Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and her mother had
been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself
with gay people. 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. So when she was a sickly,
fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and when she
became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the way
also. 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. The
young English governess who came to teach her to read and write disliked
her so much that she gave up her place in three months, and when other
governesses came to try to fill it they always went away in a shorter
time than the first one. So if Mary had not chosen to really want to
know how to read books she would never have learned her letters at all.

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.

"Why did you come?" she said to the strange woman. "I will not let you
stay. Send my Ayah to me."

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.