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 crosser still when she saw
that the servant who stood by her bedside was not her Ayah.

"Why did you come?" she said to the strange woman.  "I will not let you
stay.  Send my Ayah to me."

The woman looked frightened, but she only stammered that the Ayah could
not come and when Mary threw herself into a passion and beat and kicked
her, she looked only more frightened and repeated that it was not
possible for the Ayah to come to Missie Sahib.

There was something mysterious in the air that morning.  Nothing was
done in its regular order and several of the native servants seemed
missing, while those whom Mary saw slunk or hurried about with ashy and
scared faces.  But no one would tell her anything and her Ayah did not
come.  She was actually left alone as the morning went on, and at last
she wandered out into the garden and began to play by herself under a
tree near the veranda.  She pretended that she was making a flower-bed,
and she stuck big scarlet hibiscus blossoms into little heaps of earth,
all the time growing more and more angry and muttering to herself the
things she would say and the names she would call Saidie when she
returned.

"Pig! Pig! Daughter of Pigs!" she said, because to call a native a pig
is the worst insult of all.

She was grinding her teeth and saying this over and over again when she
heard her mother come out on the veranda with some one.  She was with a
fair young man and they stood talking together in low strange voices.
Mary knew the fair young man who looked like a boy.  She had heard that
he was a very young officer who had just come from England.  The child
stared at him, but she stared most at her mother.  She always did this
when she had a chance to see her, because the Mem Sahib--Mary used to
call her that oftener than anything else--was such a tall, slim, pretty
person and wore such lovely clothes.  Her hair was like curly silk and
she had a delicate little nose which seemed to be disdaining things,
and she had large laughing eyes.  All her clothes were thin and
floating, and Mary said they were "full of lace." They looked fuller of
lace than ever this morning, but her eyes were not laughing at all.
They were large and scared and lifted imploringly to the fair boy
officer's face.

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

"Awfully," the young man answered in a trembling voice.  "Awfully, Mrs.
Lennox.  You ought to have gone to the hills two weeks ago."

The Mem Sahib wrung her hands.

"Oh, I know I ought!" she cried.  "I only stayed to go to that silly
dinner party.  What a fool I was!"

At that very moment such a loud sound of wailing broke out from the
servants' quarters that she clutched the young man's arm, and Mary
stood shivering from head to foot.  The wailing grew wilder and wilder.
"What is it? What is it?" Mrs. Lennox gasped.

"Some one has died," answered the boy officer.  "You did not say it had
broken out among your servants."

"I did not know!" the Mem Sahib cried.  "Come with me!  Come with me!"
and she turned and ran into the house.

After that, appalling things happened, and the mysteriousness of the
morning was explained to Mary.  The cholera had broken out in its most
fatal form and people were dying like flies.  The Ayah had been taken
ill in the night, and it was because she had just died that the
servants had wailed in the huts.  Before the next day three other
servants were dead and others had run away in terror.  There was panic
on every side, and dying people in all the bungalows.

During the confusion and bewilderment of the second day Mary hid
herself in the nursery and was forgotten by everyone.  Nobody thought
of her, nobody wanted her, and strange things happened of which she
knew nothing.  Mary alternately cried and slept through the hours.  She
only knew that people were ill and that she heard mysterious and
frightening sounds.  Once she crept into the dining-room and found it
empty, though a partly finished meal was on the table and chairs and
plates looked as if they had been hastily pushed back when the diners
rose suddenly for some reason.  The child ate some fruit and biscuits,
and being thirsty she drank a glass of wine which stood nearly filled.
It was sweet, and she did not know how strong it was.  Very soon it
made her intensely drowsy, and she went back to her nursery and shut
herself in again, frightened by cries she heard in the huts and by the
hurrying sound of feet.  The wine made her so sleepy that she could
scarcely keep her eyes open and she lay down on her bed and knew
nothing more for a long time.

Many things happened during the hours in which she slept so heavily,
but she was not disturbed by the wails and the sound of 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.  Everyone 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 everyone
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 were 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 everyone 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.

The omniscient narrator of The Secret Garden begins by enumerating the many defects of Mary Lennox, the ten-year-old girl who is the novel's protagonist. Mary is ugly, with skin made yellow by constant illness. At the outset of the novel, she is living in India with her parents, who have neither time nor affection for her. Her mother, who had never wanted a child at all, has entrusted Mary to the care of a number of Indian servants, whose only instructions are to keep the unloved child out of her mother's sight. Mrs. Lennox is described as a famously beautiful, elegant woman, who does nothing but attend fashionable parties. Though everyone is acquainted with and admires Mrs. Lennox, nearly no one knows that she has a little girl, so totally is the embarrassingly ugly child kept from public view. As the servants are obliged to give Mary whatever she wants , Mary becomes terribly spoiled, selfish, and dictatorial. She loves no one, and no one cares at all for her. This already unhappy state of affairs is made worse when a cholera epidemic breaks out in the Indian village where the Lennoxes are living. The family does not manage to flee in time to escape the epidemic because Mary's mother, in the spirit of thoughtless egotism that is typical of her, has insisted upon staying to attend a dinner party. On the morning that the cholera finally strikes the Lennox bungalow, Mary's Ayah  does not come to tend to her. Left utterly unsupervised, Mary wanders into the garden and begins to play by herself beneath a tree. There, she overhears a conversation between her mother and a British officer, after which the events of the morning are explained to her. The fact that her Ayah has died of the cholera does not bother Mary at all, as she did not love her nanny or anyone else. The household is seized by terror and confusion, and in the ensuing chaos Mary is completely forgotten. She shuts herself in her room, and does nothing but cry and sleep for more than a day. When she finally ventures out, the house seems eerily deserted, as though it has been abandoned. Mary drinks a glass of wine left standing on the dining-room table. The wine causes her to fall into a deep sleep that lasts many hours. When she awakes, a small green snake with glittering eyes is the only living creature besides Mary herself left in the bungalow--everyone else, including her parents, has died or fled. A party of British soldiers finds her there and takes the newly-orphaned child away with them.

The first chapter of The Secret Garden goes to great lengths to establish Mary Lennox as a "tyrannical and selfish little pig," who is as ugly as she is hateful: she beats her servants, calls them appalling names, and does not mourn her nanny's death. However, the chapter also lays the blame for Mary's flaws at the feet of her parents, particularly her mother. It thereby introduces one of the novel's central themes: the notion that children must be loved if they are to be capable of loving, and given examples of virtue if they are to be virtuous. The first chapter also presents Mary as a sickly child. Though the source of her sickness is not entirely clear, the novel subtly attributes it to her childhood in India: "Her face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another." India, clearly, is no place for an English child, though the novel suggests that India is at fault, rather than the British invasion of the country. The relation between health and location and the relation between well-being and beauty are important motifs throughout The Secret Garden. India is presented as a place which breeds illness and ugliness, as both Mary and her father take ill during their time there; though her mother is beautiful, her beauty conceals a moral illness, or an illness of the soul. Illness and its ostensible causes are pivotal to the novel as a whole. Mary is not loved, for she is an unwanted child whose ugliness is a source of great embarrassment to her mother. Mary is thus positioned as the first of the many secrets which animate the novel: she is herself secreted away from view, and her parents' friends have no idea that they have a child at all. The soldiers who discover her at chapter's end are shocked to find her, and refer to her as "the child no one ever saw." Furthermore, no one takes care of her except the native servants, who do so only because they are commanded to, not because they have affection for her: they forget her entirely when they flee the bungalow. The relationship between the servants and the Lennox family is left largely unexplored by the novel, but implies a great deal about British colonialism in India. The servants must obey Mary's every wish, and even must withstand her beatings, because they depend upon her parents for their survival - their disobedience may carry with it the threat of death. This is made painfully clear by the fact that the servants remain with the family, even though they recognize the threat the cholera presents; many of them die because they did not flee earlier. What befalls Mary after the onset of the epidemic has a certain fairy-tale character. The empty dining room with its abandoned meal conjures the tale of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears"; Mary's drinking of the glass of sweet wine recalls Alice in Wonderland, while the oblivious sleep it causes is reminiscent of "Sleeping Beauty." As in a fairy story, Mary awakens from her sleep to find that her world has entirely changed. The motif of sleep recurs as a state in which one "knows nothing more for a long time"--that is, as a state of oblivion to be contrasted with the desirable state of wakefulness, which is associated with liveliness and curiosity. The empty house, the tiny snake "with eyes like jewels" who serves as her only companion, and Mary's orphaned state itself also seem borrowed from fairy-tales. Fairy-tales and their promises will also recur later in the novel, though they are left implicit here.


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 be.
What she thought was that she would like to know if she was going to
nice people, who would be polite to her and give her her own way as her
Ayah and the other native servants had done.

