1 "My Ayah did it," answered Mary, staring.
2 But no one would tell her anything and her Ayah did not come.
3 She wondered also who would take care of her now her Ayah was dead.
4 There would be a new Ayah, and perhaps she would know some new stories.
5 When her Ayah was dead there was no one to give a thought to the little thing.
6 Shut your eyes," said Mary, drawing her footstool closer, "and I will do what my Ayah used to do in India.
7 In India she had always been attended by her Ayah, who had followed her about and waited on her, hand and foot.
8 The Ayah had been taken ill in the night, and it was because she had just died that the servants had wailed in the huts.
9 It was not the custom to say "please" and "thank you" and Mary had always slapped her Ayah in the face when she was angry.
10 Mary Lennox had heard a great deal about Magic in her Ayah's stories, and she always said that what happened almost at that moment was Magic.
11 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.
12 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.
13 One frightfully hot morning, when she was about nine years old, she awakened feeling very cross, and she became crosser still when she saw that the servant who stood by her bedside was not her Ayah.
14 The stories she had been told by her Ayah when she lived in India had been quite unlike those Martha had to tell about the moorland cottage which held fourteen people who lived in four little rooms and never had quite enough to eat.
15 She had not wanted a little girl at all, and when Mary was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah, who was made to understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib she must keep the child out of sight as much as possible.
16 The woman looked frightened, but she only stammered that the Ayah could not come and when Mary threw herself into a passion and beat and kicked her, she looked only more frightened and repeated that it was not possible for the Ayah to come to Missie Sahib.
17 She never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the dark faces of her Ayah and the other native servants, and as they always obeyed her and gave her her own way in everything, because the Mem Sahib would be angry if she was disturbed by her crying, by the time she was six years old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived.
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