The (Garden) Wall - Mrs. Jenny Matlock's Saturday Centus Week 58

Saturday Centus is Mrs. Jenny Matlock's writing theme in which participants are asked to write a story with a limited number of words based upon a given prompt and are to keep the content and language PG (=decent enough for children to read).

This week's prompt is "The wall was built long ago".

Normally we only get to use 100 words (the name "Centus" means 100) but this week we are allotted up to 200 words besides the six words of the prompt! Yippee!

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Here is my text:

Ten-year-old Melany Turnbull had returned to England, after her parents had died of cholera in India. She came to live with distant relatives in a huge house with hundreds of rooms. No one seemed to care much about Melany, so she wandered alone to amuse herself. One day she discovered her invalid cousin, Cedric, in one of the rooms. He seemed to have lost interest in life. Melany thought that it might help him to breathe some fresh air, so she pushed him in his wheel-chair out to the rose-garden.

There was a wall on one side of the rose-garden that had a locked door. The wall was built long ago, at the same time as the manor. Melany climbed one of the apple trees to get a better look. She saw that there was an overgrown, neglected, but probably a once very beautiful, garden there. A secret garden. Cook said that her ladyship had loved flowers and that this was her own garden. When her ladyship suddenly died, his lordship was heart-broken and locked the door. He never let anyone in the garden again.

Melany was determned to see the secret garden and then show Cedric. But first she needed to find the key.

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Wordcount acording to WordCalc: 200

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Best wishes,

Anna

P.S.

This text is essentially a summary of the well-known children's classic The Secret Garden. I am not being very original this week. I am just taking this story as the starting point for this excerise. I have changed the names. They are not Melany and Cedric. I have the book at home, but I am too lazy to look up what their names are. I loved reading this novel. I read it first as an adult. I highly recommend it.

First Commenter:

xxx

To read other texts using this prompt, please go the this site or click on the image below: