When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite
Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was
the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was
true, too. She had a little thin face and a little thin
body, thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair
was yellow, and her face was yellow because she had
been born in India and had always been ill in one way
or another. Her father had held a position under the
English Government and had always been busy and ill
himself, and her mother had been a great beauty who
cared only to go to parties and amuse herself with gay
people. She had not wanted a little girl at all, and when
Mary was born she handed her over to the care of an
Ayah, who was made to understand that if she wished
to please the Mem Sahib she must keep the child out of
sight as much as possible. So when she was a sickly,
fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and
when she became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she
was kept out of the way also. She never remembered
seeing familiarly anything but the dark faces of her
Ayah and the other native servants, and as they always
obeyed her and gave her her own way in everything,
because the Mem Sahib would be angry if she was
disturbed by her crying, by the time she was six years
old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever
lived. The young English governess who came to teach
her to read and write disliked her so much that she gave
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up her place in three months, and when other
governesses came to try to fill it they always went away
in a shorter time than the first one. So if Mary had not
chosen to really want to know how to read books she
would never have learned her letters at all.
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 tell 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
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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 some one. 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, but 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 wore 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 eyes. 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!"
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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.
"Some one 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.
After that appalling things happened, and the
mysteriousness of the morning was explained to Mary.
The cholera had broken out in its most fatal form and
people were dying like flies. The Ayah had been taken
ill in the night, and it was because she had just died
that the servants had wailed in the huts. Before the
next day three other servants were dead and others had
run away in terror. There was panic on every side, and
dying people in all the bungalows.
During the confusion and bewilderment of the
second day Mary hid herself in the nursery and was
forgotten by every one. Nobody thought of her, nobody
wanted her, and strange things happened of which she
knew nothing. Mary alternately cried and slept through
the hours. She only knew that people were ill and that
she heard mysterious and frightening sounds. Once she
crept into the dining-room and found it empty, though
a partly finished meal was on the table and chairs and
plates looked as if they had been hastily pushed back
when the diners rose suddenly for some reason. The
child ate some fruit and biscuits, and being thirsty she
drank a glass of wine which stood nearly filled. It was
sweet, and she did not know how strong it was. Very
soon it made her intensely drowsy, and she went back
to her nursery and shut herself in again, frightened by
cries she heard in the huts and by the hurrying sound
of feet. The wine made her so sleepy that she could
scarcely keep her eyes open and she lay down on her
bed and knew nothing more for a long time.
Many things happened during the hours in
which she slept so heavily, but she was not disturbed by
the wails and the sound of things being carried in and
out of the bungalow.
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 heard neither 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 new Ayah, 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 much for 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. Every one was
too panic-stricken to think of a little girl no one was
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fond of. When people had the cholera it seemed that
they remembered nothing but themselves. But if every
one had got well again, surely some one would
remember and come 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 snake gliding 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 slipped under the door as she watched
him.
"How queer and quiet it is," she said. "It sounds as if there was no one in the bungalow but me and the
snake."
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. No one went to meet or speak
to them and they seemed to open doors and look into
rooms.
"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
looked an ugly, cross little thing and was frowning
because she was beginning to be hungry and feel
disgracefully neglected. The first man who came in was
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a large officer she had once seen talking to her father.
He looked tired and troubled, but when he saw her he
was so startled that he almost jumped back.
"Barney!" he cried out. "There is a child here! A child alone! In a place like this! Mercy on us, who is
she!"
"I am Mary Lennox," the little girl said, drawing
herself up stiffly. She thought the man was very rude to
call her father's bungalow "A place like this!" "I fell asleep when every one had the cholera and I have only
just wakened up. Why does nobody come?"
"It is the child no one ever saw!" exclaimed the
man, turning to his companions. "She has actually been
forgotten!"
"Why was I forgotten?" Mary said, stamping her
foot. "Why does nobody come?"
The young man whose name was Barney looked
at her very sadly. Mary even thought she saw him wink
his eyes as if to wink tears away.
"Poor little kid!" he said. "There is nobody left to come."
It was in that strange and sudden way that Mary
found out that she had neither father nor mother left;
that they had died and been carried away in the night,
and that the few native servants who had not died