"Barney!" he cried out. "There is a child here! A child alone! In a
place like this! Mercy on us, who is she!"

"I am Mary Lennox," the little girl said, drawing herself up stiffly.
She thought the man was very rude to call her father's bungalow "A place
like this!" "I fell asleep when every one had the cholera and I have
only just wakened up. Why does nobody come?"

"It is the child no one ever saw!" exclaimed the man, turning to his
companions. "She has actually been forgotten!"

"Why was I forgotten?" Mary said, stamping her foot. "Why does nobody
come?"

The young man whose name was Barney looked at her very sadly. Mary even
thought she saw him wink his eyes as if to wink tears away.

"Poor little kid!" he said. "There is nobody left to come."

It was in that strange and sudden way that Mary found out that she had
neither father nor mother left; that they had died and been carried away
in the night, and that the few native servants who had not died also had
left the house as quickly as they could get out of it, none of them even
remembering that there was a Missie Sahib. That was why the place was so
quiet. It was true that there was no one in the bungalow but herself and
the little rustling snake.