one day. But people don't know what it is or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I'm going to try and experiment. The next morning, when they went to the secret garden he sent at once for Ben-Weather staff. Ben came as quickly as he could and found the rauchas standing on his feet under a tree and looking very grand but also very beautifully smiling. Good morning, Ben Weatherstaff, he said. I want you and Dickin and Miss Mary to stand in a row and listen to me, because I am going to tell you something very important. Hi, I, sir. Answered Ben Weather Staff touching his forehead. One of the long concealed charms of Ben Weather Staff was that in his boyhood he had once run away to sea and had made voyages so he could reply like a sailor. I am going to try a scientific experiment. Explain the Raja. When I grow up, I am going to make great scientific discoveries. And I am going to begin now with this experiment. I.I. sir said Ben, whether staff promptly, though this was the first time he had heard of great scientific discoveries. It was the first time Mary had heard of them either, but even at this stage she had begun to realize that, strange as he was, Colin had read about a great many singular things, and was somehow a very convincing sort of boy. When he held up his head and fixed his strange eyes on you, it seemed as if you believed Tim, almost in spite of yourself, though he was only 10 years old,

going on 11. At this moment he was especially convincing because he suddenly felt the fascination of actually making a sort of speech like a grown-up person. The great scientific discoveries I am going to make, he went on, will be about magic. Magic is a great thing, and scarcely anyone knows anything about it except a few people in old books, and marry a little because she was born in India where there are fakes. I believe Dickin knows some magic, but perhaps he doesn't know he knows it. He charms animals and people. I would never have let him come to see me if he had not been an animal charmer, which is a boy charmer too, because a boy is an animal.

I am sure there is magic in everything, only we have not sent enough to get hold of it, and make it do things for us, like electricity and horses and steam. This sounded so imposing that Ben weather staff became quite excited and really could not keep still. Hi, I, sir! He said and he began to stand up quite straight. When Mary found this This garden, it looked quite dead. The orator proceeded.

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