CHAPTER II 10
She knew that she was not going to stay at the English clergyman ' s house where she was taken at first. She did not want to stay. The English clergyman was poor and he had five children nearly all the same age and they wore shabby clothes and were always quarreling and snatching toys from each other. Mary hated their untidy bungalow and was so disagreeable to them that after the first day or two nobody would play with her. By the second day they had given her a nickname which made her furious.
It was Basil who thought of it first. Basil was a little boy with impudent blue eyes and a turned-up nose and Mary hated him. She was playing by herself under a tree, just as she had been playing the day the cholera broke out. She was making heaps of earth and paths for a garden and Basil came and stood near to watch her. Presently he got rather interested and suddenly made a suggestion.
" Why don ' t you put a heap of stones there and pretend it is a rockery?" he said. " There in the middle," and he leaned over her to point.
" Go away!" cried Mary. " I don ' t want boys. Go away!"
For a moment Basil looked angry, and then he began to tease. He was always teasing his sisters. He danced round and round her and made faces and sang and laughed.
" Mistress Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With silver bells, and cockle shells, And marigolds all in a row."
He sang it until the other children heard and laughed, too; and the crosser Mary got, the more they sang " Mistress Mary, quite contrary "; and after that as long as she stayed with them they called her " Mistress Mary Quite Contrary " when they spoke of her to each other, and often when they spoke to her.
" You are going to be sent home," Basil said to her, " at the end of the week. And we ' re glad of it."