Таинственный сад / The secret garden

She lay waiting and the house was growing more and more silent. She heard something on the matting. When she looked down she saw a little snake. The snake was watching her with eyes like jewels. She was not frightened, because it was a harmless little thing. The snake slipped under the door as she watched it.

“How queer and quiet it is,” she said. “Is there anyone in the bungalow?”

Almost the next minute she heard footsteps in the compound, and then on the veranda. They were men’s footsteps, and the men entered the bungalow and talked in low voices.

“What desolation!” she heard one voice say. “That pretty, pretty woman! I suppose the child, too. I heard there was a child, though no one ever saw her.”

Mary was standing in the middle of the nursery when they opened the door a few minutes later. She was frowning because she was hungry. The first man who came in was a large officer. He looked tired and troubled.

“Barney!” he cried out. “There is a child here! A child alone! In a place like this!”

“I am Mary Lennox,” the little girl said. She thought the man was very rude to call her father’s bungalow “a place like this”. “I fell asleep when everyone had the cholera. I have just wakened up. Why does nobody come?”

“It is the child no one ever saw!” exclaimed the man, turning to his companions.

“Why does nobody come?” Mary asked.

The young man whose name was Barney looked at her very sadly.

“Poor little kid!” he said. “There is nobody here.”

Mary found out that she had neither father nor mother left. They died in the night, and the servants left the house quickly. That was why the place was so quiet. It was true that there was no one in the bungalow but herself and the little snake.

Chapter II

Mistress Mary quite contrary

Mary knew very little of her mother.

They took her to the English clergyman’s house. She knew that she was not going to stay there long. She did not want to stay. The English clergyman was poor and he had five children. They wore shabby clothes and were always quarreling and snatching toys from each other. Mary hated their untidy bungalow and was very disagreeable to them. Nobody wanted to play with her.