The Secret Garden: A Retelling for Curious Readers

A look inside

The opening of The Secret Garden: A Retelling for Curious Readers, free to read.

1. 

   Mistress Mary Quite Contrary

   When Mary Lennox came to Misselthwaite Manor, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. Her story began far away, on a shady veranda in India. “Bring me a cold drink!” Mary snapped at a servant. When he was slow, she kicked her chair. Nobody ever told her no. Out on the lawn, her pretty mother laughed with guests and never looked her way.

2. 

   Two officers walked through the silent house, opening door after door. Cholera, a terrible sickness, had swept through the town. Servants had died or fled. Behind the last door stood a small, scowling girl, all alone. “Why, there is a child here!” one cried. It was Mary. In the panic, everyone had forgotten her. Her mother and father had both died of the sickness.

3. 

   “Mistress Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?” Basil sang in a teasing voice, and soon the other children joined in. Mary stamped away, fuming. She was staying with a clergyman, a church minister, and his five noisy children. She had never learned to play with anyone, and she would not start now. From then on, they called her Mistress Mary Quite Contrary.

4. 

   Rain streaked the window as the train rattled north to Yorkshire. Mary stared out, pretending not to listen. Mrs. Medlock, the stout housekeeper in purple who had fetched her in London, talked and talked. Back in London she had muttered, “My word, she’s a plain little piece of goods!” Now she said, “Your uncle, Mr. Archibald Craven, lives in a strange old place. Near a hundred rooms, most of them locked. He won’t see you. And you mustn’t go poking about.”