She knew that she was not going to stay at the English clergyman's
house where she was taken at first.  She did not want to stay.  The
English clergyman was poor and he had five children nearly all the same
age and they wore shabby clothes and were always quarreling and
snatching toys from each other.  Mary hated their untidy bungalow and
was so disagreeable to them that after the first day or two nobody
would play with her.  By the second day they had given her a nickname
which made her furious.

It was Basil who thought of it first.  Basil was a little boy with
impudent blue eyes and a turned-up nose, and Mary hated him.  She was
playing by herself under a tree, just as she had been playing the day
the cholera broke out.  She was making heaps of earth and paths for a
garden and Basil came and stood near to watch her.  Presently he got
rather interested and suddenly made a suggestion.

"Why don't you put a heap of stones there and pretend it is a rockery?"
he said.  "There in the middle," and he leaned over her to point.

"Go away!" cried Mary.  "I don't want boys.  Go away!"

For a moment Basil looked angry, and then he began to tease.  He was
always teasing his sisters.  He danced round and round her and made
faces and sang and laughed.

         "Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
          How does your garden grow?
          With silver bells, and cockle shells,
          And marigolds all in a row."

He sang it until the other children heard and laughed, too; and the
crosser Mary got, the more they sang "Mistress Mary, quite contrary";
and after that as long as she stayed with them they called her
"Mistress Mary Quite Contrary" when they spoke of her to each other,
and often when they spoke to her.

"You are going to be sent home," Basil said to her, "at the end of the
week.  And we're glad of it."

"I am glad of it, too," answered Mary.  "Where is home?"

"She doesn't know where home is!" said Basil, with seven-year-old
scorn.  "It's England, of course.  Our grandmama lives there and our
sister Mabel was sent to her last year.  You are not going to your
grandmama.  You have none.  You are going to your uncle.  His name is
Mr. Archibald Craven."

"I don't know anything about him," snapped Mary.

"I know you don't," Basil answered.  "You don't know anything.  Girls
never do.  I heard father and mother talking about him.  He lives in a
great, big, desolate old house in the country and no one goes near him.
He's so cross he won't let them, and they wouldn't come if he would let
them.  He's a hunchback, and he's horrid." "I don't believe you," said
Mary; and she turned her back and stuck her fingers in her ears,
because she would not listen any more.

But she thought over it a great deal afterward; and when Mrs. Crawford
told her that night that she was going to sail away to England in a few
days and go to her uncle, Mr. Archibald Craven, who lived at
Misselthwaite Manor, she looked so stony and stubbornly uninterested
that they did not know what to think about her.  They tried to be kind
to her, but she only turned her face away when Mrs. Crawford attempted
to kiss her, and held herself stiffly when Mr. Crawford patted her
shoulder.

"She is such a plain child," Mrs. Crawford said pityingly, afterward.
"And her mother was such a pretty creature.  She had a very pretty
manner, too, and Mary has the most unattractive ways I ever saw in a
child.  The children call her 'Mistress Mary Quite Contrary,' and
though it's naughty of them, one can't help understanding it."

"Perhaps if her mother had carried her pretty face and her pretty
manners oftener into the nursery Mary might have learned some pretty
ways too.  It is very sad, now the poor beautiful thing is gone, to
remember that many people never even knew that she had a child at all."

"I believe she scarcely ever looked at her," sighed Mrs. Crawford.
"When her Ayah was dead there was no one to give a thought to the
little thing.  Think of the servants running away and leaving her all
alone in that deserted bungalow.  Colonel McGrew said he nearly jumped
out of his skin when he opened the door and found her standing by
herself in the middle of the room."

Mary 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
anyone 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 anyone'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 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 crepe 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 her and began to talk in a brisk,
hard voice.

"I suppose I may as well tell you something about where you are going
to," she said.  "Do you know anything about your uncle?"

"No," said Mary.

"Never heard your father and mother talk about him?"

"No," said Mary frowning.  She frowned because she remembered that her
father and mother had never talked to her about anything in particular.
Certainly they had never told her things.

"Humph," muttered Mrs. Medlock, staring at her queer, unresponsive
little face.  She did not say any more for a few moments and then she
began again.

"I suppose you might as well be told something--to prepare you.  You
are going to a queer place."

Mary said nothing at all, and Mrs. Medlock looked rather discomfited by
her apparent indifference, but, after taking a breath, she went on.

"Not but that it's a grand big place in a gloomy way, and Mr. Craven's
proud of it in his way--and that's gloomy enough, too.  The house is
six hundred years old and it's on the edge of the moor, and there's
near a hundred rooms in it, though most of them's shut up and locked.
And there's pictures and fine old furniture and things that's been
there for ages, and there's a big park round it and gardens and trees
with branches trailing to the ground--some of them." She paused and
took another breath.  "But there's nothing else," she ended suddenly.

Mary had begun to listen in spite of herself.  It all sounded so unlike
India, and anything new rather attracted her.  But she did not intend
to look as if she were interested.  That was one of her unhappy,
disagreeable ways.  So she sat still.

"Well," said Mrs. Medlock.  "What do you think of it?"

"Nothing," she answered.  "I know nothing about such places."

That made Mrs. Medlock laugh a short sort of laugh.

"Eh!" she said, "but you are like an old woman.  Don't you care?"

"It doesn't matter" said Mary, "whether I care or not."

"You are right enough there," said Mrs. Medlock.  "It doesn't. What
you're to be kept at Misselthwaite Manor for I don't know, unless
because it's the easiest way.  He's not going to trouble himself about
you, that's sure and certain.  He never troubles himself about no one."

She stopped herself as if she had just remembered something in time.

"He's got a crooked back," she said.  "That set him wrong.  He was a
sour young man and got no good of all his money and big place till he
was married."

Mary's eyes turned toward her in spite of her intention not to seem to
care.  She had never thought of the hunchback's being married and she
was a trifle surprised.  Mrs. Medlock saw this, and as she was a
talkative woman she continued with more interest.  This was one way of
passing some of the time, at any rate.

"She was a sweet, pretty thing and he'd have walked the world over to
get her a blade o' grass she wanted.  Nobody thought she'd marry him,
but she did, and people said she married him for his money.  But she
didn't--she didn't," positively.  "When she died--"

Mary gave a little involuntary jump.

"Oh! did she die!" she exclaimed, quite without meaning to.  She had
just remembered a French fairy story she had once read called "Riquet a
la Houppe." It had been about a poor hunchback and a beautiful princess
and it had made her suddenly sorry for Mr. Archibald Craven.

"Yes, she died," Mrs. Medlock answered.  "And it made him queerer than
ever.  He cares about nobody.  He won't see people.  Most of the time
he goes away, and when he is at Misselthwaite he shuts himself up in
the West Wing and won't let any one but Pitcher see him.  Pitcher's an
old fellow, but he took care of him when he was a child and he knows
his ways."

It sounded like something in a book and it did not make Mary feel
cheerful.  A house with a hundred rooms, nearly all shut up and with
their doors locked--a house on the edge of a moor--whatsoever a moor
was--sounded dreary.  A man with a crooked back who shut himself up
also! She stared out of the window with her lips pinched together, and
it seemed quite natural that the rain should have begun to pour down in
gray slanting lines and splash and stream down the window-panes. If the
pretty wife had been alive she might have made things cheerful by being
something like her own mother and by running in and out and going to
parties as she had done in frocks "full of lace." But she was not there
any more.

"You needn't expect to see him, because ten to one you won't," said
Mrs. Medlock.  "And you mustn't expect that there will be people to
talk to you.  You'll have to play about and look after yourself.
You'll be told what rooms you can go into and what rooms you're to keep
out of.  There's gardens enough.  But when you're in the house don't go
wandering and poking about.  Mr. Craven won't have it."

"I shall not want to go poking about," said sour little Mary and just
as suddenly as she had begun to be rather sorry for Mr. Archibald
Craven she began to cease to be sorry and to think he was unpleasant
enough to deserve all that had happened to him.

And she turned her face toward the streaming panes of the window of the
railway carriage and gazed out at the gray rain-storm which looked as
if it would go on forever and ever.  She watched it so long and
steadily that the grayness grew heavier and heavier before her eyes and
she fell asleep.

