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Copywork
About This Passage
Burnett stages Dickon's first appearance not through description of Dickon himself but through the ring of wild creatures that tolerate him — a tableau that argues character by association, letting the reader infer his gentleness from the fact that tremulous-nosed rabbits do not flee. Copy it slowly and mark how the sentence holds four separate animal vignettes in suspension by way of one long coordinated clause.
And on the trunk of the tree he leaned against, a brown squirrel was clinging and watching him, and from behind a bush nearby a cock pheasant was delicately stretching his neck to peep out, and quite ...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In a paragraph, retell the chapter's structural arc from Mary's private week in the secret garden, through her growing intimacy with Ben Weatherstaff over the story of the lady who kissed the roses, to her meeting with Dickon in the wood and her decision to show him the garden. Identify the chapter's hinge moment.
Discussion Questions
- When Ben Weatherstaff tells Mary the roses 'was left to themselves' after the lady went to Heaven, and Mary asks whether they quite die when left alone, what latent question is she actually asking about herself, and how does Burnett build the answer into the chapter's structure?
- Mary's cry — 'I don't care, I don't care! Nobody has any right to take it from me when I care about it and they don't. They're letting it die, all shut in by itself' — fuses the garden and herself grammatically. What evidence in the earlier portion of the chapter prepares this rhetorical collapse, and why does Dickon's 'Eh-h-h!' answer it more adequately than any sentence could?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
shaking or quivering slightly, usually from timidity, excitement, or physical frailty.
Item 2
with careful, gentle precision — as of a touch or movement that avoids disturbing what it approaches.
Item 3
holding on tightly to a surface or person, often suggesting dependence or reluctance to let go.
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Critical Thinking
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