A Little Princess

1

Sara

Once on a dark winter’s day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares.

She sat with her feet tucked under her, and leaned against her father, who held her in his arm, as she stared out of the window at the passing people with a queer old-fashioned thoughtfulness in her big eyes.

She was such a little girl that one did not expect to see such a look on her small face.  It would have been an old look for a child of twelve, and Sara Crewe was only seven.  The fact was, however, that she was always dreaming and thinking odd things and could not herself remember any time when she had not been thinking things about grown-up people and the world they belonged to.  She felt as if she had lived a long, long time.

At this moment she was remembering the voyage she had just made from Bombay with her father, Captain Crewe.  She was thinking of the big ship, of the Lascars passing silently to and fro on it, of the children playing about on the hot deck, and of some young officers’ wives who used to try to make her talk to them and laugh at the things she said.

Principally, she was thinking of what a queer thing it was that at one time one was in India in the blazing sun, and then in the middle of the ocean, and then driving in a strange vehicle through strange streets where the day was as dark as the night.  She found this so puzzling that she moved closer to her father.

“Papa,” she said in a low, mysterious little voice which was almost a whisper, “papa.”

“What is it, darling?” Captain Crewe answered, holding her closer and looking down into her face.  “What is Sara thinking of?”

“Is this the place?” Sara whispered, cuddling still closer to him.  “Is it, papa?”

“Yes, little Sara, it is.  We have reached it at last.”  And though she was only seven years old, she knew that he felt sad when he said it.

It seemed to her many years since he had begun to prepare her mind for “the place,” as she always called it.  Her mother had died when she was born, so she had never known or missed her.  Her young, handsome, rich, petting father seemed to be the only relation she had in the world.  They had always played together and been fond of each other.  She only knew he was rich because she had heard people say so when they thought she was not listening, and she had also heard them say that when she grew up she would be rich, too.  She did not know all that being rich meant.  She had always lived in a beautiful bungalow, and had been used to seeing many servants who made salaams to her and called her “Missee Sahib,” and gave her her own way in everything.  She had had toys and pets and an ayah who worshipped her, and she had gradually learned that people who were rich had these things.  That, however, was all she knew about it.

During her short life only one thing had troubled her, and that thing was “the place” she was to be taken to some day.  The climate of India was very bad for children, and as soon as possible they were sent away from it—­generally to England and to school.  She had seen other children go away, and had heard their fathers and mothers talk about the letters they received from them.  She had known that she would be obliged to go also, and though sometimes her father’s stories of the voyage and the new country had attracted her, she had been troubled by the thought that he could not stay with her.

“Couldn’t you go to that place with me, papa?” she had asked when she was five years old.  “Couldn’t you go to school, too?  I would help you with your lessons.”

“But you will not have to stay for a very long time, little Sara,” he had always said.  “You will go to a nice house where there will be a lot of little girls, and you will play together, and I will send you plenty of books, and you will grow so fast that it will seem scarcely a year before you are big enough and clever enough to come back and take care of papa.”

She had liked to think of that.  To keep the house for her father; to ride with him, and sit at the head of his table when he had dinner parties; to talk to him and read his books—­that would be what she would like most in the world, and if one must go away to “the place” in England to attain it, she must make up her mind to go.  She did not care very much for other little girls, but if she had plenty of books she could console herself.  She liked books more than anything else, and was, in fact, always inventing stories of beautiful things and telling them to herself.  Sometimes she had told them to her father, and he had liked them as much as she did.

“Well, papa,” she said softly, “if we are here I suppose we must be resigned.”

He laughed at her old-fashioned speech and kissed her.  He was really not at all resigned himself, though he knew he must keep that a secret.  His quaint little Sara had been a great companion to him, and he felt he should be a lonely fellow when, on his return to India, he went into his bungalow knowing he need not expect to see the small figure in its white frock come forward to meet him.  So he held her very closely in his arms as the cab rolled into the big, dull square in which stood the house which was their destination.

It was a big, dull, brick house, exactly like all the others in its row, but that on the front door there shone a brass plate on which was engraved in black letters: 

Miss Minchin,

Select Seminary for Young Ladies.

“Here we are, Sara,” said Captain Crewe, making his voice sound as cheerful as possible.  Then he lifted her out of the cab and they mounted the steps and rang the bell.  Sara often thought afterward that the house was somehow exactly like Miss Minchin.  It was respectable and well furnished, but everything in it was ugly; and the very armchairs seemed to have hard bones in them.  In the hall everything was hard and polished—­even the red cheeks of the moon face on the tall clock in the corner had a severe varnished look.  The drawing room into which they were ushered was covered by a carpet with a square pattern upon it, the chairs were square, and a heavy marble timepiece stood upon the heavy marble mantel.

As she sat down in one of the stiff mahogany chairs, Sara cast one of her quick looks about her.

“I don’t like it, papa,” she said.  “But then I dare say soldiers—­ even brave ones—­don’t really like going into battle.”

Captain Crewe laughed outright at this.  He was young and full of fun, and he never tired of hearing Sara’s queer speeches.

“Oh, little Sara,” he said.  “What shall I do when I have no one to say solemn things to me?  No one else is as solemn as you are.”

“But why do solemn things make you laugh so?” inquired Sara.

“Because you are such fun when you say them,” he answered, laughing still more.  And then suddenly he swept her into his arms and kissed her very hard, stopping laughing all at once and looking almost as if tears had come into his eyes.

It was just then that Miss Minchin entered the room.  She was very like her house, Sara felt:  tall and dull, and respectable and ugly.  She had large, cold, fishy eyes, and a large, cold, fishy smile.  It spread itself into a very large smile when she saw Sara and Captain Crewe.  She had heard a great many desirable things of the young soldier from the lady who had recommended her school to him.  Among other things, she had heard that he was a rich father who was willing to spend a great deal of money on his little daughter.

“It will be a great privilege to have charge of such a beautiful and promising child, Captain Crewe,” she said, taking Sara’s hand and stroking it.  “Lady Meredith has told me of her unusual cleverness.  A clever child is a great treasure in an establishment like mine.”

Sara stood quietly, with her eyes fixed upon Miss Minchin’s face.  She was thinking something odd, as usual.

