THE SECRET GARDEN

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Contents

1. There Is No One Left
2. Mistress Mary Quite Contrary
3. Across the Moor
4. Martha
5. The Cry in the Corridor
6. "There Was Someone Crying—There Was!"
7. The Key to the Garden
8. The Robin Who Showed the Way
9. The Strangest House Anyone Ever Lived In
10. Dickon
11. The Nest of the Missel Thrush
12. "Might I Have a Bit of Earth?"
13. "I Am Colin"
14. A Young Rajah
15. Nest Building
16. "I Won't!" Said Mary
17. A Tantrum
18. "Tha' Munnot Waste No Time"
19. "It Has Come!"
20. "I Shall Live Forever—and Ever—and Ever!"
21. Ben Weatherstaff
22. When the Sun Went Down
23. Magic
24. "Let Them Laugh"
25. The Curtain
26. "It's Mother!"
27. In the Garden

CHAPTER I. THERE IS NO ONE LEFT

When Mary Lennox went to live with her uncle at Misselthwaite Manor, everyone said she was the crankiest-looking child they had ever seen. It was true. She had a thin little face and a thin little body. Her hair was thin too, and her face looked cross all the time. Her hair was yellow, and her skin looked a bit yellow too, because she was born in India and had often been sick.

Her father worked for the English government. He was always busy, and often sick himself. Her mother was very beautiful, but she only wanted to go to parties and have fun. She did not want a little girl at all. When Mary was born, her mother gave her to a nanny called an Ayah to take care of. The Ayah was told to keep the baby out of sight, so the baby's cries would not bother her mother.

So Mary was kept away from her parents from the very start. All she knew were the faces of her Ayah and the other servants in the house, called native servants (that means they were from India, the country where Mary lived). They always did what Mary wanted, because if Mary cried, her mother got angry. By the time Mary was six years old, she was very bossy and very selfish.

A young teacher came to teach Mary to read and write. But she did not like Mary at all, and she quit after three months. Other teachers came after her, but they never stayed long either. If Mary had not wanted to learn to read on her own, she might never have learned her letters at all.

One very hot morning, when Mary was about nine, she woke up feeling grumpy. She got even grumpier when she saw that the servant standing by her bed was not her Ayah.

"Why did you come?" she said to the strange woman. "I don't want you here. Send my Ayah to me."

The woman looked scared. She said the Ayah could not come. Mary got so angry that she hit and kicked the woman. But the woman only looked more frightened and said again that the Ayah could not come.

Something strange was happening that morning. Nothing was done the way it usually was. Some of the servants seemed to be missing. The ones Mary did see moved quickly, with pale, scared faces. No one would tell Mary anything, and her Ayah never came.

By late morning, Mary was completely alone. She went outside to the garden and played by herself under a tree. She pretended to make a flower bed, sticking big red flowers into little piles of dirt. The whole time, she got angrier and angrier, muttering the mean things she would say to her Ayah when she came back.

"Pig! Pig! Daughter of pigs!" Mary said. (Calling someone a "pig" was a very rude insult back then.)

She was saying this over and over when she heard her mother come outside with someone. Her mother was talking with a young, fair-haired man in a low, strange voice. Mary knew who he was—a young officer who had just arrived from England. Mary stared at him, but she stared even more at her mother.

Mary loved looking at her mother, whom she called "the Mem Sahib." Her mother was tall and pretty, with silky curly hair, a delicate nose, and big laughing eyes. She always wore beautiful, lacy clothes. But today, her eyes were not laughing. They looked big and scared, staring up at the young officer's face.

"Is it so very bad? Oh, is it?" Mary heard her mother ask.

"Very bad," the young man answered, his voice shaking. "You should have left for the hills two weeks ago."

Mary's mother wrung her hands with worry.

"Oh, I know I should have!" she cried. "I only stayed for that silly dinner party. What a fool I was!"

Right then, a loud wailing—a loud, sad crying sound—came from where the servants lived. Mary's mother grabbed the young man's arm. Mary stood frozen, shaking all over. The wailing grew louder and wilder.

"What is it? What is it?" Mary's mother gasped.

"Someone has died," the young officer said. "You didn't tell me it had reached your servants too."

