Таинственный сад / The secret garden

“Do you hear anyone crying?” she said.

Martha suddenly looked confused.

“No,” she answered. “It’s the wind.”

“But listen,” said Mary. “It’s in the house-down one of those long corridors. It is someone crying-and it isn’t a grown-up person.”

Martha ran and shut the door and turned the key.

“It was the wind,” said Martha stubbornly. “Or it was little Betty Butterworth, the scullery-maid[15 - scullery-maid – судомойка]. She’s had the toothache all day.

”

But Mary did not believe she was speaking the truth.

Chapter VI

“There was someone crying – there was!”

The next day the rain poured down in torrents.

“What do you do in your cottage when it rains like this?” she asked Martha.

“Eh! The biggest ones go out in the cow-shed and play there,” Martha answered. “Dickon doesn’t mind the wet. He goes out just the same[16 - just the same – всё равно]. He once found a little fox cub half drowned in its hole and he brought it home to keep it warm.

He found a half-drowned young crow another time and he brought it home, too, and tamed it. Its name is Soot because it’s black.”

“I want to have a raven or a fox cub to with it,” said Mary. “But I have nothing.”

Martha looked perplexed.

“Can you knit?” she asked.

“No,” answered Mary.

“Can you sew?”

“No.”

“Can you read?”

“Yes. But I have no books,” said Mary. “Those I had were left in India.

”

“That’s a pity,” said Martha. “Ask Mrs. Medlock to go into the library, there are thousands of books there.”

Mary did not ask where the library was, because she was suddenly inspired by a new idea. She decided to go and find it herself. She was not troubled about Mrs. Medlock. Mrs. Medlock was always in her comfortable housekeeper’s sitting-room downstairs. In this queer place one scarcely ever saw anyone at all.

Mrs. Medlock came and looked at her every day, but no one inquired what she did or told her what to do.

She supposed that perhaps this was the English custom. In India, her Ayah followed her all the time. Mary was often tired of her company. Now she nobody followed her.

Mary stood at the window for about ten minutes this morning after her breakfast. She was thinking over the new idea. She did not care very much about the library itself, because she read very few books.