CHAPTER II
MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY
Mary had liked to look at her mother from a distance and she had
thought her very pretty, but as she knew very little of her she could
scarcely have been expected to love her or to miss her very much when
she was gone. She did not miss her at all, in fact, and as she was a
self-absorbed child she gave her entire thought to herself, as she had
always done. If she had been older she would no doubt have been very
anxious at being left alone in the world, but she was very young, and
as she had always been taken care of, she supposed she always would be.
What she thought was that she would like to know if she was going to
nice people, who would be polite to her and give her her own way as her
Ayah and the other native servants had done.
She knew that she was not going to stay at the English clergyman’s
house where she was taken at first. She did not want to stay. The
English clergyman was poor and he had five children nearly all the same
age and they wore shabby clothes and were always quarrelling and
snatching toys from each other. Mary hated their untidy bungalow and
was so disagreeable to them that after the first day or two nobody
would play with her. By the second day they had given her a nickname
which made her furious.
It was Basil who thought of it first. Basil was a little boy with
impudent blue eyes and a turned-up nose, and Mary hated him. She was
playing by herself under a tree, just as she had been playing the day
the cholera broke out. She was making heaps of earth and paths for a
garden and Basil came and stood near to watch her. Presently he got
rather interested and suddenly made a suggestion.
“Why don’t you put a heap of stones there and pretend it is a rockery?”
he said. “There in the middle,” and he leaned over her to point.
“Go away!” cried Mary. “I don’t want boys. Go away!”
For a moment Basil looked angry, and then he began to tease. He was
always teasing his sisters. He danced round and round her and made
faces and sang and laughed.
“Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And marigolds all in a row.”
He sang it until the other children heard and laughed, too; and the
crosser Mary got, the more they sang “Mistress Mary, quite contrary”;
and after that as long as she stayed with them they called her
“Mistress Mary Quite Contrary” when they spoke of her to each other,
and often when they spoke to her.
