非常喜欢的一本书,能够在心情低落时给予我们重新感受美好的力量。

本书是中英文对照版,现摘录英文内容奉上——《秘密花园》原蓍 Frances Hodgson Burnett，编译侯皓元， 出版社“陕西人民出版社”

Chapter 1   There is no one left

    When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too. She had a little thin body and a sour expression. 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. When Mary was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah. She never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the dark faces of her Ayah and the other native servants, and as they always obeyed her. 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. 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.

    One frightfully hot morning, when she was about nine years old, she awakened feeling very cross 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.

    There was something mysterious in the air that morning. Nothing was done in tis regular group and several of the servants seemed missing, while those whom Mary saw slunk or hurried about with ashy and scared faces. But no one would tell her anything.

    “Pig! Pig! Daughter of Pigs!” she said, because to call a native a pig is the worst insult of all.

    She was grinding her teeth and saying this over and over again when she heard her mother come out on the veranda with a youg man talking together in low e voices.

    “Is it so very bad? Oh, is it?” Mary heard her say.

    “Awfully,” the young man answered in a trembling voice. “Awfully, Mrs. Lennox. You ought to have gone to the hills two weeks ago.”

    Mother wrung her hands. “Oh, I know I ought!” she cried. “I only stayed to go to that silly dinner party. What a fool I was!”

    At that very moment such a loud sound of wailing broke out from the servants’ quarters, and Mary stood shivering from head to foot.

    “What is it? What is it?” Mrs. Lennox gasped.

    “Some one has died,” answered the boy officer. “You did not say it had broken out among your servants.”

    “I did not know!” mother cried. “Come with me!” and she turned and ran into the house.

    The cholera had broken out in its most fatal form. The Ayah had been taken ill in the night, and it was because she had just died that the servants had wailed in the huts. Before the nest day three other servants were dead and others had run away in terror.

    During the confusion and bewilderment of the second day Mary hid herself in the nursery and was forgotten by everyone. She crept into the dining-room and ate some fruit and biscuits, and being thirsty she drank a glass of wine which stood nearly filled. She went back to her nursery and shut herself in again, frightened by cries she heard in the huts and by the hurrying sound of feet.

    She slept so heavily when she awakened she lay and stared at the wall. The house was perfectly still. She heard neither voices nor footsteps, and wondered if everybody had got well of the cholera and all the trouble was over. She wondered also who would take care of her now her Ayah was dead. She did not cry because her nurse had died. She was not an affectionate child and had never cared much for anyone, and she had been angry because no one seemed to remember that she was alive.

    But no one came, and as she lay waiting the house seemed to grow more and more silent. She heard something fustling on the matting and when she looked down she saw a little snake gliding along and watching her with eyes like jewels. Almost the next minute she heard footsteps in the compound, and then on the veranda. They were men’s footsteps.

    “What desolation!” she heard on voice say. “That pretty, pretty woman! I suppose the child, too. I heard there was a child, though no one ever saw her.”

    Mary was standing in the middle of the room when they opened the door a few minutes later. She looked an ugly, cross little thing and was frowning because she was beginning to be hungry and feel disgracefully neglected.

    “Barney!” The first man cried out. “There is a child here! A child alone! In a place like this! Mercy on us, who is she?”

    “I am Mary Lennox,” the little girl said. “Why was I forgotten?” she said, stamping her foot. “Why does nobody come?”

    “Poor little kid!” the young man whose name was Barney said. “There is nobody left to come.”