“Why does she say I am a beautiful child?” she was thinking.  “I am not beautiful at all.  Colonel Grange’s little girl, Isobel, is beautiful.  She has dimples and rose-colored cheeks, and long hair the color of gold.  I have short black hair and green eyes; besides which, I am a thin child and not fair in the least.  I am one of the ugliest children I ever saw.  She is beginning by telling a story.”

She was mistaken, however, in thinking she was an ugly child.  She was not in the least like Isobel Grange, who had been the beauty of the regiment, but she had an odd charm of her own.  She was a slim, supple creature, rather tall for her age, and had an intense, attractive little face.  Her hair was heavy and quite black and only curled at the tips; her eyes were greenish gray, it is true, but they were big, wonderful eyes with long, black lashes, and though she herself did not like the color of them, many other people did.  Still she was very firm in her belief that she was an ugly little girl, and she was not at all elated by Miss Minchin’s flattery.

“I should be telling a story if I said she was beautiful,” she thought; “and I should know I was telling a story.  I believe I am as ugly as she is—­in my way.  What did she say that for?”

After she had known Miss Minchin longer she learned why she had said it.  She discovered that she said the same thing to each papa and mamma who brought a child to her school.

Sara stood near her father and listened while he and Miss Minchin talked.  She had been brought to the seminary because Lady Meredith’s two little girls had been educated there, and Captain Crewe had a great respect for Lady Meredith’s experience.  Sara was to be what was known as “a parlor boarder,” and she was to enjoy even greater privileges than parlor boarders usually did.  She was to have a pretty bedroom and sitting room of her own; she was to have a pony and a carriage, and a maid to take the place of the ayah who had been her nurse in India.

“I am not in the least anxious about her education,” Captain Crewe said, with his gay laugh, as he held Sara’s hand and patted it.  “The difficulty will be to keep her from learning too fast and too much.  She is always sitting with her little nose burrowing into books.  She doesn’t read them, Miss Minchin; she gobbles them up as if she were a little wolf instead of a little girl.  She is always starving for new books to gobble, and she wants grown-up books—­great, big, fat ones—­French and German as well as English—­history and biography and poets, and all sorts of things.  Drag her away from her books when she reads too much.  Make her ride her pony in the Row or go out and buy a new doll.  She ought to play more with dolls.”

“Papa,” said Sara, “you see, if I went out and bought a new doll every few days I should have more than I could be fond of.  Dolls ought to be intimate friends.  Emily is going to be my intimate friend.”

Captain Crewe looked at Miss Minchin and Miss Minchin looked at Captain Crewe.

“Who is Emily?” she inquired.

“Tell her, Sara,” Captain Crewe said, smiling.

Sara’s green-gray eyes looked very solemn and quite soft as she answered.

“She is a doll I haven’t got yet,” she said.  “She is a doll papa is going to buy for me.  We are going out together to find her.  I have called her Emily.  She is going to be my friend when papa is gone.  I want her to talk to about him.”

Miss Minchin’s large, fishy smile became very flattering indeed.

“What an original child!” she said.  “What a darling little creature!”

“Yes,” said Captain Crewe, drawing Sara close.  “She is a darling little creature.  Take great care of her for me, Miss Minchin.”

Sara stayed with her father at his hotel for several days; in fact, she remained with him until he sailed away again to India.  They went out and visited many big shops together, and bought a great many things.  They bought, indeed, a great many more things than Sara needed; but Captain Crewe was a rash, innocent young man and wanted his little girl to have everything she admired and everything he admired himself, so between them they collected a wardrobe much too grand for a child of seven.  There were velvet dresses trimmed with costly furs, and lace dresses, and embroidered ones, and hats with great, soft ostrich feathers, and ermine coats and muffs, and boxes of tiny gloves and handkerchiefs and silk stockings in such abundant supplies that the polite young women behind the counters whispered to each other that the odd little girl with the big, solemn eyes must be at least some foreign princess—­perhaps the little daughter of an Indian rajah.

And at last they found Emily, but they went to a number of toy shops and looked at a great many dolls before they discovered her.

“I want her to look as if she wasn’t a doll really,” Sara said.  “I want her to look as if she LISTENS when I talk to her.  The trouble with dolls, papa”—­and she put her head on one side and reflected as she said it—­“the trouble with dolls is that they never seem to hear.”  So they looked at big ones and little ones—­ at dolls with black eyes and dolls with blue—­at dolls with brown curls and dolls with golden braids, dolls dressed and dolls undressed.

“You see,” Sara said when they were examining one who had no clothes.  “If, when I find her, she has no frocks, we can take her to a dressmaker and have her things made to fit.  They will fit better if they are tried on.”

After a number of disappointments they decided to walk and look in at the shop windows and let the cab follow them.  They had passed two or three places without even going in, when, as they were approaching a shop which was really not a very large one, Sara suddenly started and clutched her father’s arm.

“Oh, papa!” she cried.  “There is Emily!”

A flush had risen to her face and there was an expression in her green-gray eyes as if she had just recognized someone she was intimate with and fond of.

“She is actually waiting there for us!” she said.  “Let us go in to her.”

“Dear me,” said Captain Crewe, “I feel as if we ought to have someone to introduce us.”

“You must introduce me and I will introduce you,” said Sara.  “But I knew her the minute I saw her—­so perhaps she knew me, too.”

Perhaps she had known her.  She had certainly a very intelligent expression in her eyes when Sara took her in her arms.  She was a large doll, but not too large to carry about easily; she had naturally curling golden-brown hair, which hung like a mantle about her, and her eyes were a deep, clear, gray-blue, with soft, thick eyelashes which were real eyelashes and not mere painted lines.

“Of course,” said Sara, looking into her face as she held her on her knee, “of course papa, this is Emily.”

So Emily was bought and actually taken to a children’s outfitter’s shop and measured for a wardrobe as grand as Sara’s own.  She had lace frocks, too, and velvet and muslin ones, and hats and coats and beautiful lace-trimmed underclothes, and gloves and handkerchiefs and furs.

“I should like her always to look as if she was a child with a good mother,” said Sara.  “I’m her mother, though I am going to make a companion of her.”

Captain Crewe would really have enjoyed the shopping tremendously, but that a sad thought kept tugging at his heart.  This all meant that he was going to be separated from his beloved, quaint little comrade.

