Perhaps she will improve as she grows older, the officer s wife said
good-naturedly. If she were not so sallow and had a nicer expression,
her features are rather good. Children alter so much.
She ll have to alter a good deal, answered Mrs. Medlock. And,
there s nothing likely to improve children at Misselthwaite if you ask
me!
They thought Mary was not listening because she was standing a little
apart from them at the window of the private hotel they had gone to.
She was watching the passing buses and cabs and people, but she heard
quite well and was made very curious about her uncle and the place he
lived in. What sort of a place was it, and what would he be like? What
was a hunchback? She had never seen one. Perhaps there were none in
India.
Since she had been living in other people s houses and had had no Ayah,
she had begun to feel lonely and to think queer thoughts which were new
to her. She had begun to wonder why she had never seemed to belong to
anyone even when her father and mother had been alive. Other children
seemed to belong to their fathers and mothers, but she had never seemed
to really be anyone s little girl. She had had servants, and food and
clothes, but no one had taken any notice of her. She did not know that
this was because she was a disagreeable child; but then, of course, she
did not know she was disagreeable. She often thought that other people
were, but she did not know that she was so herself.
She thought Mrs. Medlock the most disagreeable person she had ever
seen, with her common, highly colored face and her common fine bonnet.
When the next day they set out on their journey to Yorkshire, she
walked through the station to the railway carriage with her head up and
trying to keep as far away from her as she could, because she did not
want to seem to belong to her. It would have made her angry to think
people imagined she was her little girl.
But Mrs. Medlock was not in the least disturbed by her and her
thoughts. She was the kind of woman who would stand no nonsense from
young ones. At least, that is what she would have said if she had been
asked. She had not wanted to go to London just when her sister Maria s
daughter was going to be married, but she had a comfortable, well paid
10