Mary is sent to live with an English clergyman and his family in the period immediately following the death of her parents. Her misfortune has done little to change her worldview, however, and she instantly despises the clergyman's five children and the poverty of the family's circumstances. They, for their part, are quite frank in their dislike for her, and she finds herself ostracized by the other children. They delight in making fun of her, and, upon finding her playing at gardening, give her a mocking nickname borrowed from a nursery rhyme: "Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary. Basil, the favorite among the children, informs Mary that she is to be sent to England to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven. As she has heard of neither England nor her uncle, this comes as something of a surprise to her. It is also from Basil that Mary begins to hear the peculiar rumors that surround her uncle: it is said that he is a hunchback and hermit who lives in a mysterious, rambling old house in the middle of nowhere. Though Mary roundly spurns Basil and his story, she is preoccupied by what he has told her. A few days later, she does indeed set sail for England, in the care of an officer's wife who is on her way to leave her own children in a boarding school. In London, Mary is handed over to Archibald Craven's housekeeper, Mrs. Medlock. The pair loathe each other on sight--a turn of events that is quite common for Mary, whose plain face and bitter disposition seem to impress everyone unfavorably. It is in Mrs. Medlock's company that Mary first begins to feel lonely. Mrs. Medlock and her charge take a train to Yorkshire, the site of Misselthwaite Manor. Mrs. Medlock passes the journey by telling Mary dismal stories about the house and its master. Archibald Craven is indeed a hunchback, and a widower; the death of his lovely wife had been, for him, the end of any possibility of happiness. Most of his house's hundred rooms are now kept locked and shuttered. To Mary, her uncle's story seems like a fairytale, or "like something in a book. As she contemplates this, it begins to rain, and Mary is lulled to sleep


She slept a long time, and when she awakened Mrs. Medlock had bought a
lunchbasket at one of the stations and they had some chicken and cold
beef and bread and butter and some hot tea.  The rain seemed to be
streaming down more heavily than ever and everybody in the station wore
wet and glistening waterproofs.  The guard lighted the lamps in the
carriage, and Mrs. Medlock cheered up very much over her tea and
chicken and beef.  She ate a great deal and afterward fell asleep
herself, and Mary sat and stared at her and watched her fine bonnet
slip on one side until she herself fell asleep once more in the corner
of the carriage, lulled by the splashing of the rain against the
windows.  It was quite dark when she awakened again.  The train had
stopped at a station and Mrs. Medlock was shaking her.

"You have had a sleep!" she said.  "It's time to open your eyes! We're
at Thwaite Station and we've got a long drive before us."

Mary stood up and tried to keep her eyes open while Mrs. Medlock
collected her parcels.  The little girl did not offer to help her,
because in India native servants always picked up or carried things and
it seemed quite proper that other people should wait on one.

The station was a small one and nobody but themselves seemed to be
getting out of the train.  The station-master spoke to Mrs. Medlock in
a rough, good-natured way, pronouncing his words in a queer broad
fashion which Mary found out afterward was Yorkshire.

"I see tha's got back," he said.  "An' tha's browt th' young 'un with
thee."

"Aye, that's her," answered Mrs. Medlock, speaking with a Yorkshire
accent herself and jerking her head over her shoulder toward Mary.
"How's thy Missus?"

"Well enow.  Th' carriage is waitin' outside for thee."

A brougham stood on the road before the little outside platform.  Mary
saw that it was a smart carriage and that it was a smart footman who
helped her in.  His long waterproof coat and the waterproof covering of
his hat were shining and dripping with rain as everything was, the
burly station-master included.

When he shut the door, mounted the box with the coachman, and they
drove off, the little girl found herself seated in a comfortably
cushioned corner, but she was not inclined to go to sleep again.  She
sat and looked out of the window, curious to see something of the road
over which she was being driven to the queer place Mrs. Medlock had
spoken of.  She was not at all a timid child and she was not exactly
frightened, but she felt that there was no knowing what might happen in
a house with a hundred rooms nearly all shut up--a house standing on
the edge of a moor.

"What is a moor?" she said suddenly to Mrs. Medlock.

"Look out of the window in about ten minutes and you'll see," the woman
answered.  "We've got to drive five miles across Missel Moor before we
get to the Manor.  You won't see much because it's a dark night, but
you can see something."

Mary asked no more questions but waited in the darkness of her corner,
keeping her eyes on the window.  The carriage lamps cast rays of light
a little distance ahead of them and she caught glimpses of the things
they passed.  After they had left the station they had driven through a
tiny village and she had seen whitewashed cottages and the lights of a
public house.  Then they had passed a church and a vicarage and a
little shop-window or so in a cottage with toys and sweets and odd
things set out for sale.  Then they were on the highroad and she saw
hedges and trees.  After that there seemed nothing different for a long
time--or at least it seemed a long time to her.

At last the horses began to go more slowly, as if they were climbing
up-hill, and presently there seemed to be no more hedges and no more
trees.  She could see nothing, in fact, but a dense darkness on either
side.  She leaned forward and pressed her face against the window just
as the carriage gave a big jolt.

"Eh! We're on the moor now sure enough," said Mrs. Medlock.

The carriage lamps shed a yellow light on a rough-looking road which
seemed to be cut through bushes and low-growing things which ended in
the great expanse of dark apparently spread out before and around them.
A wind was rising and making a singular, wild, low, rushing sound.

"It's--it's not the sea, is it?" said Mary, looking round at her
companion.

"No, not it," answered Mrs. Medlock.  "Nor it isn't fields nor
mountains, it's just miles and miles and miles of wild land that
nothing grows on but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing lives on
but wild ponies and sheep."

"I feel as if it might be the sea, if there were water on it," said
Mary.  "It sounds like the sea just now."

"That's the wind blowing through the bushes," Mrs. Medlock said.  "It's
a wild, dreary enough place to my mind, though there's plenty that
likes it--particularly when the heather's in bloom."

On and on they drove through the darkness, and though the rain stopped,
the wind rushed by and whistled and made strange sounds.  The road went
up and down, and several times the carriage passed over a little bridge
beneath which water rushed very fast with a great deal of noise.  Mary
felt as if the drive would never come to an end and that the wide,
bleak moor was a wide expanse of black ocean through which she was
passing on a strip of dry land.

"I don't like it," she said to herself.  "I don't like it," and she
pinched her thin lips more tightly together.

The horses were climbing up a hilly piece of road when she first caught
sight of a light.  Mrs. Medlock saw it as soon as she did and drew a
long sigh of relief.

"Eh, I am glad to see that bit o' light twinkling," she exclaimed.
"It's the light in the lodge window.  We shall get a good cup of tea
after a bit, at all events."

It was "after a bit," as she said, for when the carriage passed through
the park gates there was still two miles of avenue to drive through and
the trees (which nearly met overhead) made it seem as if they were
driving through a long dark vault.

They drove out of the vault into a clear space and stopped before an
immensely long but low-built house which seemed to ramble round a stone
court.  At first Mary thought that there were no lights at all in the
windows, but as she got out of the carriage she saw that one room in a
corner upstairs showed a dull glow.

The entrance door was a huge one made of massive, curiously shaped
panels of oak studded with big iron nails and bound with great iron
bars.  It opened into an enormous hall, which was so dimly lighted that
the faces in the portraits on the walls and the figures in the suits of
armor made Mary feel that she did not want to look at them.  As she
stood on the stone floor she looked a very small, odd little black
figure, and she felt as small and lost and odd as she looked.

A neat, thin old man stood near the manservant who opened the door for
them.

"You are to take her to her room," he said in a husky voice.  "He
doesn't want to see her.  He's going to London in the morning."

"Very well, Mr. Pitcher," Mrs. Medlock answered.  "So long as I know
what's expected of me, I can manage."

"What's expected of you, Mrs. Medlock," Mr. Pitcher said, "is that you
make sure that he's not disturbed and that he doesn't see what he
doesn't want to see."

And then Mary Lennox was led up a broad staircase and down a long
corridor and up a short flight of steps and through another corridor
and another, until a door opened in a wall and she found herself in a
room with a fire in it and a supper on a table.

Mrs. Medlock said unceremoniously:

"Well, here you are! This room and the next are where you'll live--and
you must keep to them.  Don't you forget that!"

It was in this way Mistress Mary arrived at Misselthwaite Manor and she
had perhaps never felt quite so contrary in all her life.

When Mary awakes, the train has arrived in Yorkshire. She and Mrs. Medlock board a carriage there, which takes them through a village and over Missel Moor, until they finally reach the manor. There, the travelers are greeted by Mr. Pitcher, her uncle's manservant, who tells them that Mr. Craven does not wish to see them. Medlock shuts Mary up in a room by herself, and reminds her again that she is not to explore the house or its grounds, as Mr. Craven "won't have it. Mary's contrariness reaches new levels of intensity.

