to you. You'll have to play about and look after yourself. You'll be told what rooms you can go into and what rooms you're to keep out of. There's gardens enough. But when you're in the house don't go wandering [26]and poking about [27]. Mr. Craven won't have it.”
“I shall not want to go poking about,” said sour little Mary and just as suddenly as she had begun to be rather sorry for Mr. Archibald Craven she began to cease [28] to be sorry and to think he was unpleasant enough to deserve all that had happened to him.
Mary turned her face toward the streaming panes of the window of the railway carriage and gazed out at the gray rain-storm. Sooner she fell asleep.
Chapter III
Across The Moor
She slept a long time, and when she awakened Mrs. Medlock had bought a lunchbasket at one of the stations and they had some chicken and cold beef and bread and butter and some hot tea. The rain seemed to be streaming down more heavily than ever and everybody in the station wore wet and glistening [29] waterproofs. The guard lighted the lamps in the carriage, and Mrs. Medlock cheered up very much over her tea and chicken and beef. She ate a great deal and afterward fell asleep herself, and Mary sat and stared at her and watched her fine bonnet slip on one side until she herself fell asleep once more in the corner of the carriage, lulled [30] by the splashing of the rain against the windows. It was quite dark when she awakened again. The train had stopped at a station and Mrs. Medlock was shaking her.
“You have had a sleep!” she said. “It's time to open your eyes! We're at Thwaite Station and we've got a long drive before us.”
Mary stood up and Mrs. Medlock collected her parcels. The station was a small one. A smart carriage stood on the road before the outside platform. A smart footman helped them in and they drove off. Mary sat and looked out of the window thinking about the queer place Mrs. Medlock had spoken of.
“What is a moor?” she said suddenly to Mrs. Medlock.
“Look out of the window in about ten minutes and you'll see,” the woman answered. “We've got to drive five miles across Missel Moor before we get to the Manor. You won't see much because it's a dark night, but you can see something.” Mary asked no more questions but waited in the darkness of her corner, keeping her eyes on the window. The carriage lamps cast rays of light a little distance ahead of them and she caught glimpses of the things they passed. After they had left the station they had driven through a tiny village and she had seen whitewashed cottages and the lights of a public house. Then they had passed a church and a vicarage [31] and a little shop-window or so in a cottage with toys and sweets and odd things set our for sale. Then they were on the highroad and she saw hedges [32] and trees. After that there seemed nothing different for a long time-or at least it seemed a long time to her.
At last the horses began to go more slowly, as if they were climbing up the hill, and presently there seemed to be no more hedges and no more trees. She could see nothing. A wind was rising and making a singular, wild, low, rushing sound. It was just miles and miles and miles of wild land that nothing grows on and nothing lives on but wild ponies and sheep.On and on they drove through the darkness. The road went up and down, and several times the carriage passed over a little bridge beneath which water rushed very fast with a great deal of noise. Mary felt as if the drive would never come to an end and that the wide moor was a wide expanse of black ocean through which she was passing on a strip of dry land. At last the carriage passed through the park gates.
They drove out of the vault [33] into a clear space and stopped before an immensely long but low-built house which seemed to ramble round a stone court [34]. At first Mary thought that there were no lights at all in the windows, but as she got out of the carriage she saw that one room in a corner upstairs showed a dull glow.
The entrance door was a huge one made of massive, curiously shaped panels of oak studded with big iron nails and bound with great iron bars. It opened into an enormous hall, which was so dimly lighted that the faces in the portraits on the walls and the figures in the suits of armor [35] made Mary feel that she did not want to look at them. As she stood on the stone floor she looked a very small, odd little black figure, and she felt as small and lost and odd as she looked.
A neat, thin old man stood near the manservant who opened the door for them.
And then Mary Lennox was led up a broad staircase and down a long corridor and up a short flight of steps and through another corridor and another, until a door opened in a wall and she found herself in a room with a fire in it and a supper on a table.
Chapter IV
Martha
When she opened her eyes in the morning it was because a young housemaid had come into her room to light the fire and was kneeling on the hearth-rug raking out the cinders [36] [37] noisily. Mary lay and watched her for a few moments and then began to look about the room. She had never seen a room at all like it and thought it curious and gloomy. The walls were covered with tapestry [38] with a forest scene embroidered on it. There were fantastically dressed people under the trees and in the distance there was a glimpse of the turrets [39] of a castle. There were hunters and horses and dogs and ladies. Mary felt as if she were in the forest with them. Out of a deep window she could see a great climbing stretch of land which seemed to have no trees on it, and to look rather like an endless, dull, purplish sea.
After that Mary began to talk with the housemaid about the moor. The housemaid told her about it with great interest.
Mary listened to her with a grave, puzzled expression. The native servants she had been used to in India were not in the least like this. They were obsequious [40] and servile [41] [42] and did not presume to talk to their masters as if they were their equals. They made salaams'1 and called them “protector of the poor” and names of that sort. They say “please” and “thank you” and Mary had always slapped her Ayah in the face when she was angry. She wondered a little what this girl would do if one slapped her in the face. She was a round, rosy, good- natured-looking creature, but she had a sturdy way which made Mistress Mary wonder if she might not even slap back- if the person who slapped her was only a little girl.
“You are a strange servant,” she said from her pillows, rather haughtily.
Martha sat up on her heels, with her blacking-brush in her hand, and laughed, without seeming the least out of temper.
“Eh! I know that,” she said. “If there was a grand Missus at Misselthwaite I should never have been even one of th' under house-maids. I might have been let to be scullery maid [43]but I'd never have been let upstairs. I'm too common an' I talk too much Yorkshire. But this is a funny house for all it's so grand. Seems like there's neither Master nor Mistress except Mr. Pitcher an' Mrs. Medlock. Mr. Craven, he won't be troubled about anythin' when he's here, an' he's nearly always away. Mrs. Medlock gave me th' place out o' kindness. She told me she could never have done it if Misselthwaite had been like other big houses.”
“Are you going to be my servant?” Mary asked, still in her imperious little Indian way.
Martha began to rub her grate again.
Martha