Secret Garden. Chapter 1

The Secret Garden

CHAPTER I

THERE IS NO ONE LEFT

When she awakened she lay and stared at the wall. The house was perfectly still. She had never known it to be so silent before. She heardneither voices nor footsteps, and wondered if everybody had got well of the cholera and all the trouble was over. She wondered also who would take care of her now her Ayah was dead. There would be a newAyah, and perhaps she would know some new stories. Mary had been rather tired of the old ones. She did not cry because her nurse had died. She was not an affectionate child and had never cared muchfor any one. The noise and hurrying about and wailing over the cholera had frightened her, and she had been angry because no one seemed to remember that she was alive. Everyone was too panic−stricken tothink of a little girl no one was fond of. When people had the cholera it seemed that they remembered nothing but themselves. But if everyone had got well again, surely some one would remember andcome to look for her. But no one came, and as she lay waiting the house seemed to grow more and more silent. She heard something rustling on the matting and when she looked down she saw a little snakegliding along and watching her with eyes like jewels. She was not frightened, because he was a harmless little thing who would not hurt her and he seemed in a hurry to get out of the room. He slippedunder the door as she watched him. "How queer and quiet it is," she said. "It sounds as if there were no one in the bungalow but me and the snake." Almost the next minute she heard footsteps in thecompound, and then on the veranda. They were men's footsteps, and the men entered the bungalow and talked in low voices. No one went to meet or speak to them and they seemed to open doors and look intorooms. "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...