This second chapter further details Mary's friendlessness and its causes. Both the clergyman's family and Mrs. Medlock dislike her on sight; her ugliness and sour disposition seem incapable of inspiring any other response. Mary is made doubly sour by her growing sense of dislocation and loneliness: when Basil tells her that she is going home, Mary replies "Where is home. Absolutely dispossessed of everything that she has ever known, Mary begins to reflect upon her lot, and realizes that she has never really belonged anywhere, nor to anyone. Mary's newfound capacity for self-examination provides her with several important insights in the ensuing chapters. The book reinforces its condemnation of parental neglect in two ways in this chapter: through the voice of the clergyman, and in the person of the woman who accompanies Mary on her trip back to England. This woman is only traveling back to England to leave her own children in a boarding-school; the novel thereby suggests that abandonment and neglect are common among English parents in India. The clergyman alone recognizes that Mary's bitterness is the product of her mother's neglect, saying that Mary's "scarcely ever looked at her," and so Mary inherited neither her beauty nor her charm. Mary, for her part, amply returns the enmity that is heaped upon her, though hers is predicated, in some measure, upon class: that is, she despises the family and Mrs. Medlock for being poorer than she. She is contemptuous of the clergyman's crowded, untidy bungalow, his children's patched clothes, and of Mrs. Medlock's "common face" and "common fine bonnet. Common," here, means low-class, or vulgar; it constitutes a very strong epithet indeed in a country as fanatically class-conscious as England. The precarious position of servants with regard to their employers is again suggested in this chapter, in that Mrs. Medlock must miss her niece's wedding in order to pick up Mary. This is "the only way in which she could keep. to do at once what Mr. Archibald Craven told her to do. never dare even to ask a question. Servants, in England as in India, are permitted no freedoms. The story of Archibald Craven, as related to Mary by Basil and Mrs. Medlock, impresses her as having a number of fairy-tale characteristics. Not least among these is the great house in which he lives, comprised of a hundred locked rooms; this, coupled with the description of him as a widower and "hunchback," makes him seem like an English Bluebeard. Mary's life has, by Chapter II, been given over entirely to fairy-tale: she is being sent to live with her fantastical uncle in his fantastical house; furthermore, as Medlock relates his story, it begins to rain, making the entire scene quite "like something in a book. The hundred locked rooms of Misselthwaite Manor provide another instance of the motif of secrets that animates the novel. Mary, upon her arrival at Misselthwaite, is positioned as yet another of those secrets: like her parents, her uncle does not wish "to see what he doesn't want to see," and so Mary is buried in one of the Manor's distant rooms. Mary earns the much-despised nickname of "Mistress Mary Quite Contrary" by engaging in the activity that will later prove to be her salvation: gardening. The omniscient narrator seems to approve of this nickname, as it will henceforth often refer to Mary in this manner, and concludes this chapter by doing so


When she opened her eyes in the morning it was because a young
housemaid had come into her room to light the fire and was kneeling on
the hearth-rug raking out the cinders noisily.  Mary lay and watched
her for a few moments and then began to look about the room.  She had
never seen a room at all like it and thought it curious and gloomy.
The walls were covered with tapestry with a forest scene embroidered on
it.  There were fantastically dressed people under the trees and in the
distance there was a glimpse of the turrets of a castle.  There were
hunters and horses and dogs and ladies.  Mary felt as if she were in
the forest with them.  Out of a deep window she could see a great
climbing stretch of land which seemed to have no trees on it, and to
look rather like an endless, dull, purplish sea.

"What is that?" she said, pointing out of the window.

Martha, the young housemaid, who had just risen to her feet, looked and
pointed also.  "That there?" she said.

"Yes."

"That's th' moor," with a good-natured grin.  "Does tha' like it?"

"No," answered Mary.  "I hate it."

"That's because tha'rt not used to it," Martha said, going back to her
hearth.  "Tha' thinks it's too big an' bare now.  But tha' will like
it."

"Do you?" inquired Mary.

"Aye, that I do," answered Martha, cheerfully polishing away at the
grate.  "I just love it.  It's none bare.  It's covered wi' growin'
things as smells sweet.  It's fair lovely in spring an' summer when th'
gorse an' broom an' heather's in flower.  It smells o' honey an'
there's such a lot o' fresh air--an' th' sky looks so high an' th' bees
an' skylarks makes such a nice noise hummin' an' singin'. Eh! I
wouldn't live away from th' moor for anythin'."

Mary listened to her with a grave, puzzled expression.  The native
servants she had been used to in India were not in the least like this.
They were obsequious and servile and did not presume to talk to their
masters as if they were their equals.  They made salaams and called
them "protector of the poor" and names of that sort.  Indian servants
were commanded to do things, not asked.  It was not the custom to say
"please" and "thank you" and Mary had always slapped her Ayah in the
face when she was angry.  She wondered a little what this girl would do
if one slapped her in the face.  She was a round, rosy,
good-natured-looking creature, but she had a sturdy way which made
Mistress Mary wonder if she might not even slap back--if the person who
slapped her was only a little girl.

"You are a strange servant," she said from her pillows, rather
haughtily.

Martha sat up on her heels, with her blacking-brush in her hand, and
laughed, without seeming the least out of temper.

"Eh! I know that," she said.  "If there was a grand Missus at
Misselthwaite I should never have been even one of th' under
house-maids. I might have been let to be scullerymaid but I'd never
have been let upstairs.  I'm too common an' I talk too much Yorkshire.
But this is a funny house for all it's so grand.  Seems like there's
neither Master nor Mistress except Mr. Pitcher an' Mrs. Medlock.  Mr.
Craven, he won't be troubled about anythin' when he's here, an' he's
nearly always away.  Mrs. Medlock gave me th' place out o' kindness.
She told me she could never have done it if Misselthwaite had been like
other big houses." "Are you going to be my servant?" Mary asked, still
in her imperious little Indian way.

Martha began to rub her grate again.

"I'm Mrs. Medlock's servant," she said stoutly.  "An' she's Mr.
Craven's--but I'm to do the housemaid's work up here an' wait on you a
bit.  But you won't need much waitin' on."

"Who is going to dress me?" demanded Mary.

Martha sat up on her heels again and stared.  She spoke in broad
Yorkshire in her amazement.

"Canna' tha' dress thysen!" she said.

"What do you mean? I don't understand your language," said Mary.

"Eh! I forgot," Martha said.  "Mrs. Medlock told me I'd have to be
careful or you wouldn't know what I was sayin'.  I mean can't you put
on your own clothes?"

"No," answered Mary, quite indignantly.  "I never did in my life.  My
Ayah dressed me, of course."

"Well," said Martha, evidently not in the least aware that she was
impudent, "it's time tha' should learn.  Tha' cannot begin younger.
It'll do thee good to wait on thysen a bit.  My mother always said she
couldn't see why grand people's children didn't turn out fair
fools--what with nurses an' bein' washed an' dressed an' took out to
walk as if they was puppies!"

"It is different in India," said Mistress Mary disdainfully.  She could
scarcely stand this.

But Martha was not at all crushed.

"Eh! I can see it's different," she answered almost sympathetically.
"I dare say it's because there's such a lot o' blacks there instead o'
respectable white people.  When I heard you was comin' from India I
thought you was a black too."

Mary sat up in bed furious.

"What!" she said.  "What! You thought I was a native.  You--you
daughter of a pig!"

Martha stared and looked hot.

"Who are you callin' names?" she said.  "You needn't be so vexed.
That's not th' way for a young lady to talk.  I've nothin' against th'
blacks.  When you read about 'em in tracts they're always very
religious.  You always read as a black's a man an' a brother.  I've
never seen a black an' I was fair pleased to think I was goin' to see
one close.  When I come in to light your fire this mornin' I crep' up
to your bed an' pulled th' cover back careful to look at you.  An'
there you was," disappointedly, "no more black than me--for all you're
so yeller."

Mary did not even try to control her rage and humiliation.  "You
thought I was a native! You dared! You don't know anything about
natives! They are not people--they're servants who must salaam to you.
You know nothing about India.  You know nothing about anything!"

She was in such a rage and felt so helpless before the girl's simple
stare, and somehow she suddenly felt so horribly lonely and far away
from everything she understood and which understood her, that she threw
herself face downward on the pillows and burst into passionate sobbing.
She sobbed so unrestrainedly that good-natured Yorkshire Martha was a
little frightened and quite sorry for her.  She went to the bed and
bent over her.

"Eh! you mustn't cry like that there!" she begged.  "You mustn't for
sure.  I didn't know you'd be vexed.  I don't know anythin' about
anythin'--just like you said.  I beg your pardon, Miss. Do stop cryin'."

There was something comforting and really friendly in her queer
Yorkshire speech and sturdy way which had a good effect on Mary.  She
gradually ceased crying and became quiet.  Martha looked relieved.

"It's time for thee to get up now," she said.  "Mrs. Medlock said I was
to carry tha' breakfast an' tea an' dinner into th' room next to this.
It's been made into a nursery for thee.  I'll help thee on with thy
clothes if tha'll get out o' bed.  If th' buttons are at th' back tha'
cannot button them up tha'self."

