Mary Reilly Read Online Free PDF

very nervous and surprised, as she rarely sees Master, beingalways in the kitchen, and she said, “Oh, sir, what is the hour? You mun be coming in for your lunch.”
    So Master come up to us and I gave up shovelling, feeling a little ashamed for I was sweating and dirty and I knew my face must be red from my struggle with the bushes, though I felt proud too, for there they were, got up on the flags and ready to be hauled off. Master said to Cook, “It’s only just past eleven. I was going in to write some letters before lunch. You might tell Poole I’ll take it in the library and there’s certainly no reason to hurry.”
    Cook bobbed him a curtsy and said, “Very good, sir,” and then to me, “I’ll be off to get cleaned up and the luncheon on, Mary. You may work a bit longer if you’re not tired.”
    I said I would and Cook hurried off, leaving me leaning on my shovel and Master gazing on me in my dirt. “Well, Mary,” he said. “Poole tells me we’re to have a garden.”
    “Yes, sir,” I said. “Cook says we may have herbs here and she knows the way of gardening.”
    “You don’t know the way yourself?”
    “No, sir,” I said. “We had some potted geraniums once, at the Marley School, and that’s as close as I’ve been to growing anything.”
    Master seemed to light up with interest at my reply. “The Marley School, Mary?” he said. “Why, that is one of my projects.”
    “Truly, sir? You mean you was a teacher there?”
    “No, Mary,” he said, seeming to think my idea a funny one. “I’ve never seen the school. But it was partly my idea and I gave the money for the building and I am on the board still. We see to the running of the school.”
    I thought it odd that Master would be running a school he never saw, and then I thought if he saw what went on there he might not be looking so pleased, but that made me feel sorry for Master, with his good intentions and his seeming so pleased to find I was a pupil there, so I only said, “It’s where I learned to read, sir, so I’m grateful to you.”
    This delighted Master so his face broke into a smile, as if someone had given him a fine present, and he seemed almost shy to have my thanks for he said, “Well, Mary. So. That’s very fine, very gratifying to me. It seems remarkable really, that you should go to my school and end up in my house.”
    Then I had such a mean thought it left me speechless, for it was this, that considering how rough the school was, it was a wonder I could read and had got as far as I have in the world, which surely even Master mun see isn’t very far. So I said nothing, but wiped my sweating forehead on my sleeve and stood looking at Master across the dirt feeling all the world was standing between us and we’d no way ever to cross it, but also that somehow we was also two sides of the same coin, doing our different work in the same house and as close, without speaking, as a dog and his shadow.
    Master’s smile faded and we looked at each other a moment longer, me feeling no shame at my dirt, butrather proud. Then Master looked down at the shovel pressed in the dirt and said, “Well then, Mary. Good luck with your gardening,” and he turned away and went into the house.
    So I continued my digging but I felt strange somehow, as if my work would come to no good end and the garden would never be as it was in my imagination, but only a poor stunted, blighted place where nothing would prosper no matter how much Cook and I might try. And I thought of Master who was so kind and thoughtful today, not distant as he used to seem before we had our talk and he read my history, and I remembered the question he had asked as to whether I hated my father for his ill use of me and how I had failed to answer it and Master had not pressed me, for he must have seen what I now understood, that I hadn’t answered because I don’t know the answer.
    I believe to hate my father would be to give in and make small my real feeling which is