Таинственный сад / The secret garden

Basil was a little boy with impudent blue eyes and a turned-up nose and Mary hated him. She was playing by herself under a tree. She was making heaps of earth and paths for a garden and Basil came and stood near to watch her. Suddenly he made a suggestion.

“Why don’t you put a heap of stones there?” he said. “There in the middle,” and he leaned over her to point.

“Go away!” cried Mary. “Go away!”

For a moment Basil looked angry, and then he began to tease. He was always teasing his sisters.

He danced round and round her and made faces[5 - made faces – кривлялся] and sang and laughed:

“Mistress Mary, quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells, and cockle shells,

And marigolds all in a row.”

He sang it until the other children heard and laughed, and sang “Mistress Mary, quite contrary”. After that they called her “Mistress Mary Quite Contrary” when they spoke of her to each other, and often when they spoke to her.

“They will send you home,” Basil said to her, “at the end of the week. And we’re glad of it.”

“I am glad of it, too,” answered Mary. “Where is home?”

“She doesn’t know where home is!” said Basil, with scorn. “It’s England, of course. Our grandmama lives there and our sister Mabel came to her last year. You are not going to your grandmama. You have none. You are going to your uncle. His name is Mr. Archibald Craven.”

“I don’t know anything about him,” snapped Mary.

“I know you don’t,” Basil answered. “You don’t know anything. Girls never do. I heard father and mother talking about him. He lives in a great, big, desolate old house in the country and no one goes near him. He’s a hunchback, and he’s horrid.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Mary; and she turned her back and stuck her fingers in her ears, because she did not want to listen any more.

Mrs. Crawford told her that night that she was going to sail away to England in a few days and go to her uncle, Mr.

Archibald Craven, who lived at Misselthwaite Manor. Mary looked so stony and stubbornly uninterested that they did not know what to think about her. They tried to be kind to her, but she only turned her face away when Mrs. Crawford attempted to kiss her.

“She is such a plain child,” Mrs. Crawford said pityingly, afterward. “And her mother was such a pretty creature.