"I am Mary Lennox. Mr. Craven is my uncle."

"He is my father," said the boy.

"Your father!" gasped Mary. "No one ever told me he had a boy! Why
didn't they?"

"Come here," he said, still keeping his strange eyes fixed on her with
an anxious expression.

She came close to the bed and he put out his hand and touched her.

"You are real, aren't you?" he said. "I have such real dreams very
often. You might be one of them."

Mary had slipped on a woolen wrapper before she left her room and she
put a piece of it between his fingers.

"Rub that and see how thick and warm it is," she said. "I will pinch you
a little if you like, to show you how real I am. For a minute I thought
you might be a dream too."

"Where did you come from?" he asked.

"From my own room. The wind wuthered so I couldn't go to sleep and I
heard some one crying and wanted to find out who it was. What were you
crying for?"

"Because I couldn't go to sleep either and my head ached. Tell me your
name again."

"Mary Lennox. Did no one ever tell you I had come to live here?"

He was still fingering the fold of her wrapper, but he began to look a
little more as if he believed in her reality.

"No," he answered. "They daren't."

"Why?" asked Mary.

"Because I should have been afraid you would see me. I won't let people
see me and talk me over."

"Why?" Mary asked again, feeling more mystified every moment.

"Because I am like this always, ill and having to lie down. My father
won't let people talk me over either. The servants are not allowed to
speak about me. If I live I may be a hunchback, but I shan't live. My
father hates to think I may be like him."

"Oh, what a queer house this is!" Mary said. "What a queer house!
Everything is a kind of secret. Rooms are locked up and gardens are
locked up--and you! Have you been locked up?"

"No. I stay in this room because I don't want to be moved out of it. It
tires me too much."

"Does your father come and see you?" Mary ventured.

"Sometimes. Generally when I am asleep. He doesn't want to see me."

"Why?" Mary could not help asking again.

A sort of angry shadow passed over the boy's face.

"My mother died when I was born and it makes him wretched to look at me.
He thinks I don't know, but I've heard people talking. He almost hates
me."

"He hates the garden, because she died," said Mary half speaking to
herself.

"What garden?" the boy asked.

"Oh! just--just a garden she used