When Mary at last decided to get up, the clothes Martha took from the
wardrobe were not the ones she had worn when she arrived the night
before with Mrs. Medlock.

"Those are not mine," she said.  "Mine are black."

She looked the thick white wool coat and dress over, and added with
cool approval:

"Those are nicer than mine."

"These are th' ones tha' must put on," Martha answered.  "Mr. Craven
ordered Mrs. Medlock to get 'em in London.  He said 'I won't have a
child dressed in black wanderin' about like a lost soul,' he said.
'It'd make the place sadder than it is.  Put color on her.' Mother she
said she knew what he meant.  Mother always knows what a body means.
She doesn't hold with black hersel'."

"I hate black things," said Mary.

The dressing process was one which taught them both something.  Martha
had "buttoned up" her little sisters and brothers but she had never
seen a child who stood still and waited for another person to do things
for her as if she had neither hands nor feet of her own.

"Why doesn't tha' put on tha' own shoes?" she said when Mary quietly
held out her foot.

"My Ayah did it," answered Mary, staring.  "It was the custom."

She said that very often--"It was the custom." The native servants were
always saying it.  If one told them to do a thing their ancestors had
not done for a thousand years they gazed at one mildly and said, "It is
not the custom" and one knew that was the end of the matter.

It had not been the custom that Mistress Mary should do anything but
stand and allow herself to be dressed like a doll, but before she was
ready for breakfast she began to suspect that her life at Misselthwaite
Manor would end by teaching her a number of things quite new to
her--things such as putting on her own shoes and stockings, and picking
up things she let fall.  If Martha had been a well-trained fine young
lady's maid she would have been more subservient and respectful and
would have known that it was her business to brush hair, and button
boots, and pick things up and lay them away.  She was, however, only an
untrained Yorkshire rustic who had been brought up in a moorland
cottage with a swarm of little brothers and sisters who had never
dreamed of doing anything but waiting on themselves and on the younger
ones who were either babies in arms or just learning to totter about
and tumble over things.

If Mary Lennox had been a child who was ready to be amused she would
perhaps have laughed at Martha's readiness to talk, but Mary only
listened to her coldly and wondered at her freedom of manner.  At first
she was not at all interested, but gradually, as the girl rattled on in
her good-tempered, homely way, Mary began to notice what she was saying.

"Eh! you should see 'em all," she said.  "There's twelve of us an' my
father only gets sixteen shilling a week.  I can tell you my mother's
put to it to get porridge for 'em all.  They tumble about on th' moor
an' play there all day an' mother says th' air of th' moor fattens 'em.
She says she believes they eat th' grass same as th' wild ponies do.
Our Dickon, he's twelve years old and he's got a young pony he calls
his own."

"Where did he get it?" asked Mary.

"He found it on th' moor with its mother when it was a little one an'
he began to make friends with it an' give it bits o' bread an' pluck
young grass for it.  And it got to like him so it follows him about an'
it lets him get on its back.  Dickon's a kind lad an' animals likes
him."

Mary had never possessed an animal pet of her own and had always
thought she should like one.  So she began to feel a slight interest in
Dickon, and as she had never before been interested in any one but
herself, it was the dawning of a healthy sentiment.  When she went into
the room which had been made into a nursery for her, she found that it
was rather like the one she had slept in.  It was not a child's room,
but a grown-up person's room, with gloomy old pictures on the walls and
heavy old oak chairs.  A table in the center was set with a good
substantial breakfast.  But she had always had a very small appetite,
and she looked with something more than indifference at the first plate
Martha set before her.

"I don't want it," she said.

"Tha' doesn't want thy porridge!" Martha exclaimed incredulously.

"No."

"Tha' doesn't know how good it is.  Put a bit o' treacle on it or a bit
o' sugar."

"I don't want it," repeated Mary.

"Eh!" said Martha.  "I can't abide to see good victuals go to waste.
If our children was at this table they'd clean it bare in five minutes."

"Why?" said Mary coldly.  "Why!" echoed Martha.  "Because they scarce
ever had their stomachs full in their lives.  They're as hungry as
young hawks an' foxes."

"I don't know what it is to be hungry," said Mary, with the
indifference of ignorance.

Martha looked indignant.

"Well, it would do thee good to try it.  I can see that plain enough,"
she said outspokenly.  "I've no patience with folk as sits an' just
stares at good bread an' meat.  My word! don't I wish Dickon and Phil
an' Jane an' th' rest of 'em had what's here under their pinafores."

"Why don't you take it to them?" suggested Mary.

"It's not mine," answered Martha stoutly.  "An' this isn't my day out.
I get my day out once a month same as th' rest.  Then I go home an'
clean up for mother an' give her a day's rest."

Mary drank some tea and ate a little toast and some marmalade.

"You wrap up warm an' run out an' play you," said Martha.  "It'll do
you good and give you some stomach for your meat."

Mary went to the window.  There were gardens and paths and big trees,
but everything looked dull and wintry.

"Out? Why should I go out on a day like this?" "Well, if tha' doesn't
go out tha'lt have to stay in, an' what has tha' got to do?"

Mary glanced about her.  There was nothing to do.  When Mrs. Medlock
had prepared the nursery she had not thought of amusement.  Perhaps it
would be better to go and see what the gardens were like.

"Who will go with me?" she inquired.

Martha stared.

"You'll go by yourself," she answered.  "You'll have to learn to play
like other children does when they haven't got sisters and brothers.
Our Dickon goes off on th' moor by himself an' plays for hours.  That's
how he made friends with th' pony.  He's got sheep on th' moor that
knows him, an' birds as comes an' eats out of his hand.  However little
there is to eat, he always saves a bit o' his bread to coax his pets."

It was really this mention of Dickon which made Mary decide to go out,
though she was not aware of it.  There would be, birds outside though
there would not be ponies or sheep.  They would be different from the
birds in India and it might amuse her to look at them.

Martha found her coat and hat for her and a pair of stout little boots
and she showed her her way downstairs.

"If tha' goes round that way tha'll come to th' gardens," she said,
pointing to a gate in a wall of shrubbery.  "There's lots o' flowers in
summer-time, but there's nothin' bloomin' now." She seemed to hesitate
a second before she added, "One of th' gardens is locked up.  No one
has been in it for ten years."

"Why?" asked Mary in spite of herself.  Here was another locked door
added to the hundred in the strange house.

"Mr. Craven had it shut when his wife died so sudden.  He won't let no
one go inside.  It was her garden.  He locked th' door an' dug a hole
and buried th' key.  There's Mrs. Medlock's bell ringing--I must run."

After she was gone Mary turned down the walk which led to the door in
the shrubbery.  She could not help thinking about the garden which no
one had been into for ten years.  She wondered what it would look like
and whether there were any flowers still alive in it.  When she had
passed through the shrubbery gate she found herself in great gardens,
with wide lawns and winding walks with clipped borders.  There were
trees, and flower-beds, and evergreens clipped into strange shapes, and
a large pool with an old gray fountain in its midst.  But the
flower-beds were bare and wintry and the fountain was not playing.
This was not the garden which was shut up.  How could a garden be shut
up? You could always walk into a garden.

She was just thinking this when she saw that, at the end of the path
she was following, there seemed to be a long wall, with ivy growing
over it.  She was not familiar enough with England to know that she was
coming upon the kitchen-gardens where the vegetables and fruit were
growing.  She went toward the wall and found that there was a green
door in the ivy, and that it stood open.  This was not the closed
garden, evidently, and she could go into it.

She went through the door and found that it was a garden with walls all
round it and that it was only one of several walled gardens which
seemed to open into one another.  She saw another open green door,
revealing bushes and pathways between beds containing winter
vegetables.  Fruit-trees were trained flat against the wall, and over
some of the beds there were glass frames.  The place was bare and ugly
enough, Mary thought, as she stood and stared about her.  It might be
nicer in summer when things were green, but there was nothing pretty
about it now.

Presently an old man with a spade over his shoulder walked through the
door leading from the second garden.  He looked startled when he saw
Mary, and then touched his cap.  He had a surly old face, and did not
seem at all pleased to see her--but then she was displeased with his
garden and wore her "quite contrary" expression, and certainly did not
seem at all pleased to see him.

"What is this place?" she asked.

"One o' th' kitchen-gardens," he answered.

"What is that?" said Mary, pointing through the other green door.

"Another of 'em," shortly.  "There's another on t'other side o' th'
wall an' there's th' orchard t'other side o' that."

"Can I go in them?" asked Mary.

"If tha' likes.  But there's nowt to see."

