The Secret Garden: Complete (Paperback)

Description

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When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said shewas the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too. She had a little thin face and alittle thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was yellowbecause she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another. Her father hadheld a position under the English Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and hermother 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 anAyah, who was made to understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib she must keep thechild out of sight as much as possible. So when she was a sickly, fretful, ugly little baby she was keptout of the way, and when she became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the wayalso. She never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the dark faces of her Ayah and the othernative servants, and as they always obeyed her and gave her her own way in everything, because theMem Sahib would be angry if she was disturbed by her crying, by the time she was six years old shewas as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived. The young English governess who came toteach her to read and write disliked her so much that she gave up her place in three months, andwhen other governesses came to try to fill it they always went away in a shorter time than the firstone. So if Mary had not chosen to really want to know how to read books she would never havelearned 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 herAyah.