The Secret Garden
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CHAPTER I THERE IS NO ONE LEFTWhen Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncleeverybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.It was true, too. She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and herface was yellow because she had been born in India and had always beenill in one way or another. Her father had held a position under theEnglish Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and hermother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties andamuse herself with gay people. She had not wanted a little girl at all, and when Mary was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah, whowas made to understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib shemust keep the child out of sight as much as possible. So when she was asickly, fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and whenshe became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of theway also. She never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the darkfaces of her Ayah and the other native servants, and as they alwaysobeyed her and gave her her own way in everything, because the MemSahib would be angry if she was disturbed by her crying, by the timeshe was six years old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig asever lived. The young English governess who came to teach her to readand write disliked her so much that she gave up her place in threemonths, and when other governesses came to try to fill it they alwayswent away in a shorter time than the first one. So if Mary had notchosen to really want to know how to read books she would never havelearned her letters at all.One frightfully hot morning, when she was about nine years old, sheawakened feeling very cross, and she became crosser still when she sawthat the servant who stood by her bedside was not her Ayah."Why did you come?" she said to the strange woman. "I will not let youstay. Send my Ayah to me."The woman looked frightened, but she only stammered that the Ayah couldnot come and when Mary threw herself into a passion and beat and kickedher, she looked only more frightened and repeated that it was notpossible for the Ayah to come to Missie Sahib.There was something mysterious in the air that morning. Nothing wasdone in its regular order and several of the native servants seemedmissing, while those whom Mary saw slunk or hurried about with ashy andscared faces. But no one would tell her anything and her Ayah did notcome. She was actually left alone as the morning went on, and at lastshe wandered out into the garden and began to play by herself under atree near the veranda. She pretended that she was making a flower-bed, and she stuck big scarlet hibiscus blossoms into little heaps of earth, all the time growing more and more angry and muttering to herself thethings she would say and the names she would call Saidie when shereturned."Pig! Pig! Daughter of Pigs!" she said, because to call a native a pigis the worst insult of all.
The Secret Garden
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