Таинственный сад / The secret garden

And when she became a sickly, fretful, toddling girl she was kept out of the way also. She saw the dark faces of her nurse and the other native servants. They always obeyed her. So by the time the girl was six years old she was very tyrannical and selfish.

The young English governess who came to teach her to read and write disliked her so much that she left in three months. When other governesses came they always went away even sooner. So Mary learned letters herself.

One frightfully hot morning, when she was about nine years old, she awakened feeling very cross[3 - feeling very cross – в дурном настроении].

She became crosser 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. She only stammered that the Ayah could not come. Mary kicked her. The servant looked only more frightened and repeated that it was not possible for the Ayah to come.

There was something mysterious in the air that morning. The servants hurried about with ashy and scared faces. But no one told the girl anything and her Ayah did not come. She was actually left alone. At last she wandered out into the garden and began to play by herself under a tree near the veranda. She was growing more and more angry. She was muttering to herself,

“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 saw her mother. Her mother came out on the veranda with someone. 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. He was a very young officer 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. Her mother was a tall, slim, pretty person and wore lovely clothes.

Her hair was like curly silk and she had a delicate little nose and large laughing eyes. All her clothes were thin and floating.

But this morning, 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?” she said.

“Awfully,” the young man answered in a trembling voice. “Awfully, Mrs. Lennox. Why didn’t you go to the hills?”

Mother wrung her hands.