The Secret Garden / Таинственный сад

Crawford began to pity Mary, afterward. She remembered her beautiful mother and she could not understand why Mary did not have pretty manners like her mother had. Mrs. Crawford believed that when Ayah was dead there was no one to take care of the little girl.

Mary made the long voyage to England under the care of an officer's wife, who was taking her children to leave them in a boarding-school. She was very much absorbed in her own little boy and girl, and was rather glad to hand the child over to the woman Mr. Archibald Craven sent to meet her, in London.

The woman was his housekeeper at Misselthwaite Manor, and her name was Mrs. Medlock. She was a stout[19 - stout – полный, тучный]woman, with very red cheeks and sharp black eyes. She wore a very purple dress, a black silk mantle with jet fringe[20 - jet fringe – блестящая черная бахрома] on it and a black bonnet[21 - bonnet – капор] with purple velvet flowers which stuck up and trembled when she moved her head. Mary did not like her at all, but as she very seldom liked people there was nothing remarkable in that; besides which it was very evident Mrs. Medlock did not think much of her.

“My word! she's a plain little piece of goods!” she said. “And we'd heard that her mother was a beauty. She hasn't handed much of it down, has she, ma'am?”

“Perhaps she will improve as she grows older,” the officer's wife said good-naturedly. “If she were not so sallow and had a nicer expression, her features are rather good.

Children alter so much.”

“She'll have to alter a good deal,” answered Mrs. Medlock. “And, there's nothing likely to improve children at Misselthwaite-if you ask me!” They thought Mary was not listening because she was standing a little apart from them at the window of the private hotel they had gone to. She was watching the passing buses and cabs and people, but she heard quite well and was made very curious about her uncle and the place he lived in.

What sort of a place was it, and what would he be like? What was a hunchback? She had never seen one.

Since Mary had been living in other people's houses and had had no Ayah, she had begun to feel lonely. She wanted to belong to anyone like other children. She had had servants, and food and clothes, but no one had taken any notice of her. She often thought that other people were disagreeable, but she did not know that she was so herself.

She thought Mrs.