










In Honor of Lisa Hart's 9th Birthday




THE SECRET GARDEN

BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT



Author of

  "The Shuttle,"
  "The Making of a Marchioness,"
  "The Methods of Lady Walderhurst,"
  "The Lass o' Lowries,"
  "Through One Administration,"
  "Little Lord Fauntleroy,"
  "A Lady of Quality," etc.




                           CONTENTS

CHAPTER  TITLE

      I  THERE IS NO ONE LEFT
     II  MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY
    III  ACROSS THE MOOR
     IV  MARTHA
      V  THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR
     VI  "THERE WAS SOME ONE CRYING--THERE WAS!"
    VII  THE KEY TO THE GARDEN
   VIII  THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY
     IX  THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANY ONE EVER LIVED IN
      X  DICKON
     XI  THE NEST OF THE MISSEL THRUSH
    XII  "MIGHT I HAVE A BIT OF EARTH?"
   XIII  "I AM COLIN"
    XIV  A YOUNG RAJAH
     XV  NEST BUILDING
    XVI  "I WON'T!" SAID MARY
   XVII  A TANTRUM
  XVIII  "THA' MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME"
    XIX  "IT HAS COME!"
     XX  "I SHALL LIVE FOREVER--AND EVER--AND EVER!"
    XXI  BEN WEATHERSTAFF
   XXII  WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN
  XXIII  MAGIC
   XXIV  "LET THEM LAUGH"
    XXV  THE CURTAIN
   XXVI  "IT'S MOTHER!"
  XXVII  IN THE GARDEN





THE SECRET GARDEN

BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT




CHAPTER I

THERE IS NO ONE LEFT


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