The Secret Garden | Page 5

made the long voyage to England under the care of an officer's
wife, who was taking her children to leave them in a boarding-school.
She was very much absorbed in her own little boy and girl, and was
rather glad to hand the child over to the woman Mr. Archibald Craven
sent to meet her, in London. The woman was his housekeeper at
Misselthwaite Manor, and her name was Mrs. Medlock. She was a
stout woman, with very red cheeks and sharp black eyes. She wore a
very purple dress, a black silk mantle with jet fringe on it and a black
bonnet with purple velvet flowers which stuck up and trembled when
she moved her head. Mary did not like her at all, but as she very
seldom liked people there was nothing remarkable in that; besides
which it was very evident Mrs. Medlock did not think much of her.
"My word! she's a plain little piece of goods!" she said. "And we'd
heard that her mother was a beauty. She hasn't handed much of it down,
has she, ma'am?"
"Perhaps she will improve as she grows older," the officer's wife said
good-naturedly. "If she were not so sallow and had a nicer expression,
her features are rather good. Children alter so much."
"She'll have to alter a good deal," answered Mrs. Medlock. "And there's
nothing likely to improve children at Misselthwaite--if you ask me!"
They thought Mary was not listening because she was standing a little
apart from them at the window of the private hotel they had gone to.
She was watching the passing buses and cabs, and people, but she
heard quite well and was made very curious about her uncle and the
place he lived in. What sort of a place was it, and what would he be like?
What was a hunchback? She had never seen one. Perhaps there were
none in India.
Since she had been living in other people's houses and had had no Ayah,
she had begun to feel lonely and to think queer thoughts which were

new to her. She had begun to wonder why she had never seemed to
belong to any one even when her father and mother had been alive.
Other children seemed to belong to their fathers and mothers, but she
had never seemed to really be any one's little girl. She had had servants,
and food and clothes, but no one had taken any notice of her. She did
not know that this was because she was a disagreeable child; but then,
of course, she did not know she was disagreeable. She often thought
that other people were, but she did not know that she was so herself.
She thought Mrs. Medlock the most disagreeable person she had ever
seen, with her common, highly colored face and her common fine
bonnet. When the next day they set out on their journey to Yorkshire,
she walked through the station to the railway carriage with her head up
and trying to keep as far away from her as she could, because she did
not want to seem to belong to her. It would have made her very angry
to think people imagined she was her little girl.
But Mrs. Medlock was not in the least disturbed by her and her
thoughts. She was the kind of woman who would "stand no nonsense
from young ones." At least, that is what she would have said if she had
been asked. She had not wanted to go to London just when her sister
Maria's daughter was going to be married, but she had a comfortable,
well paid place as housekeeper at Misselthwaite Manor and the only
way in which she could keep it was to do at once what Mr. Archibald
Craven told her to do. She never dared even to ask a question.
"Captain Lennox and his wife died of the cholera," Mr. Craven had said
in his short, cold way. "Captain Lennox was my wife's brother and I am
their daughter's guardian. The child is to be brought here. You must go
to London and bring her yourself."
So she packed her small trunk and made the journey.
Mary sat in her corner of the railway carriage and looked plain and
fretful. She had nothing to read or to look at, and she had folded her
thin little black-gloved hands in her lap. Her black dress made her look
yellower than ever, and her limp light hair straggled from under her
black crêpe hat.

"A more marred-looking young one I never saw in my life," Mrs.
Medlock thought. (Marred is a Yorkshire word and means spoiled and
pettish.) She had never seen a child who sat so still without doing
anything; and at last she got tired of watching