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 c