He got out of his bed in the middle of that night and went and stood looking down at Sara, who lay asleep with Emily in her arms.  Her black hair was spread out on the pillow and Emily’s golden-brown hair mingled with it, both of them had lace-ruffled nightgowns, and both had long eyelashes which lay and curled up on their cheeks.  Emily looked so like a real child that Captain Crewe felt glad she was there.  He drew a big sigh and pulled his mustache with a boyish expression.

“Heigh-ho, little Sara!” he said to himself “I don’t believe you know how much your daddy will miss you.”

The next day he took her to Miss Minchin’s and left her there.  He was to sail away the next morning.  He explained to Miss Minchin that his solicitors, Messrs. Barrow & Skipworth, had charge of his affairs in England and would give her any advice she wanted, and that they would pay the bills she sent in for Sara’s expenses.  He would write to Sara twice a week, and she was to be given every pleasure she asked for.

“She is a sensible little thing, and she never wants anything it isn’t safe to give her,” he said.

Then he went with Sara into her little sitting room and they bade each other good-by.  Sara sat on his knee and held the lapels of his coat in her small hands, and looked long and hard at his face.

“Are you learning me by heart, little Sara?” he said, stroking her hair.

“No,” she answered.  “I know you by heart.  You are inside my heart.”  And they put their arms round each other and kissed as if they would never let each other go.

When the cab drove away from the door, Sara was sitting on the floor of her sitting room, with her hands under her chin and her eyes following it until it had turned the corner of the square.  Emily was sitting by her, and she looked after it, too.  When Miss Minchin sent her sister, Miss Amelia, to see what the child was doing, she found she could not open the door.

“I have locked it,” said a queer, polite little voice from inside.  “I want to be quite by myself, if you please.”

Miss Amelia was fat and dumpy, and stood very much in awe of her sister.  She was really the better-natured person of the two, but she never disobeyed Miss Minchin.  She went downstairs again, looking almost alarmed.

“I never saw such a funny, old-fashioned child, sister,” she said.  “She has locked herself in, and she is not making the least particle of noise.”

“It is much better than if she kicked and screamed, as some of them do,” Miss Minchin answered.  “I expected that a child as much spoiled as she is would set the whole house in an uproar.  If ever a child was given her own way in everything, she is.”

“I’ve been opening her trunks and putting her things away,” said Miss Amelia.  “I never saw anything like them—­sable and ermine on her coats, and real Valenciennes lace on her underclothing.  You have seen some of her clothes.  What do you think of them?”

“I think they are perfectly ridiculous,” replied Miss Minchin, sharply; “but they will look very well at the head of the line when we take the schoolchildren to church on Sunday.  She has been provided for as if she were a little princess.”

And upstairs in the locked room Sara and Emily sat on the floor and stared at the corner round which the cab had disappeared, while Captain Crewe looked backward, waving and kissing his hand as if he could not bear to stop.

2

A French Lesson

When Sara entered the schoolroom the next morning everybody looked at her with wide, interested eyes.  By that time every pupil—­ from Lavinia Herbert, who was nearly thirteen and felt quite grown up, to Lottie Legh, who was only just four and the baby of the school—­ had heard a great deal about her.  They knew very certainly that she was Miss Minchin’s show pupil and was considered a credit to the establishment.  One or two of them had even caught a glimpse of her French maid, Mariette, who had arrived the evening before.  Lavinia had managed to pass Sara’s room when the door was open, and had seen Mariette opening a box which had arrived late from some shop.

“It was full of petticoats with lace frills on them—­frills and frills,” she whispered to her friend Jessie as she bent over her geography.  “I saw her shaking them out.  I heard Miss Minchin say to Miss Amelia that her clothes were so grand that they were ridiculous for a child.  My mamma says that children should be dressed simply.  She has got one of those petticoats on now.  I saw it when she sat down.”

“She has silk stockings on!” whispered Jessie, bending over her geography also.  “And what little feet!  I never saw such little feet.”

“Oh,” sniffed Lavinia, spitefully, “that is the way her slippers are made.  My mamma says that even big feet can be made to look small if you have a clever shoemaker.  I don’t think she is pretty at all.  Her eyes are such a queer color.”

“She isn’t pretty as other pretty people are,” said Jessie, stealing a glance across the room; “but she makes you want to look at her again.  She has tremendously long eyelashes, but her eyes are almost green.”

Sara was sitting quietly in her seat, waiting to be told what to do.  She had been placed near Miss Minchin’s desk.  She was not abashed at all by the many pairs of eyes watching her.  She was interested and looked back quietly at the children who looked at her.  She wondered what they were thinking of, and if they liked Miss Minchin, and if they cared for their lessons, and if any of them had a papa at all like her own.  She had had a long talk with Emily about her papa that morning.

“He is on the sea now, Emily,” she had said.  “We must be very great friends to each other and tell each other things.  Emily, look at me.  You have the nicest eyes I ever saw—­but I wish you could speak.”

She was a child full of imaginings and whimsical thoughts, and one of her fancies was that there would be a great deal of comfort in even pretending that Emily was alive and really heard and understood.  After Mariette had dressed her in her dark-blue schoolroom frock and tied her hair with a dark-blue ribbon, she went to Emily, who sat in a chair of her own, and gave her a book.

“You can read that while I am downstairs,” she said; and, seeing Mariette looking at her curiously, she spoke to her with a serious little face.

“What I believe about dolls,” she said, “is that they can do things they will not let us know about.  Perhaps, really, Emily can read and talk and walk, but she will only do it when people are out of the room.  That is her secret.  You see, if people knew that dolls could do things, they would make them work.  So, perhaps, they have promised each other to keep it a secret.  If you stay in the room, Emily will just sit there and stare; but if you go out, she will begin to read, perhaps, or go and look out of the window.  Then if she heard either of us coming, she would just run back and jump into her chair and pretend she had been there all the time.”

“Comme elle est drole!” Mariette said to herself, and when she went downstairs she told the head housemaid about it.  But she had already begun to like this odd little girl who had such an intelligent small face and such perfect manners.  She had taken care of children before who were not so polite.  Sara was a very fine little person, and had a gentle, appreciative way of saying, “If you please, Mariette,” “Thank you, Mariette,” which was very charming.  Mariette told the head housemaid that she thanked her as if she was thanking a lady.

“Elle a l’air d’une princesse, cette petite,” she said.  Indeed, she was very much pleased with her new little mistress and liked her place greatly.

