Mistress Mary quite contrary How does your garden grow With silver bells and cockle shells And marigolds all in a row When Mary Lennox was sent to live at Misselthwaite Manor everyone said she was the most disagreeable looking child they had ever seen It was true too She had a thin little face and a sour expression And her insides were sour too She was as spoiled as spoiled could be and she had seldom if ever been happy But as with many things in life the beauty in the story of Mary Lennox is not in how things began it is in how they came to be
Before Mary arrived at Misselthwaite Manor she had lived her whole life in a big beautiful exotic home in India Growing up she had been mostly ignored by her parents and pandered to by everyone else The servants who took care of Mary had orders to simply keep her quiet so they responded to any outbursts by indulging her every whim This inevitably led to Mary being a very spoiled and very stubborn child
When Mary was ten years old a cholera outbreak swept through her home and left her an orphan No one in India wanted Mary so it was decided she would be shipped off to her uncle Mr Craven who lived at Misselthwaite Manor in England a place she knew nothing about Mary felt it was the worst thing ever to happen yet it may just have been what saved her
