THE SECRET GARDEN

CHAPTER PAGE
I THERE IS NO ONE LEFT 1
II MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY 10
III ACROSS THE MOOR 23
IV MARTHA 30
V THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR 55
VI "THERE WAS SOME ONE CRYING--THERE WAS!" 65
VII THE KEY OF THE GARDEN 75
VIII THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY 85
IX THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANY ONE EVER LIVED IN 97
X DICKON 111
XI THE NEST OF THE MISSEL THRUSH 128
XII "MIGHT I HAVE A BIT OF EARTH?" 140
XIII "I AM COLIN" 153
XIV A YOUNG RAJAH 172
XV NEST BUILDING 189
XVI "I WON'T!" SAID MARY 207
XVII A TANTRUM 218
XVIII "THA' MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME" 229
XIX "IT HAS COME!" 239
XX "I SHALL LIVE FOREVER--AND EVER--AND EVER!" 255
XXI BEN WEATHERSTAFF 268
XXII WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN 284
XXIII MAGIC 292
XXIV "LET THEM LAUGH" 310
XXV THE CURTAIN 328
XXVI "IT'S MOTHER!" 339
XXVII IN THE GARDEN 353

THE SECRET GARDEN

CHAPTER I

THERE IS NO ONE LEFT

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle
everybody 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 her face was
yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one
way or another. Her father had held a position under the English
Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and her mother had
been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse 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, who was made to
understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib she must keep the
child out of sight as much as possible. So when she was a sickly,
fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and when she
became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the way
also. She never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the dark faces
of her Ayah and the other native servants, and as they always obeyed her
and gave her her own way in everything, because the Mem Sahib would be
angry if she was disturbed by her crying, by the time she was six years
old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived. The
young English governess who came to teach her to read and write disliked
her so much that she gave up her place in three months, and when other
governesses came to try to fill it they always went away in a shorter
time than the first one. So if Mary had not chosen to really want to
know how to read books she would never have learned her letters at all.

One frightfully hot morning, when she was about nine years old, she
awakened feeling very cross, and she became crosser still when she saw
that 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 you
stay. Send my Ayah to me."

The woman looked frightened, but she only stammered that the Ayah could
not come and when Mary threw herself into a passion and beat and kicked
her, she looked only more frightened and repeated that it was not
possible for the Ayah to come to Missie Sahib.

There was something mysterious in the air that morning. Nothing was done
in its regular order and several of the native servants seemed missing,
while those whom Mary saw slunk or hurried about with ashy and scared
faces. But no one would tell her anything and her Ayah did not come. She
was actually left alone as the morning went on, and at last she wandered
out into the garden and began to play by herself under a tree 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 the things she
would say and the names she would call Saidie when she returned.

THE SECRET GARDEN