After Sara had sat in her seat in the schoolroom for a few minutes, being looked at by the pupils, Miss Minchin rapped in a dignified manner upon her desk.

“Young ladies,” she said, “I wish to introduce you to your new companion.”  All the little girls rose in their places, and Sara rose also.  “I shall expect you all to be very agreeable to Miss Crewe; she has just come to us from a great distance—­in fact, from India.  As soon as lessons are over you must make each other’s acquaintance.”

The pupils bowed ceremoniously, and Sara made a little curtsy, and then they sat down and looked at each other again.

“Sara,” said Miss Minchin in her schoolroom manner, “come here to me.”

She had taken a book from the desk and was turning over its leaves.  Sara went to her politely.

“As your papa has engaged a French maid for you,” she began, “I conclude that he wishes you to make a special study of the French language.”

Sara felt a little awkward.

“I think he engaged her,” she said, “because he—­he thought I would like her, Miss Minchin.”

“I am afraid,” said Miss Minchin, with a slightly sour smile, “that you have been a very spoiled little girl and always imagine that things are done because you like them.  My impression is that your papa wished you to learn French.”

If Sara had been older or less punctilious about being quite polite to people, she could have explained herself in a very few words.  But, as it was, she felt a flush rising on her cheeks.  Miss Minchin was a very severe and imposing person, and she seemed so absolutely sure that Sara knew nothing whatever of French that she felt as if it would be almost rude to correct her.  The truth was that Sara could not remember the time when she had not seemed to know French.  Her father had often spoken it to her when she had been a baby.  Her mother had been a French woman, and Captain Crewe had loved her language, so it happened that Sara had always heard and been familiar with it.

“I—­I have never really learned French, but—­but—­” she began, trying shyly to make herself clear.

One of Miss Minchin’s chief secret annoyances was that she did not speak French herself, and was desirous of concealing the irritating fact.  She, therefore, had no intention of discussing the matter and laying herself open to innocent questioning by a new little pupil.

“That is enough,” she said with polite tartness.  “If you have not learned, you must begin at once.  The French master, Monsieur Dufarge, will be here in a few minutes.  Take this book and look at it until he arrives.”

Sara’s cheeks felt warm.  She went back to her seat and opened the book.  She looked at the first page with a grave face.  She knew it would be rude to smile, and she was very determined not to be rude.  But it was very odd to find herself expected to study a page which told her that “le pere” meant “the father,” and “la mere” meant “the mother.”

Miss Minchin glanced toward her scrutinizingly.

“You look rather cross, Sara,” she said.  “I am sorry you do not like the idea of learning French.”

“I am very fond of it,” answered Sara, thinking she would try again; “but—­”

“You must not say `but’ when you are told to do things,” said Miss Minchin.  “Look at your book again.”

And Sara did so, and did not smile, even when she found that “le fils” meant “the son,” and “le frere” meant “the brother.”

“When Monsieur Dufarge comes,” she thought, “I can make him understand.”

Monsieur Dufarge arrived very shortly afterward.  He was a very nice, intelligent, middle-aged Frenchman, and he looked interested when his eyes fell upon Sara trying politely to seem absorbed in her little book of phrases.

“Is this a new pupil for me, madame?” he said to Miss Minchin.  “I hope that is my good fortune.”

“Her papa—­Captain Crewe—­is very anxious that she should begin the language.  But I am afraid she has a childish prejudice against it.  She does not seem to wish to learn,” said Miss Minchin.

“I am sorry of that, mademoiselle,” he said kindly to Sara.  “Perhaps, when we begin to study together, I may show you that it is a charming tongue.”

Little Sara rose in her seat.  She was beginning to feel rather desperate, as if she were almost in disgrace.  She looked up into Monsieur Dufarge’s face with her big, green-gray eyes, and they were quite innocently appealing.  She knew that he would understand as soon as she spoke.  She began to explain quite simply in pretty and fluent French.  Madame had not understood.  She had not learned French exactly—­not out of books—­but her papa and other people had always spoken it to her, and she had read it and written it as she had read and written English.  Her papa loved it, and she loved it because he did.  Her dear mamma, who had died when she was born, had been French.  She would be glad to learn anything monsieur would teach her, but what she had tried to explain to madame was that she already knew the words in this book—­ and she held out the little book of phrases.

When she began to speak Miss Minchin started quite violently and sat staring at her over her eyeglasses, almost indignantly, until she had finished.  Monsieur Dufarge began to smile, and his smile was one of great pleasure.  To hear this pretty childish voice speaking his own language so simply and charmingly made him feel almost as if he were in his native land—­which in dark, foggy days in London sometimes seemed worlds away.  When she had finished, he took the phrase book from her, with a look almost affectionate.  But he spoke to Miss Minchin.

“Ah, madame,” he said, “there is not much I can teach her.  She has not learned French; she is French.  Her accent is exquisite.”

“You ought to have told me,” exclaimed Miss Minchin, much mortified, turning to Sara.

“I—­I tried,” said Sara.  “I—­I suppose I did not begin right.”

Miss Minchin knew she had tried, and that it had not been her fault that she was not allowed to explain.  And when she saw that the pupils had been listening and that Lavinia and Jessie were giggling behind their French grammars, she felt infuriated.

“Silence, young ladies!” she said severely, rapping upon the desk.  “Silence at once!”

And she began from that minute to feel rather a grudge against her show pupil.

3

Ermengarde

On that first morning, when Sara sat at Miss Minchin’s side, aware that the whole schoolroom was devoting itself to observing her, she had noticed very soon one little girl, about her own age, who looked at her very hard with a pair of light, rather dull, blue eyes.  She was a fat child who did not look as if she were in the least clever, but she had a good-naturedly pouting mouth.  Her flaxen hair was braided in a tight pigtail, tied with a ribbon, and she had pulled this pigtail around her neck, and was biting the end of the ribbon, resting her elbows on the desk, as she stared wonderingly at the new pupil.  When Monsieur Dufarge began to speak to Sara, she looked a little frightened; and when Sara stepped forward and, looking at him with the innocent, appealing eyes, answered him, without any warning, in French, the fat little girl gave a startled jump, and grew quite red in her awed amazement.  Having wept hopeless tears for weeks in her efforts to remember that “la mere” meant “the mother,” and “le pere,” “the father,”—­ when one spoke sensible English—­it was almost too much for her suddenly to find herself listening to a child her own age who seemed not only quite familiar with these words, but apparently knew any number of others, and could mix them up with verbs as if they were mere trifles.

