In Honor of Lisa Hart's 9th Birthday

This text is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN.

THE SECRET GARDEN
BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

Author of

"The Shuttle,"
"The Making of a Marchioness,"
"The Methods of Lady
Walderhurst,"
"The Lass o' Lowries,"
"Through One Administration,"
"Little Lord Fauntleroy,"
"A Lady of Quality," etc.

                           CONTENTS

CHAPTER  TITLE

      I  THERE IS NO ONE LEFT 
     II  MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY 
    III  ACROSS THE MOOR  
     IV  MARTHA 
      V  THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR  
     VI  "THERE WAS SOME ONE CRYING--THERE WAS!"  
    VII  THE KEY TO THE GARDEN  
   VIII  THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY 
     IX  THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANY ONE EVER LIVED IN  
      X  DICKON 
     XI  THE NEST OF THE MISSEL THRUSH  
    XII  "MIGHT I HAVE A BIT OF EARTH?" 
   XIII  "I AM COLIN" 
    XIV  A YOUNG RAJAH  
     XV  NEST BUILDING  
    XVI  "I WON'T!" SAID MARY 
   XVII  A TANTRUM  
  XVIII  "THA' MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME"  
    XIX  "IT HAS COME!" 
     XX  "I SHALL LIVE FOREVER--AND EVER--AND EVER!"  
    XXI  BEN WEATHERSTAFF 
   XXII  WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN 
  XXIII  MAGIC  
    XIV  "LET THEM LAUGH" 
    XXV  THE CURTAIN  
   XXVI  "IT'S MOTHER!" 
  XXVII  IN THE GARDEN  

THE SECRET GARDEN
BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

CHAPTER I

THERE IS NO ONE LEFT

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 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