The Secret Garden, a beloved children’s novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, was first published in 1911. Raised in British India, Mary Lennox is a spoiled and unpleasant child. After her parents’ neglect and sudden death from cholera, she goes to live with her uncle Archibald Craven at Misselthwaite Manor in England. While there, she discovers a hidden garden. Mary meets new friends, including the good-natured maid Martha, her brother Dickon, who has a unique way with animals, and her cousin Colin Craven, who is bedridden and believed to be a permanent invalid. With the help of Dickon, Mary restores the garden. As they work together, the garden becomes a place of healing and rejuvenation for all in its thrall.
Following is a book excerpt from The Secret Garden, Chapter IX. The Strangest House Anyone Ever Lived.
“How still it is!” she whispered. “How still!”
Then she waited a moment and listened at the stillness. The robin, who had flown to his treetop, was still as all the rest. He did not even flutter his wings; he sat without stirring, and looked at Mary.
“No wonder it is still,” she whispered again. “I am the first person who has spoken in here for ten years.”
She moved away from the door, stepping as softly as if she were afraid of awakening someone. She was glad that grass was under her feet and that her steps made no sound. She walked under one of the fairy-like gray arches between the trees and looked up at the sprays and tendrils which formed them.
“I wonder if they are all quite dead,” she said. “Is it all a quite dead garden? I wish it wasn’t.”
If she had been Ben Weatherstaff she could have told whether the wood was alive by looking at it, but she could only see that there were only gray or brown sprays and branches and none showed any signs of even a tiny leaf-bud anywhere.
But she was inside the wonderful garden and she could come through the door under the ivy any time and she felt as if she had found a world all her own.
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