Welcome to Literature.com!

    								
Contents

 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 SOMEONE CRYING—THERE WAS!”
 VII. THE KEY TO THE GARDEN
 VIII. THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY
 IX. THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANYONE 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

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.

    								Rate this book:5.0 / 2 votes