She stared so hard and bit the ribbon on her pigtail so fast that she attracted the attention of Miss Minchin, who, feeling extremely cross at the moment, immediately pounced upon her.

“Miss St. John!” she exclaimed severely.  “What do you mean by such conduct?  Remove your elbows!  Take your ribbon out of your mouth!  Sit up at once!”

Upon which Miss St. John gave another jump, and when Lavinia and Jessie tittered she became redder than ever—­so red, indeed, that she almost looked as if tears were coming into her poor, dull, childish eyes; and Sara saw her and was so sorry for her that she began rather to like her and want to be her friend.  It was a way of hers always to want to spring into any fray in which someone was made uncomfortable or unhappy.

“If Sara had been a boy and lived a few centuries ago,” her father used to say, “she would have gone about the country with her sword drawn, rescuing and defending everyone in distress.  She always wants to fight when she sees people in trouble.”

So she took rather a fancy to fat, slow, little Miss St. John, and kept glancing toward her through the morning.  She saw that lessons were no easy matter to her, and that there was no danger of her ever being spoiled by being treated as a show pupil.  Her French lesson was a pathetic thing.  Her pronunciation made even Monsieur Dufarge smile in spite of himself, and Lavinia and Jessie and the more fortunate girls either giggled or looked at her in wondering disdain.  But Sara did not laugh.  She tried to look as if she did not hear when Miss St. John called “le bon pain,” “lee bong pang.”  She had a fine, hot little temper of her own, and it made her feel rather savage when she heard the titters and saw the poor, stupid, distressed child’s face.

“It isn’t funny, really,” she said between her teeth, as she bent over her book.  “They ought not to laugh.”

When lessons were over and the pupils gathered together in groups to talk, Sara looked for Miss St. John, and finding her bundled rather disconsolately in a window-seat, she walked over to her and spoke.  She only said the kind of thing little girls always say to each other by way of beginning an acquaintance, but there was something friendly about Sara, and people always felt it.

“What is your name?” she said.

To explain Miss St. John’s amazement one must recall that a new pupil is, for a short time, a somewhat uncertain thing; and of this new pupil the entire school had talked the night before until it fell asleep quite exhausted by excitement and contradictory stories.  A new pupil with a carriage and a pony and a maid, and a voyage from India to discuss, was not an ordinary acquaintance.

“My name’s Ermengarde St. John,” she answered.

“Mine is Sara Crewe,” said Sara.  “Yours is very pretty.  It sounds like a story book.”

“Do you like it?” fluttered Ermengarde.  “I—­I like yours.”

Miss St. John’s chief trouble in life was that she had a clever father.  Sometimes this seemed to her a dreadful calamity.  If you have a father who knows everything, who speaks seven or eight languages, and has thousands of volumes which he has apparently learned by heart, he frequently expects you to be familiar with the contents of your lesson books at least; and it is not improbable that he will feel you ought to be able to remember a few incidents of history and to write a French exercise.  Ermengarde was a severe trial to Mr. St. John.  He could not understand how a child of his could be a notably and unmistakably dull creature who never shone in anything.

“Good heavens!” he had said more than once, as he stared at her, “there are times when I think she is as stupid as her Aunt Eliza!”

If her Aunt Eliza had been slow to learn and quick to forget a thing entirely when she had learned it, Ermengarde was strikingly like her.  She was the monumental dunce of the school, and it could not be denied.

“She must be made to learn,” her father said to Miss Minchin.

Consequently Ermengarde spent the greater part of her life in disgrace or in tears.  She learned things and forgot them; or, if she remembered them, she did not understand them.  So it was natural that, having made Sara’s acquaintance, she should sit and stare at her with profound admiration.

“You can speak French, can’t you?” she said respectfully.

Sara got on to the window-seat, which was a big, deep one, and, tucking up her feet, sat with her hands clasped round her knees.

“I can speak it because I have heard it all my life,” she answered.  “You could speak it if you had always heard it.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” said Ermengarde.  “I never could speak it!”

“Why?” inquired Sara, curiously.

Ermengarde shook her head so that the pigtail wobbled.

“You heard me just now,” she said.  “I’m always like that.  I can’t say the words.  They’re so queer.”

She paused a moment, and then added with a touch of awe in her voice, “You are clever, aren’t you?”

Sara looked out of the window into the dingy square, where the sparrows were hopping and twittering on the wet, iron railings and the sooty branches of the trees.  She reflected a few moments.  She had heard it said very often that she was “clever,” and she wondered if she was—­and if she was, how it had happened.

“I don’t know,” she said.  “I can’t tell.”  Then, seeing a mournful look on the round, chubby face, she gave a little laugh and changed the subject.

“Would you like to see Emily?” she inquired.

“Who is Emily?” Ermengarde asked, just as Miss Minchin had done.

“Come up to my room and see,” said Sara, holding out her hand.

They jumped down from the window-seat together, and went upstairs.

“Is it true,” Ermengarde whispered, as they went through the hall—”is it true that you have a playroom all to yourself?”

“Yes,” Sara answered.  “Papa asked Miss Minchin to let me have one, because—­well, it was because when I play I make up stories and tell them to myself, and I don’t like people to hear me.  It spoils it if I think people listen.”

They had reached the passage leading to Sara’s room by this time, and Ermengarde stopped short, staring, and quite losing her breath.

“You make up stories!” she gasped.  “Can you do that—­as well as speak French?  Can you?”

Sara looked at her in simple surprise.

“Why, anyone can make up things,” she said.  “Have you never tried?”

She put her hand warningly on Ermengarde’s.

“Let us go very quietly to the door,” she whispered, “and then I will open it quite suddenly; perhaps we may catch her.”

She was half laughing, but there was a touch of mysterious hope in her eyes which fascinated Ermengarde, though she had not the remotest idea what it meant, or whom it was she wanted to “catch,” or why she wanted to catch her.  Whatsoever she meant, Ermengarde was sure it was something delightfully exciting.  So, quite thrilled with expectation, she followed her on tiptoe along the passage.  They made not the least noise until they reached the door.  Then Sara suddenly turned the handle, and threw it wide open.  Its opening revealed the room quite neat and quiet, a fire gently burning in the grate, and a wonderful doll sitting in a chair by it, apparently reading a book.

