Kitabı oku: «Таинственный сад / The Secret Garden. B1», sayfa 13

‘Tell me about the secret garden,’ she said.

‘Well, all right then, miss, but we aren’t supposed to talk about it, you know. It was Mrs Craven’s favourite garden, and she and Mr Craven used to take care of it themselves. They spent hours there, reading and talking. Very happy, they were. They used the branch of an old tree as a seat. But one day when she was sitting on the branch, it broke, and she fell. She was very badly hurt and the next day she died. That’s why he hates the garden so much, and won’t let anyone go in there.’

‘How sad!’ said Mary. ‘Poor Mr Craven!’ It was the first time that she had ever felt sorry for anyone.

Just then, as she was listening to the wind outside, she heard another noise, in the house.

‘Can you hear a child crying?’ she asked Martha.

Martha looked confused. ‘Er – no,’ she replied. ‘No, I think – it must be the wind.’

But at that moment the wind blew open their door and they heard the crying very clearly.

‘I told you!’ cried Mary.

At once Martha shut the door. ‘It was the wind,’ she repeated. But she did not speak in her usual natural way, and Mary did not believe her.

The next day it was very rainy, so Mary did not go out. Instead she decided towander round the house, looking into some of the hundred rooms that Mrs Medlock had told her about. She spent all morning going in and out of dark, silent rooms, which were full of heavy furniture and old pictures. She saw no servants at all, and was on her way back to her room for lunch, when she heard a cry. ‘It’s a bit like the cry that I heard last night!’ she thought. Just then the housekeeper, Mrs Medlock, appeared, with her keys in her hand.