"I didn't know!" Mary's mother cried. "Come with me! Come with me!" She ran into the house.

Then, terrible things began to happen, and Mary finally understood what the strange morning meant. A disease called cholera (a very serious sickness that spreads quickly) had broken out, and people were dying fast. The Ayah had gotten sick in the night and had just died—that was why the servants had been wailing. By the next day, three more servants had died, and others ran away in fear. There was panic everywhere, and people were dying in houses all around.

During all this confusion, Mary hid in the nursery (the room where children stayed) and everyone forgot about her. Nobody thought of her. Nobody wanted her. Strange things kept happening that she knew nothing about. She cried, then slept, then cried again.

She only knew that people were sick, and she heard scary, mysterious sounds. Once, she crept into the dining room and found it empty. A half-finished meal sat on the table, with chairs pushed back as if people had jumped up suddenly. Mary ate some fruit and crackers. She was thirsty, so she drank a nearly-full glass of wine. It tasted sweet, and she did not know how strong it was. Soon it made her very sleepy. She went back to her room and shut herself in, scared by the cries from outside and the sound of hurrying feet. The wine made her so sleepy that she could barely keep her eyes open. She lay down and fell into a deep sleep for a long time.

Many things happened while she slept so deeply. But she did not hear the crying, or the sounds of things being carried in and out of the house.

When she woke up, she stared at the wall. The house was completely still. She had never heard it so quiet before. No voices, no footsteps. She wondered if everyone had gotten better and the trouble was over. She wondered who would take care of her now that her Ayah had died. Maybe a new Ayah would come, one who knew new stories—Mary was tired of the old ones. She did not cry about her nanny dying. Mary was not a loving child and had never cared much for anyone. The noise and the crying about the cholera had scared her, and she was angry that no one remembered she was there. Everyone was too scared to think about a little girl that nobody loved. But surely, once everyone got well, someone would remember her and come find her.

But no one came. As she waited, the house grew even quieter. She saw something rustling on the floor mat and looked down to see a little snake sliding along, watching her with shiny eyes. She was not scared—he was a harmless little snake, and he seemed in a hurry to leave. He slid under the door.

"How strange and quiet it is," she said. "It sounds like there's no one in this house but me and the snake."

Just then, she heard footsteps outside, then on the porch. They were men's footsteps. The men came into the house and talked in low voices. No one greeted them, and they began opening doors and looking into rooms.

"What a terrible loss!" one voice said. "That pretty, pretty woman! I suppose the child died too. I heard there was a child, though no one ever saw her."

Mary was standing in the middle of the nursery when the door opened a few minutes later. She looked cross and unhappy, frowning because she was hungry and felt forgotten. The first man to come in was a large officer she had once seen talking to her father. He looked tired and worried, but when he saw Mary, he jumped back in shock.

"Barney!" he shouted. "There's a child here! A child, all alone! In a place like this! Goodness, who is she?"

"I am Mary Lennox," the little girl said, standing up very straight. She thought it was rude of him to call her father's house "a place like this!" "I fell asleep when everyone had cholera, and I just woke up. Why does nobody come?"

"It's the child no one ever saw!" the man said to the others. "She's been completely forgotten!"

"Why was I forgotten?" Mary said, stamping her foot. "Why does nobody come?"

The young man named Barney looked at her very sadly. Mary thought she even saw him blink back tears.

"Poor little kid," he said. "There's nobody left to come."

That is how Mary suddenly learned that she had no father and no mother left. They had both died and been carried away in the night. The few servants who hadn't died had run away as fast as they could, and none of them remembered the little girl in the house. That is why it was so quiet. There really was no one in the house but Mary—and the little snake.

CHAPTER II. MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY

Mary liked to watch her mother from far away and thought she was very pretty. But Mary knew very little about her, so she could not really love her or miss her much now that she was gone. In fact, Mary did not miss her at all. Mary only thought about herself, as she always had. If she had been older, she might have worried about being alone in the world. But she was young, and since she had always been taken care of, she guessed she always would be.

All she wondered was whether she would go live with nice people—people who would be polite to her and let her have her own way, just like her Ayah and the other servants always had.

She knew she would not be staying at the English minister's house, where she was taken at first. She did not want to stay there. The English cle—