“Oh, she got back to her seat before we could see her!” Sara explained.  “Of course they always do.  They are as quick as lightning.”

Ermengarde looked from her to the doll and back again.

“Can she—­walk?” she asked breathlessly.

“Yes,” answered Sara.  “At least I believe she can.  At least I pretend I believe she can.  And that makes it seem as if it were true.  Have you never pretended things?”

“No,” said Ermengarde.  “Never.  I—­tell me about it.”

She was so bewitched by this odd, new companion that she actually stared at Sara instead of at Emily—­notwithstanding that Emily was the most attractive doll person she had ever seen.

“Let us sit down,” said Sara, “and I will tell you.  It’s so easy that when you begin you can’t stop.  You just go on and on doing it always.  And it’s beautiful.  Emily, you must listen.  This is Ermengarde St. John, Emily.  Ermengarde, this is Emily.  Would you like to hold her?”

“Oh, may I?” said Ermengarde.  “May I, really?  She is beautiful!” And Emily was put into her arms.

Never in her dull, short life had Miss St. John dreamed of such an hour as the one she spent with the queer new pupil before they heard the lunch-bell ring and were obliged to go downstairs.

Sara sat upon the hearth-rug and told her strange things.  She sat rather huddled up, and her green eyes shone and her cheeks flushed.  She told stories of the voyage, and stories of India; but what fascinated Ermengarde the most was her fancy about the dolls who walked and talked, and who could do anything they chose when the human beings were out of the room, but who must keep their powers a secret and so flew back to their places “like lightning” when people returned to the room.

“We couldn’t do it,” said Sara, seriously.  “You see, it’s a kind of magic.”

Once, when she was relating the story of the search for Emily, Ermengarde saw her face suddenly change.  A cloud seemed to pass over it and put out the light in her shining eyes.  She drew her breath in so sharply that it made a funny, sad little sound, and then she shut her lips and held them tightly closed, as if she was determined either to do or not to do something.  Ermengarde had an idea that if she had been like any other little girl, she might have suddenly burst out sobbing and crying.  But she did not.

“Have you a—­a pain?” Ermengarde ventured.

“Yes,” Sara answered, after a moment’s silence.  “But it is not in my body.”  Then she added something in a low voice which she tried to keep quite steady, and it was this:  “Do you love your father more than anything else in all the whole world?”

Ermengarde’s mouth fell open a little.  She knew that it would be far from behaving like a respectable child at a select seminary to say that it had never occurred to you that you could love your father, that you would do anything desperate to avoid being left alone in his society for ten minutes.  She was, indeed, greatly embarrassed.

“I—­I scarcely ever see him,” she stammered.  “He is always in the library—­reading things.”

“I love mine more than all the world ten times over,” Sara said.  “That is what my pain is.  He has gone away.”

She put her head quietly down on her little, huddled-up knees, and sat very still for a few minutes.

“She’s going to cry out loud,” thought Ermengarde, fearfully.

But she did not.  Her short, black locks tumbled about her ears, and she sat still.  Then she spoke without lifting her head.

“I promised him I would bear it,” she said.  “And I will.  You have to bear things.  Think what soldiers bear!  Papa is a soldier.  If there was a war he would have to bear marching and thirstiness and, perhaps, deep wounds.  And he would never say a word—­not one word.”

Ermengarde could only gaze at her, but she felt that she was beginning to adore her.  She was so wonderful and different from anyone else.

Presently, she lifted her face and shook back her black locks, with a queer little smile.

“If I go on talking and talking,” she said, “and telling you things about pretending, I shall bear it better.  You don’t forget, but you bear it better.”

Ermengarde did not know why a lump came into her throat and her eyes felt as if tears were in them.

“Lavinia and Jessie are `best friends,’” she said rather huskily.  “I wish we could be `best friends.’  Would you have me for yours?  You’re clever, and I’m the stupidest child in the school, but I—­ oh, I do so like you!”

“I’m glad of that,” said Sara.  “It makes you thankful when you are liked.  Yes.  We will be friends.  And I’ll tell you what”—­ a sudden gleam lighting her face—­“I can help you with your French lessons.”

4

Lottie

If Sara had been a different kind of child, the life she led at Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary for the next few years would not have been at all good for her.  She was treated more as if she were a distinguished guest at the establishment than as if she were a mere little girl.  If she had been a self-opinionated, domineering child, she might have become disagreeable enough to be unbearable through being so much indulged and flattered.  If she had been an indolent child, she would have learned nothing.  Privately Miss Minchin disliked her, but she was far too worldly a woman to do or say anything which might make such a desirable pupil wish to leave her school.  She knew quite well that if Sara wrote to her papa to tell him she was uncomfortable or unhappy, Captain Crewe would remove her at once.  Miss Minchin’s opinion was that if a child were continually praised and never forbidden to do what she liked, she would be sure to be fond of the place where she was so treated.  Accordingly, Sara was praised for her quickness at her lessons, for her good manners, for her amiability to her fellow pupils, for her generosity if she gave sixpence to a beggar out of her full little purse; the simplest thing she did was treated as if it were a virtue, and if she had not had a disposition and a clever little brain, she might have been a very self-satisfied young person.  But the clever little brain told her a great many sensible and true things about herself and her circumstances, and now and then she talked these things over to Ermengarde as time went on.

“Things happen to people by accident,” she used to say.  “A lot of nice accidents have happened to me.  It just happened that I always liked lessons and books, and could remember things when I learned them.  It just happened that I was born with a father who was beautiful and nice and clever, and could give me everything I liked.  Perhaps I have not really a good temper at all, but if you have everything you want and everyone is kind to you, how can you help but be good-tempered?  I don’t know”—­looking quite serious—­“how I shall ever find out whether I am really a nice child or a horrid one.  Perhaps I’m a hideous child, and no one will ever know, just because I never have any trials.”

“Lavinia has no trials,” said Ermengarde, stolidly, “and she is horrid enough.”

Sara rubbed the end of her little nose reflectively, as she thought the matter over.