Mary made no response.  She went down the path and through the second
green door.  There, she found more walls and winter vegetables and
glass frames, but in the second wall there was another green door and
it was not open.  Perhaps it led into the garden which no one had seen
for ten years.  As she was not at all a timid child and always did what
she wanted to do, Mary went to the green door and turned the handle.
She hoped the door would not open because she wanted to be sure she had
found the mysterious garden--but it did open quite easily and she
walked through it and found herself in an orchard.  There were walls
all round it also and trees trained against them, and there were bare
fruit-trees growing in the winter-browned grass--but there was no green
door to be seen anywhere.  Mary looked for it, and yet when she had
entered the upper end of the garden she had noticed that the wall did
not seem to end with the orchard but to extend beyond it as if it
enclosed a place at the other side.  She could see the tops of trees
above the wall, and when she stood still she saw a bird with a bright
red breast sitting on the topmost branch of one of them, and suddenly
he burst into his winter song--almost as if he had caught sight of her
and was calling to her.

She stopped and listened to him and somehow his cheerful, friendly
little whistle gave her a pleased feeling--even a disagreeable little
girl may be lonely, and the big closed house and big bare moor and big
bare gardens had made this one feel as if there was no one left in the
world but herself.  If she had been an affectionate child, who had been
used to being loved, she would have broken her heart, but even though
she was "Mistress Mary Quite Contrary" she was desolate, and the
bright-breasted little bird brought a look into her sour little face
which was almost a smile.  She listened to him until he flew away.  He
was not like an Indian bird and she liked him and wondered if she
should ever see him again.  Perhaps he lived in the mysterious garden
and knew all about it.

Perhaps it was because she had nothing whatever to do that she thought
so much of the deserted garden.  She was curious about it and wanted to
see what it was like.  Why had Mr. Archibald Craven buried the key? If
he had liked his wife so much why did he hate her garden?  She wondered
if she should ever see him, but she knew that if she did she should not
like him, and he would not like her, and that she should only stand and
stare at him and say nothing, though she should be wanting dreadfully
to ask him why he had done such a queer thing.

"People never like me and I never like people," she thought.  "And I
never can talk as the Crawford children could.  They were always
talking and laughing and making noises."

She thought of the robin and of the way he seemed to sing his song at
her, and as she remembered the tree-top he perched on she stopped
rather suddenly on the path.

"I believe that tree was in the secret garden--I feel sure it was," she
said.  "There was a wall round the place and there was no door."

She walked back into the first kitchen-garden she had entered and found
the old man digging there.  She went and stood beside him and watched
him a few moments in her cold little way.  He took no notice of her and
so at last she spoke to him.

"I have been into the other gardens," she said.

"There was nothin' to prevent thee," he answered crustily.

"I went into the orchard."

"There was no dog at th' door to bite thee," he answered.

"There was no door there into the other garden," said Mary.

"What garden?" he said in a rough voice, stopping his digging for a
moment.

"The one on the other side of the wall," answered Mistress Mary.
"There are trees there--I saw the tops of them.  A bird with a red
breast was sitting on one of them and he sang."

To her surprise the surly old weather-beaten face actually changed its
expression.  A slow smile spread over it and the gardener looked quite
different.  It made her think that it was curious how much nicer a
person looked when he smiled.  She had not thought of it before.

He turned about to the orchard side of his garden and began to
whistle--a low soft whistle.  She could not understand how such a surly
man could make such a coaxing sound.  Almost the next moment a
wonderful thing happened.  She heard a soft little rushing flight
through the air--and it was the bird with the red breast flying to
them, and he actually alighted on the big clod of earth quite near to
the gardener's foot.

"Here he is," chuckled the old man, and then he spoke to the bird as if
he were speaking to a child.

"Where has tha' been, tha' cheeky little beggar?" he said.  "I've not
seen thee before today.  Has tha, begun tha' courtin' this early in th'
season? Tha'rt too forrad."

The bird put his tiny head on one side and looked up at him with his
soft bright eye which was like a black dewdrop.  He seemed quite
familiar and not the least afraid.  He hopped about and pecked the
earth briskly, looking for seeds and insects.  It actually gave Mary a
queer feeling in her heart, because he was so pretty and cheerful and
seemed so like a person.  He had a tiny plump body and a delicate beak,
and slender delicate legs.

"Will he always come when you call him?" she asked almost in a whisper.

"Aye, that he will.  I've knowed him ever since he was a fledgling.  He
come out of th' nest in th' other garden an' when first he flew over
th' wall he was too weak to fly back for a few days an' we got
friendly.  When he went over th' wall again th' rest of th' brood was
gone an' he was lonely an' he come back to me."

"What kind of a bird is he?" Mary asked.

"Doesn't tha' know? He's a robin redbreast an' they're th' friendliest,
curiousest birds alive.  They're almost as friendly as dogs--if you
know how to get on with 'em. Watch him peckin' about there an' lookin'
round at us now an' again.  He knows we're talkin' about him."

It was the queerest thing in the world to see the old fellow.  He
looked at the plump little scarlet-waistcoated bird as if he were both
proud and fond of him.

"He's a conceited one," he chuckled.  "He likes to hear folk talk about
him.  An' curious--bless me, there never was his like for curiosity an'
meddlin'. He's always comin' to see what I'm plantin'. He knows all th'
things Mester Craven never troubles hissel' to find out.  He's th' head
gardener, he is."

The robin hopped about busily pecking the soil and now and then stopped
and looked at them a little.  Mary thought his black dewdrop eyes gazed
at her with great curiosity.  It really seemed as if he were finding
out all about her.  The queer feeling in her heart increased.  "Where
did the rest of the brood fly to?" she asked.

"There's no knowin'. The old ones turn 'em out o' their nest an' make
'em fly an' they're scattered before you know it.  This one was a
knowin' one an' he knew he was lonely."

Mistress Mary went a step nearer to the robin and looked at him very
hard.

"I'm lonely," she said.

She had not known before that this was one of the things which made her
feel sour and cross.  She seemed to find it out when the robin looked
at her and she looked at the robin.

The old gardener pushed his cap back on his bald head and stared at her
a minute.

"Art tha' th' little wench from India?" he asked.

Mary nodded.

"Then no wonder tha'rt lonely.  Tha'lt be lonlier before tha's done,"
he said.

He began to dig again, driving his spade deep into the rich black
garden soil while the robin hopped about very busily employed.

"What is your name?" Mary inquired.

He stood up to answer her.

"Ben Weatherstaff," he answered, and then he added with a surly
chuckle, "I'm lonely mysel' except when he's with me," and he jerked
his thumb toward the robin.  "He's th' only friend I've got."

"I have no friends at all," said Mary.  "I never had.  My Ayah didn't
like me and I never played with any one."

It is a Yorkshire habit to say what you think with blunt frankness, and
old Ben Weatherstaff was a Yorkshire moor man.

"Tha' an' me are a good bit alike," he said.  "We was wove out of th'
same cloth.  We're neither of us good lookin' an' we're both of us as
sour as we look.  We've got the same nasty tempers, both of us, I'll
warrant."

This was plain speaking, and Mary Lennox had never heard the truth
about herself in her life.  Native servants always salaamed and
submitted to you, whatever you did.  She had never thought much about
her looks, but she wondered if she was as unattractive as Ben
Weatherstaff and she also wondered if she looked as sour as he had
looked before the robin came.  She actually began to wonder also if she
was "nasty tempered." She felt uncomfortable.

Suddenly a clear rippling little sound broke out near her and she
turned round.  She was standing a few feet from a young apple-tree and
the robin had flown on to one of its branches and had burst out into a
scrap of a song.  Ben Weatherstaff laughed outright.

"What did he do that for?" asked Mary.

"He's made up his mind to make friends with thee," replied Ben.  "Dang
me if he hasn't took a fancy to thee."

"To me?" said Mary, and she moved toward the little tree softly and
looked up.

"Would you make friends with me?" she said to the robin just as if she
was speaking to a person.  "Would you?" And she did not say it either
in her hard little voice or in her imperious Indian voice, but in a
tone so soft and eager and coaxing that Ben Weatherstaff was as
surprised as she had been when she heard him whistle.

"Why," he cried out, "tha' said that as nice an' human as if tha' was a
real child instead of a sharp old woman.  Tha' said it almost like
Dickon talks to his wild things on th' moor."

"Do you know Dickon?" Mary asked, turning round rather in a hurry.

"Everybody knows him.  Dickon's wanderin' about everywhere.  Th' very
blackberries an' heather-bells knows him.  I warrant th' foxes shows
him where their cubs lies an' th' skylarks doesn't hide their nests
from him."

Mary would have liked to ask some more questions.  She was almost as
curious about Dickon as she was about the deserted garden.  But just
that moment the robin, who had ended his song, gave a little shake of
his wings, spread them and flew away.  He had made his visit and had
other things to do.

"He has flown over the wall!" Mary cried out, watching him.  "He has
flown into the orchard--he has flown across the other wall--into the
garden where there is no door!"

