Kitabı oku: «Таинственный сад / The Secret Garden. B1», sayfa 2

Before-Reading Questions

1. The novel’s working title wasMistress Mary. Later, the author changed it to The Secret Garden. What is the difference between the two titles? What plot would you expect from a children’s novel titled Mistress Mary?

2. What myths about gardens can you remember? Try to find at least one more in books or on the Internet.

3. Do you know what English moors look like? Find the pictures of them on the Internet and describe the landscape. What feelings does it awake in you?

Chapter 1
Little Miss Mary

Nobody seemed to care about Mary. She was born in India, where her father was a Britishofficial. He was busy with his work, and her mother, who was very beautiful, spent all her time going to parties. So an Indian woman, Kamala, was paid to take care of the little girl. Mary was not a pretty child. She had a thin angry face and thin yellow hair. She was always giving orders to Kamala. Mary never thought of other people, but only of herself. In fact, she was a very selfish, disagreeable, bad-tempered little girl.

One very hot morning, when she was about nine years old, she woke up and saw that instead of Kamala there was a different Indian servant by her bed.

‘What areyou doing here?’ she asked crossly. ‘Go away! And send Kamala to me at once!’

The woman looked afraid. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Mary, she – she – she can’t come!’

Something strange was happening that day. Some of the house servants were missing and everybody looked frightened. But nobody told Mary anything, and Kamala still did not come. So at last Mary went out into the garden, and played by herself under a tree. She pretended she was making her own flower garden, and picked large red flowers to push into the ground. All the time she was sayingcrossly to herself,