The Secret Garden. Burnett Frances Hodgson

Frances Hodgson Burnett

      The Secret Garden

      THE SECRET GARDEN

      ‘We’re alike, you and me,’ old Ben Weatherstaff said to Mary. ‘We’re not pretty to look at and we’re both very disagreeable.’

      Poor Mary! Nobody wants her, nobody likes her. Her parents have died, and she is sent home from India to live in her uncle’s house in Yorkshire. It is a big old house, with nearly a hundred rooms, but most of them are shut and locked. Mary is cross and bored, and lonely. There is nothing to do all day, and no one to talk to, except old Ben Weatherstaff, the gardener.

      But then Mary learns about the secret garden. The door is locked and hidden, and the key is lost. No one has been inside the secret garden for ten years – except the robin, who flies over the wall. Mary watches the robin, and wonders where the key is …

      And then there is that strange crying in the night, somewhere in the house. It sounds like a child crying …

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford

It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in

Oxford New York

Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto

With offices in

Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

OXFORD and OXFORD ENGLISH are registered trade marks of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries

This simplified edition © Oxford University Press 2008

Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published in Oxford Bookworms 1993

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

No unauthorized photocopying

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the ELT Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above

You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer

Any websites referred to in this publication are in the public domain and their addresses are provided by Oxford University Press for information only. Oxford University Press disclaims any responsibility for the content

ISBN 978 0 19 479129 8

A complete recording of this Bookworms edition of The Secret Garden is available on audio CD ISBN 978 0 19 4791014

Typeset by Wyvern Typesetting Ltd, Bristol

Word count (main text): 10,715 words

For more information on the Oxford Bookworms Library, visit www.oup.com/bookwormswww.oup.com/bookworms

e-Book ISBN 978 0 19 478663 8

e-Book first published 2012

      1

      Little Miss Mary

      Nobody seemed to care about Mary. She was born in India, where her father was a British official. 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, who had to obey. 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 are you 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 saying crossly to herself,