"He lives there," said old Ben.  "He came out o' th' egg there.  If
he's courtin', he's makin' up to some young madam of a robin that lives
among th' old rose-trees there."

"Rose-trees," said Mary.  "Are there rose-trees?"

Ben Weatherstaff took up his spade again and began to dig.

"There was ten year' ago," he mumbled.

"I should like to see them," said Mary.  "Where is the green door?
There must be a door somewhere."

Ben drove his spade deep and looked as uncompanionable as he had looked
when she first saw him.

"There was ten year' ago, but there isn't now," he said.

"No door!" cried Mary.  "There must be." "None as any one can find, an'
none as is any one's business.  Don't you be a meddlesome wench an'
poke your nose where it's no cause to go.  Here, I must go on with my
work.  Get you gone an' play you.  I've no more time."

And he actually stopped digging, threw his spade over his shoulder and
walked off, without even glancing at her or saying good-by.

Martha, one of the manor's numerous maidservants, greets Mary when she awakens on her first morning at Misselthwaite. Mary tells Martha how much she hates the moor; Martha replies that she will come to love it, just as Martha does herself. The housemaid is quite casual in her speech, and talks to the girl as though the two were equals. This much upsets Mistress Mary, who is used to the extreme servility of the servants who took care of her in India. When Mary asks Martha to help her in getting dressed, Martha is completely shocked. It had never occurred to her that the child might not be capable of dressing herself. In her surprise, she lapses into the dialect of Yorkshire. This dialect is characteristic of the speech of nearly everyone on the moor . Martha goes on to say that she suspects Mary's circumstances were so very different in India because there are "such a lot o' blacks there." In fact, she had imagined that Mary herself was black. Mary is outraged at this suggestion, for blacks "are not people"; in response, she insults Martha viciously and then bursts into tears. Martha, troubled by this tantrum, comforts her and agrees to help her dress. Mary finds that the mourning black she was wearing upon her arrival at Misselthwaite has been replaced by a new set of white woolen clothes. For once, she is pleased by the change, as she "hates black things." As she helps Mary dress, Martha is again surprised by the child's behavior: she stands very still, as though she were a doll, and does nothing to help herself. When the maid asks why she insists on being dressed, Mary replies with a phrase she learned from her Indian servants: "It was the custom." Martha begins to tell Mary about her family: her mother, father, and eleven brothers and sisters. She mentions that one of her younger brothers, Dickon, has an almost magical way with animals and keeps a wild pony as a pet. For the first time in her life, Mary finds herself interested in something other than herself: she is attracted by the idea of Dickon. Mary refuses to eat the breakfast that is brought to her, which exasperates Martha, who has often seen her siblings go hungry. At Martha's suggestion , Mary decides to explore the moor. Before she ventures out, however, Martha mentions that, somewhere on the grounds of Misselthwaite, there is a garden that has been shut up for ten years. It was once Mistress Craven's garden and, after her death, Master Craven locked its door and buried the key. Mary begins searching for the secret garden as soon as she leaves the manor. She first explores the kitchen gardens, and, over one of the garden walls, sees a robin redbreast, whose lovely appearance and cheerful song please Mary deeply. She feels certain that the tree on which he is perched is in the secret garden. In one of the kitchen gardens, Mary comes across a gruff old gardener named Ben Weatherstaff. When she mentions seeing the robin, the old man breaks into a beautiful soft whistle; Mary is terribly surprised, as the sound is so at odds with his surly appearance. The robin appears a few moments later, and lands near the old man's feet. Ben Weatherstaff tells Mary that the robin had been lonely after the rest of his brood flew away; longing for company, the robin befriended the gardener. Mary realizes that she too is lonely, and that this is one of the reasons for her contrariness. Ben Weatherstaff observes that Mary and he are alike, in that they are both unattractive and have terrible tempers; Mary is greatly discomfited, as no one has ever spoken to her with such bluntness. The robin breaks into song, in an attempt to make friends with Mary; as she has no friends in the entire world, she is almost painfully delighted. Mary attempts to ask Ben Weatherstaff about the secret garden, but he refuses to answer and walks away without a word of goodbye.

The third chapter begins by introducing Martha Sowerby, Mary's new maidservant. Martha, however, hardly thinks of herself as a servant, as rapidly becomes clear: she expects Mary to dress and feed herself, and is not at all deferential. Mary becomes irritated in comparing Martha's liberal manner with that of her servants in India, whom she treated as less than human. The typical Yorkshire bluntness of both Martha and the gardener Ben Weatherstaff begin to alter Mary for the better in this chapter. Both Mary and Martha here evince extreme racism, made the more disturbing by its casualness and by the novel's implicit endorsement of it: Martha remarks that Mary's awfulness may be because she is from India, where there are "a lot of blacks instead of respectable white people." Mary, in her fury at being assumed to be black, shouts, "Natives are not people." A painfully obvious symbol of this racism can be found in the replacement of the black clothes Mary arrived from India in by white ones, as well as by her attendant statement that she "hates black things"; the reader is given to understand that Mary's life in England will be everywhere marked by whiteness rather than despised blackness. Misselthwaite Manor, however, has its own form of "native": all the servants speak Yorkshire dialect, which marks them as different from the inhabitants of the manor, and which Mary can barely understand. Martha's impoverished Yorkshire family is presented as being in almost uncanny harmony with the land: the hungry children are said to eat moor grass, as though they themselves were wild animals. The poor--particularly Dickon, Martha's wondrous brother--are depicted throughout the book as being more natural, unspoiled, and simple than the residents of the manor, and provides one of the novel's central oppositions. This, of course, is hardly unique to The Secret Garden. The poor, so frequently barred from education, are then hypocritically celebrated by the wealthy for their refreshing lack of "civilization. " It is now winter in England, which means nothing is growing upon the moor. The landscape mirrors Mary's state of well-being throughout the novel: at this point, she is still miserable and friendless, and so the moor itself remains bleak and barren. The secret garden, first mentioned in this chapter, is also implicitly aligned with Mary: it has been locked for ten years, and Mary is precisely ten years old. It remains locked here because Mary herself is still closed off from all human congress and friendship. Mary is also aligned with the robin redbreast in this chapter: like her, he began life as an orphan; he lives in the secret garden, as she would like to; like her, he began to seek out friendship when he realized he was lonely. The friendliness of the little bird both helps Mary recognize that she is lonely and to assuage that loneliness. This is significant in that Mary is awakened by a wild creature, a distinctive part of the English countryside; the robin is explicitly described as being "not at all like birds in India. " The landscape  is here foreshadowed as the agent of Mary's eventual transformation.


At first each day which passed by for Mary Lennox was exactly like the
others.  Every morning she awoke in her tapestried room and found
Martha kneeling upon the hearth building her fire; every morning she
ate her breakfast in the nursery which had nothing amusing in it; and
after each breakfast she gazed out of the window across to the huge
moor which seemed to spread out on all sides and climb up to the sky,
and after she had stared for a while she realized that if she did not
go out she would have to stay in and do nothing--and so she went out.
She did not know that this was the best thing she could have done, and
she did not know that, when she began to walk quickly or even run along
the paths and down the avenue, she was stirring her slow blood and
making herself stronger by fighting with the wind which swept down from
the moor.  She ran only to make herself warm, and she hated the wind
which rushed at her face and roared and held her back as if it were
some giant she could not see.  But the big breaths of rough fresh air
blown over the heather filled her lungs with something which was good
for her whole thin body and whipped some red color into her cheeks and
brightened her dull eyes when she did not know anything about it.

But after a few days spent almost entirely out of doors she wakened one
morning knowing what it was to be hungry, and when she sat down to her
breakfast she did not glance disdainfully at her porridge and push it
away, but took up her spoon and began to eat it and went on eating it
until her bowl was empty.

"Tha' got on well enough with that this mornin', didn't tha'?" said
Martha.

"It tastes nice today," said Mary, feeling a little surprised her self.

"It's th' air of th' moor that's givin' thee stomach for tha'
victuals," answered Martha.  "It's lucky for thee that tha's got
victuals as well as appetite.  There's been twelve in our cottage as
had th' stomach an' nothin' to put in it.  You go on playin' you out o'
doors every day an' you'll get some flesh on your bones an' you won't
be so yeller."

"I don't play," said Mary.  "I have nothing to play with."

"Nothin' to play with!" exclaimed Martha.  "Our children plays with
sticks and stones.  They just runs about an' shouts an' looks at
things." Mary did not shout, but she looked at things.  There was
nothing else to do.  She walked round and round the gardens and
wandered about the paths in the park.  Sometimes she looked for Ben
Weatherstaff, but though several times she saw him at work he was too
busy to look at her or was too surly.  Once when she was walking toward
him he picked up his spade and turned away as if he did it on purpose.