“Well,” she said at last, “perhaps—­perhaps that is because Lavinia is growing.”  This was the result of a charitable recollection of having heard Miss Amelia say that Lavinia was growing so fast that she believed it affected her health and temper.

Lavinia, in fact, was spiteful.  She was inordinately jealous of Sara.  Until the new pupil’s arrival, she had felt herself the leader in the school.  She had led because she was capable of making herself extremely disagreeable if the others did not follow her.  She domineered over the little children, and assumed grand airs with those big enough to be her companions.  She was rather pretty, and had been the best-dressed pupil in the procession when the Select Seminary walked out two by two, until Sara’s velvet coats and sable muffs appeared, combined with drooping ostrich feathers, and were led by Miss Minchin at the head of the line.  This, at the beginning, had been bitter enough; but as time went on it became apparent that Sara was a leader, too, and not because she could make herself disagreeable, but because she never did.

“There’s one thing about Sara Crewe,” Jessie had enraged her “best friend” by saying honestly, “she’s never `grand’ about herself the least bit, and you know she might be, Lavvie.  I believe I couldn’t help being—­just a little—­if I had so many fine things and was made such a fuss over.  It’s disgusting, the way Miss Minchin shows her off when parents come.”

“`Dear Sara must come into the drawing room and talk to Mrs. Musgrave about India,’” mimicked Lavinia, in her most highly flavored imitation of Miss Minchin. “`Dear Sara must speak French to Lady Pitkin.  Her accent is so perfect.’  She didn’t learn her French at the Seminary, at any rate.  And there’s nothing so clever in her knowing it.  She says herself she didn’t learn it at all.  She just picked it up, because she always heard her papa speak it.  And, as to her papa, there is nothing so grand in being an Indian officer.”

“Well,” said Jessie, slowly, “he’s killed tigers.  He killed the one in the skin Sara has in her room.  That’s why she likes it so.  She lies on it and strokes its head, and talks to it as if it was a cat.”

“She’s always doing something silly,” snapped Lavinia.  “My mamma says that way of hers of pretending things is silly.  She says she will grow up eccentric.”

It was quite true that Sara was never “grand.”  She was a friendly little soul, and shared her privileges and belongings with a free hand.  The little ones, who were accustomed to being disdained and ordered out of the way by mature ladies aged ten and twelve, were never made to cry by this most envied of them all.  She was a motherly young person, and when people fell down and scraped their knees, she ran and helped them up and patted them, or found in her pocket a bonbon or some other article of a soothing nature.  She never pushed them out of her way or alluded to their years as a humiliation and a blot upon their small characters.

“If you are four you are four,” she said severely to Lavinia on an occasion of her having—­it must be confessed—­slapped Lottie and called her “a brat;” “but you will be five next year, and six the year after that.  And,” opening large, convicting eyes, “it takes sixteen years to make you twenty.”

“Dear me,” said Lavinia, “how we can calculate!” In fact, it was not to be denied that sixteen and four made twenty—­and twenty was an age the most daring were scarcely bold enough to dream of.

So the younger children adored Sara.  More than once she had been known to have a tea party, made up of these despised ones, in her own room.  And Emily had been played with, and Emily’s own tea service used—­ the one with cups which held quite a lot of much-sweetened weak tea and had blue flowers on them.  No one had seen such a very real doll’s tea set before.  From that afternoon Sara was regarded as a goddess and a queen by the entire alphabet class.

Lottle Legh worshipped her to such an extent that if Sara had not been a motherly person, she would have found her tiresome.  Lottie had been sent to school by a rather flighty young papa who could not imagine what else to do with her.  Her young mother had died, and as the child had been treated like a favorite doll or a very spoiled pet monkey or lap dog ever since the first hour of her life, she was a very appalling little creature.  When she wanted anything or did not want anything she wept and howled; and, as she always wanted the things she could not have, and did not want the things that were best for her, her shrill little voice was usually to be heard uplifted in wails in one part of the house or another.

Her strongest weapon was that in some mysterious way she had found out that a very small girl who had lost her mother was a person who ought to be pitied and made much of.  She had probably heard some grown-up people talking her over in the early days, after her mother’s death.  So it became her habit to make great use of this knowledge.

The first time Sara took her in charge was one morning when, on passing a sitting room, she heard both Miss Minchin and Miss Amelia trying to suppress the angry wails of some child who, evidently, refused to be silenced.  She refused so strenuously indeed that Miss Minchin was obliged to almost shout—­in a stately and severe manner—­ to make herself heard.

“What is she crying for?” she almost yelled.

“Oh—­oh—­oh!” Sara heard; “I haven’t got any mam—­ma-a!”

“Oh, Lottie!” screamed Miss Amelia.  “Do stop, darling!  Don’t cry!  Please don’t!”

“Oh!  Oh!  Oh!  Oh!  Oh!” Lottle howled tempestuously.  “Haven’t—got—­any—­mam—­ma-a!”

“She ought to be whipped,” Miss Minchin proclaimed.  “You shall be whipped, you naughty child!”

Lottle wailed more loudly than ever.  Miss Amelia began to cry.  Miss Minchin’s voice rose until it almost thundered, then suddenly she sprang up from her chair in impotent indignation and flounced out of the room, leaving Miss Amelia to arrange the matter.

Sara had paused in the hall, wondering if she ought to go into the room, because she had recently begun a friendly acquaintance with Lottie and might be able to quiet her.  When Miss Minchin came out and saw her, she looked rather annoyed.  She realized that her voice, as heard from inside the room, could not have sounded either dignified or amiable.

“Oh, Sara!” she exclaimed, endeavoring to produce a suitable smile.

“I stopped,” explained Sara, “because I knew it was Lottie—­ and I thought, perhaps—­just perhaps, I could make her be quiet.  May I try, Miss Minchin?”

“If you can, you are a clever child,” answered Miss Minchin, drawing in her mouth sharply.  Then, seeing that Sara looked slightly chilled by her asperity, she changed her manner.  “But you are clever in everything,” she said in her approving way.  “I dare say you can manage her.  Go in.”  And she left her.

When Sara entered the room, Lottie was lying upon the floor, screaming and kicking her small fat legs violently, and Miss Amelia was bending over her in consternation and despair, looking quite red and damp with heat.  Lottie had always found, when in her own nursery at home, that kicking and screaming would always be quieted by any means she insisted on.  Poor plump Miss Amelia was trying first one method, and then another.

