Hello there and welcome to episode 16 of Down to Sleep, the podcast of softly spoken stories where I read to you every Monday to help you drift off and get to sleep.

If you'd like to support this podcast, you can join me at patreon.com slash down to sleep.

This is our 16th episode here, but there are 15 more episodes as every week there is a bonus reading on the

Patreon that is just for supporters of the podcast. Sometimes that is a continued reading of a book

that we have started here. We finished Alice in Wonderland. We're about to finish the Wizard of

Oz. Sometimes these are short stories, Oscar Wilde's short stories and stuff like that so come and join us

and support the podcast if you found it useful so far tonight i will be reading to you the secret garden

by francis hodgson burnett if you're unable to join us at the patreon and support that way maybe do

consider giving us a review in whatever app you were listening to

as that really helps this podcast get shared and more people can find us and join us for these book

readings. All right, take a nice deep breath, settle yourself down into bed, and let's begin the

secret garden. Chapter 1, There is no one left.

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misslethwaite Manor to live with her uncle,

everybody said she was the most disagreeable looking child ever seen.

It was true, too.

She had a little thin face and a little thin body,

thin light hair and a sour expression.

Her hair was yellow and her face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another. Her father had held a position under the English government and had

always been busy and got 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

...