When Mary finished playing with the horse, she investigated the wooden chest in one corner of the room. There were some very old toys inside. Most of them didn’t interest her—a tin of metal soldiers with the paint peeling off, a spinning top and a jack-in-the-box. But she did take out a skipping rope with wooden handles. She tried skipping a few steps in the room, but realized she needed more space.

I could take it outside and skip in the gardens, she thought.

She peered around her bedroom door. Mrs. Medlock had told her that she could not explore, but why? I’m not a prisoner, she thought mutinously. And this is my uncle’s house. I’m sure he doesn’t intend for me to be kept in my room at all times.

She put the skipping rope in the large front pocket of her dress and set off down the corridor. She wasn’t sure where she was going, but she felt it was important to show Mrs. Medlock that she was not going to be ordered around.

A pale light came in through the stone windows, illuminating the bare boards on the floor and the paintings on the walls. Mary looked out of the windows to the back of the house, expecting to see landscaped gardens, but to her surprise she saw a sea of mud and ruts. It looked as if some of the soldiers who had used the house during the war had been camped out there.

Mary remembered what Mrs. Medlock had said—It’s not the house it was. . . .—and suddenly she felt sorry for the old place. It looked like it had once been loved, but now it was falling apart and neglected.

She continued on and reached a large open door. She peered inside and saw a room with a high ceiling, a polished wooden floor, and lots of bookshelves. It looked like it might once have been the library, but now it was stacked with chairs and tables and cases of stuffed animals. Mary shrank back into the shadows of the corridor as she saw her uncle and Mrs. Medlock standing by a pile of paintings at the far end of the room. They were in the middle of a heated discussion.

“It doesn’t matter, Mrs. Medlock,” Mary’s uncle was saying. “These are of no importance.”

“We can’t just leave them all piled up like this,” the housekeeper protested.

“Well, get rid of them, then. Throw them away. Burn them. I don’t care!”

“But, sir.” Mrs. Medlock picked up a portrait of a woman’s head. “What about this one?”

Mary saw a muscle jump in her uncle’s jaw. “Please,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t need to be reminded of her. She’s gone.”