The Secret Garden

002

             
         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 rell 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 someone. 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, bot 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 were 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 eves. 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. "Someone 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.