The Secret Garden | Page 3

things being
carried in and out of the bungalow.
When she awakened she lay and stared at the wall. The house was
perfectly still. She had never known it to be so silent before. She heard
neither voices nor footsteps, and wondered if everybody had got well of
the cholera and all the trouble was over. She wondered also who would
take care of her now her Ayah was dead. There would be a new Ayah,
and perhaps she would know some new stories. Mary had been rather
tired of the old ones. She did not cry because her nurse had died. She
was not an affectionate child and had never cared much for any one.
The noise and hurrying about and wailing over the cholera had
frightened her, and she had been angry because no one seemed to
remember that she was alive. Every one was too panic-stricken to think
of a little girl no one was fond of. When people had the cholera it
seemed that they remembered nothing but themselves. But if every one
had got well again, surely some one would remember and come to look

for her.
But no one came, and as she lay waiting the house seemed to grow
more and more silent. She heard something rustling on the matting and
when she looked down she saw a little snake gliding along and
watching her with eyes like jewels. She was not frightened, because he
was a harmless little thing who would not hurt her and he seemed in a
hurry to get out of the room. He slipped under the door as she watched
him.
"How queer and quiet it is," she said. "It sounds as if there was no one
in the bungalow but me and the snake."
Almost the next minute she heard footsteps in the compound, and then
on the veranda. They were men's footsteps, and the men entered the
bungalow and talked in low voices. No one went to meet or speak to
them and they seemed to open doors and look into rooms.
"What desolation!" she heard one voice say. "That pretty, pretty woman!
I suppose the child, too. I heard there was a child, though no one ever
saw her."
Mary was standing in the middle of the nursery when they opened the
door a few minutes later. She looked an ugly, cross little thing and was
frowning because she was beginning to be hungry and feel
disgracefully neglected. The first man who came in was a large officer
she had once seen talking to her father. He looked tired and troubled,
but when he saw her he was so startled that he almost jumped back.
"Barney!" he cried out. "There is a child here! A child alone! In a place
like this! Mercy on us, who is she!"
"I am Mary Lennox," the little girl said, drawing herself up stiffly. She
thought the man was very rude to call her father's bungalow "A place
like this!" "I fell asleep when every one had the cholera and I have only
just wakened up. Why does nobody come?"
"It is the child no one ever saw!" exclaimed the man, turning to his

companions. "She has actually been forgotten!"
"Why was I forgotten?" Mary said, stamping her foot. "Why does
nobody come?"
The young man whose name was Barney looked at her very sadly.
Mary even thought she saw him wink his eyes as if to wink tears away.
"Poor little kid!" he said. "There is nobody left to come."
It was in that strange and sudden way that Mary found out that she had
neither father nor mother left; that they had died and been carried away
in the night, and that the few native servants who had not died also had
left the house as quickly as they could get out of it, none of them even
remembering that there was a Missie Sahib. That was why the place
was so quiet. It was true that there was no one in the bungalow but
herself and the little rustling snake.
CHAPTER II
MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY
Mary had liked to look at her mother from a distance and she had
thought her very pretty, but as she knew very little of her she could
scarcely have been expected to love her or to miss her very much when
she was gone. She did not miss her at all, in fact, and as she was a
self-absorbed child she gave her entire thought to herself, as she had
always done. If she had been older she would no doubt have been very
anxious at being left alone in the world, but she was very young, and as
she had always been taken care of, she supposed she always would