One place she went to oftener than to any other.  It was the long walk
outside the gardens with the walls round them.  There were bare
flower-beds on either side of it and against the walls ivy grew
thickly.  There was one part of the wall where the creeping dark green
leaves were more bushy than elsewhere.  It seemed as if for a long time
that part had been neglected.  The rest of it had been clipped and made
to look neat, but at this lower end of the walk it had not been trimmed
at all.

A few days after she had talked to Ben Weatherstaff, Mary stopped to
notice this and wondered why it was so.  She had just paused and was
looking up at a long spray of ivy swinging in the wind when she saw a
gleam of scarlet and heard a brilliant chirp, and there, on the top of
the wall, forward perched Ben Weatherstaff's robin redbreast, tilting
forward to look at her with his small head on one side.

"Oh!" she cried out, "is it you--is it you?" And it did not seem at all
queer to her that she spoke to him as if she were sure that he would
understand and answer her.

He did answer.  He twittered and chirped and hopped along the wall as
if he were telling her all sorts of things.  It seemed to Mistress Mary
as if she understood him, too, though he was not speaking in words.  It
was as if he said:

"Good morning! Isn't the wind nice? Isn't the sun nice? Isn't
everything nice? Let us both chirp and hop and twitter.  Come on! Come
on!"

Mary began to laugh, and as he hopped and took little flights along the
wall she ran after him.  Poor little thin, sallow, ugly Mary--she
actually looked almost pretty for a moment.

"I like you! I like you!" she cried out, pattering down the walk; and
she chirped and tried to whistle, which last she did not know how to do
in the least.  But the robin seemed to be quite satisfied and chirped
and whistled back at her.  At last he spread his wings and made a
darting flight to the top of a tree, where he perched and sang loudly.
That reminded Mary of the first time she had seen him.  He had been
swinging on a tree-top then and she had been standing in the orchard.
Now she was on the other side of the orchard and standing in the path
outside a wall--much lower down--and there was the same tree inside.

"It's in the garden no one can go into," she said to herself.  "It's
the garden without a door.  He lives in there.  How I wish I could see
what it is like!"

She ran up the walk to the green door she had entered the first
morning.  Then she ran down the path through the other door and then
into the orchard, and when she stood and looked up there was the tree
on the other side of the wall, and there was the robin just finishing
his song and, beginning to preen his feathers with his beak.

"It is the garden," she said.  "I am sure it is."

She walked round and looked closely at that side of the orchard wall,
but she only found what she had found before--that there was no door in
it.  Then she ran through the kitchen-gardens again and out into the
walk outside the long ivy-covered wall, and she walked to the end of it
and looked at it, but there was no door; and then she walked to the
other end, looking again, but there was no door.

"It's very queer," she said.  "Ben Weatherstaff said there was no door
and there is no door.  But there must have been one ten years ago,
because Mr. Craven buried the key."

This gave her so much to think of that she began to be quite interested
and feel that she was not sorry that she had come to Misselthwaite
Manor.  In India she had always felt hot and too languid to care much
about anything.  The fact was that the fresh wind from the moor had
begun to blow the cobwebs out of her young brain and to waken her up a
little.

She stayed out of doors nearly all day, and when she sat down to her
supper at night she felt hungry and drowsy and comfortable.  She did
not feel cross when Martha chattered away.  She felt as if she rather
liked to hear her, and at last she thought she would ask her a
question.  She asked it after she had finished her supper and had sat
down on the hearth-rug before the fire.

"Why did Mr. Craven hate the garden?" she said.

She had made Martha stay with her and Martha had not objected at all.
She was very young, and used to a crowded cottage full of brothers and
sisters, and she found it dull in the great servants' hall downstairs
where the footman and upper-housemaids made fun of her Yorkshire speech
and looked upon her as a common little thing, and sat and whispered
among themselves.  Martha liked to talk, and the strange child who had
lived in India, and been waited upon by "blacks," was novelty enough to
attract her.

She sat down on the hearth herself without waiting to be asked.

"Art tha' thinkin' about that garden yet?" she said.  "I knew tha'
would.  That was just the way with me when I first heard about it."

"Why did he hate it?" Mary persisted.

Martha tucked her feet under her and made herself quite comfortable.

"Listen to th' wind wutherin' round the house," she said.  "You could
bare stand up on the moor if you was out on it tonight."

Mary did not know what "wutherin'" meant until she listened, and then
she understood.  It must mean that hollow shuddering sort of roar which
rushed round and round the house as if the giant no one could see were
buffeting it and beating at the walls and windows to try to break in.
But one knew he could not get in, and somehow it made one feel very
safe and warm inside a room with a red coal fire.

"But why did he hate it so?" she asked, after she had listened.  She
intended to know if Martha did.

Then Martha gave up her store of knowledge.

"Mind," she said, "Mrs. Medlock said it's not to be talked about.
There's lots o' things in this place that's not to be talked over.
That's Mr. Craven's orders.  His troubles are none servants' business,
he says.  But for th' garden he wouldn't be like he is.  It was Mrs.
Craven's garden that she had made when first they were married an' she
just loved it, an' they used to 'tend the flowers themselves.  An' none
o' th' gardeners was ever let to go in.  Him an' her used to go in an'
shut th' door an' stay there hours an' hours, readin' and talkin'. An'
she was just a bit of a girl an' there was an old tree with a branch
bent like a seat on it.  An' she made roses grow over it an' she used
to sit there.  But one day when she was sittin' there th' branch broke
an' she fell on th' ground an' was hurt so bad that next day she died.
Th' doctors thought he'd go out o' his mind an' die, too.  That's why
he hates it.  No one's never gone in since, an' he won't let any one
talk about it."

Mary did not ask any more questions.  She looked at the red fire and
listened to the wind "wutherin'." It seemed to be "wutherin'" louder
than ever.  At that moment a very good thing was happening to her.
Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to
Misselthwaite Manor.  She had felt as if she had understood a robin and
that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had
grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her
life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for some one.

But as she was listening to the wind she began to listen to something
else.  She did not know what it was, because at first she could
scarcely distinguish it from the wind itself.  It was a curious
sound--it seemed almost as if a child were crying somewhere.  Sometimes
the wind sounded rather like a child crying, but presently Mistress
Mary felt quite sure this sound was inside the house, not outside it.
It was far away, but it was inside.  She turned round and looked at
Martha.

"Do you hear any one crying?" she said.

Martha suddenly looked confused.

"No," she answered.  "It's th' wind.  Sometimes it sounds like as if
some one was lost on th' moor an' wailin'. It's got all sorts o'
sounds."

"But listen," said Mary.  "It's in the house--down one of those long
corridors."

And at that very moment a door must have been opened somewhere
downstairs; for a great rushing draft blew along the passage and the
door of the room they sat in was blown open with a crash, and as they
both jumped to their feet the light was blown out and the crying sound
was swept down the far corridor so that it was to be heard more plainly
than ever.

"There!" said Mary.  "I told you so! It is some one crying--and it
isn't a grown-up person."

Martha ran and shut the door and turned the key, but before she did it
they both heard the sound of a door in some far passage shutting with a
bang, and then everything was quiet, for even the wind ceased
"wutherin'" for a few moments.

"It was th' wind," said Martha stubbornly.  "An' if it wasn't, it was
little Betty Butterworth, th' scullery-maid. She's had th' toothache
all day."

But something troubled and awkward in her manner made Mistress Mary
stare very hard at her.  She did not believe she was speaking the truth.

Mary passes a number of weeks in which each of her days is like the others: she awakens, eats breakfast, and then wanders the moor all day. Her time out of doors begins to cause a change in her: she slowly begins to grow stronger and healthier, and her imagination, which had laid dormant during her time in India, is quickened by her exploration of the manor grounds and her search for the secret garden. Outside one of Misselthwaite's walled gardens, Mary has a second encounter with Ben Weatherstaff's robin. She is terribly pleased to see him, and chases after the robin as he flies along the garden wall--she even goes so far as to chirp and whistle at him, even though she does not know how. In her pursuit of the robin, she becomes certain that he lives in the secret garden. She cannot, however, find its door. That night, Martha tells Mary further stories of the secret garden, even though Master Craven has forbidden the servants to discuss it. The garden once belonged to Mrs. Craven, and she and her husband had spent many intimate hours there in the years of their marriage. It had been Mrs. Craven's custom to sit in a rose-covered bower at the top of one of the garden's trees, and, one day, she fell from it when a branch gave way. She died of her injuries, and, after her death, Archibald Craven could no longer bear the garden and had it locked shut. Hearing this story, Mary feels a great pity for her uncle. As she listens to the wind blowing over the moor, she is able to discern another sound beneath it: the sound of someone, a child, crying. Martha denies hearing any such sound, though Mary does not believe her