Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody saidshe was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too. She had a little thin faceand a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face wasyellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another. Herfather had held a position under the English Government and had always been busy and illhimself, and her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuseherself with gay people. She had not wanted a little girl at all, and when Mary was born shehanded her over to the care of an Ayah, who was made to understand that if she wished to pleasethe Mem Sahib she must keep the child out of sight as much as possible. So when she was asickly, 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 familiarlyanything but the dark faces of her Ayah and the other native servants, and as they always obeyedher and gave her her own way in everything, because the Mem Sahib would be angry if she wasdisturbed by her crying, by the time she was six years old she was as tyrannical and selfish alittle pig as ever lived. The young English governess who came to teach her to read and writedisliked her so much that she gave up her place in three months, and when other governessescame to try to fill it they always went away in a shorter time than the first one. So if Mary hadnot chosen to really want to know how to read books she would never have learned her letters atall