Page 26 - Secret Garden

But then the weather changed. Rain poured and a grey mist swallowed up house, garden and skyline. Mary was furious that she could not go out. The wind howled like someone lost and crying on the moor. Although . . . when the wind paused for breath, one sad little sound remained.
“Do you hear that, Martha? Someone in the house is crying!”
Martha looked flustered. “It’s just the wind. It’s nothing.” And she hurried
out of the room.
Mary was puzzled. She had the strangest feeling that Martha had just lied to her. Roaming the gardens had turned her into an explorer, and explorers don’t
stay in their bedrooms. Were there truly a hundred rooms in Misselthwaite Manor? Why not count them and see if all of them really were locked?
No one could make her stay in her room!
Up staircases and along passageways she went, trying every door handle. Let the portraits scowl at her. Let the wind roar and batter at the house. She was an intrepid explorer.
One handle turned!
Inside, the portrait of a frumpy girl stared down at her from the wall, as if shocked by Mary’s daring. “Did you live here once, like me?” Mary asked.
There were shelves filled with little carved elephants. She spent a happy hour lining them up, making parades and sorting them into families . . .
It made her remember India where real elephants bellowed and trumpeted.
The tiniest noise drew her eye to the sofa, and there was a mouse peeping out of a hole in a cushion. A closer look showed six tiny baby mice curled up in there, asleep. Oddly, they did not seem lonely at all, those little visitors who shared with her the huge, empty house.