“Poor darling,” she said one moment, “I know you haven’t any mamma, poor—­” Then in quite another tone, “If you don’t stop, Lottie, I will shake you.  Poor little angel!  There—!  You wicked, bad, detestable child, I will smack you!  I will!”

Sara went to them quietly.  She did not know at all what she was going to do, but she had a vague inward conviction that it would be better not to say such different kinds of things quite so helplessly and excitedly.

“Miss Amelia,” she said in a low voice, “Miss Minchin says I may try to make her stop—­may I?”

Miss Amelia turned and looked at her hopelessly.  “Oh, do you think you can?” she gasped.

“I don’t know whether I can”, answered Sara, still in her half-whisper; “but I will try.”

Miss Amelia stumbled up from her knees with a heavy sigh, and Lottie’s fat little legs kicked as hard as ever.

“If you will steal out of the room,” said Sara, “I will stay with her.”

“Oh, Sara!” almost whimpered Miss Amelia.  “We never had such a dreadful child before.  I don’t believe we can keep her.”

But she crept out of the room, and was very much relieved to find an excuse for doing it.

Sara stood by the howling furious child for a few moments, and looked down at her without saying anything.  Then she sat down flat on the floor beside her and waited.  Except for Lottie’s angry screams, the room was quite quiet.  This was a new state of affairs for little Miss Legh, who was accustomed, when she screamed, to hear other people protest and implore and command and coax by turns.  To lie and kick and shriek, and find the only person near you not seeming to mind in the least, attracted her attention.  She opened her tight-shut streaming eyes to see who this person was.  And it was only another little girl.  But it was the one who owned Emily and all the nice things.  And she was looking at her steadily and as if she was merely thinking.  Having paused for a few seconds to find this out, Lottie thought she must begin again, but the quiet of the room and of Sara’s odd, interested face made her first howl rather half-hearted.

“I—­haven’t—­any—­ma—­ma—­ma-a!” she announced; but her voice was not so strong.

Sara looked at her still more steadily, but with a sort of understanding in her eyes.

“Neither have I,” she said.

This was so unexpected that it was astounding.  Lottie actually dropped her legs, gave a wriggle, and lay and stared.  A new idea will stop a crying child when nothing else will.  Also it was true that while Lottie disliked Miss Minchin, who was cross, and Miss Amelia, who was foolishly indulgent, she rather liked Sara, little as she knew her.  She did not want to give up her grievance, but her thoughts were distracted from it, so she wriggled again, and, after a sulky sob, said, “Where is she?”

Sara paused a moment.  Because she had been told that her mamma was in heaven, she had thought a great deal about the matter, and her thoughts had not been quite like those of other people.

“She went to heaven,” she said.  “But I am sure she comes out sometimes to see me—­though I don’t see her.  So does yours.  Perhaps they can both see us now.  Perhaps they are both in this room.”

Lottle sat bolt upright, and looked about her.  She was a pretty, little, curly-headed creature, and her round eyes were like wet forget-me-nots.  If her mamma had seen her during the last half-hour, she might not have thought her the kind of child who ought to be related to an angel.

Sara went on talking.  Perhaps some people might think that what she said was rather like a fairy story, but it was all so real to her own imagination that Lottie began to listen in spite of herself.  She had been told that her mamma had wings and a crown, and she had been shown pictures of ladies in beautiful white nightgowns, who were said to be angels.  But Sara seemed to be telling a real story about a lovely country where real people were.

“There are fields and fields of flowers,” she said, forgetting herself, as usual, when she began, and talking rather as if she were in a dream, “fields and fields of lilies—­and when the soft wind blows over them it wafts the scent of them into the air—­and everybody always breathes it, because the soft wind is always blowing.  And little children run about in the lily fields and gather armfuls of them, and laugh and make little wreaths.  And the streets are shining.  And people are never tired, however far they walk.  They can float anywhere they like.  And there are walls made of pearl and gold all round the city, but they are low enough for the people to go and lean on them, and look down onto the earth and smile, and send beautiful messages.”

Whatsoever story she had begun to tell, Lottie would, no doubt, have stopped crying, and been fascinated into listening; but there was no denying that this story was prettier than most others.  She dragged herself close to Sara, and drank in every word until the end came—­far too soon.  When it did come, she was so sorry that she put up her lip ominously.

“I want to go there,” she cried.  “I—­haven’t any mamma in this school.”

Sara saw the danger signal, and came out of her dream.  She took hold of the chubby hand and pulled her close to her side with a coaxing little laugh.

“I will be your mamma,” she said.  “We will play that you are my little girl.  And Emily shall be your sister.”

Lottie’s dimples all began to show themselves.

“Shall she?” she said.

“Yes,” answered Sara, jumping to her feet.  “Let us go and tell her.  And then I will wash your face and brush your hair.”

To which Lottie agreed quite cheerfully, and trotted out of the room and upstairs with her, without seeming even to remember that the whole of the last hour’s tragedy had been caused by the fact that she had refused to be washed and brushed for lunch and Miss Minchin had been called in to use her majestic authority.

And from that time Sara was an adopted mother.

5

Becky

Of course the greatest power Sara possessed and the one which gained her even more followers than her luxuries and the fact that she was “the show pupil,” the power that Lavinia and certain other girls were most envious of, and at the same time most fascinated by in spite of themselves, was her power of telling stories and of making everything she talked about seem like a story, whether it was one or not.

Anyone who has been at school with a teller of stories knows what the wonder means—­how he or she is followed about and besought in a whisper to relate romances; how groups gather round and hang on the outskirts of the favored party in the hope of being allowed to join in and listen.  Sara not only could tell stories, but she adored telling them.  When she sat or stood in the midst of a circle and began to invent wonderful things, her green eyes grew big and shining, her cheeks flushed, and, without knowing that she was doing it, she began to act and made what she told lovely or alarming by the raising or dropping of her voice, the bend and sway of her slim body, and the dramatic movement of her hands.  She forgot that she was talking to listening children; she saw and lived with the fairy folk, or the kings and queens and beautiful ladies, whose adventures she was narrating.  Sometimes when she had finished her story, she was quite out of breath with excitement, and would lay her hand on her thin, little, quick-rising chest, and half laugh as if at herself.

“When I am telling it,” she would say, “it doesn’t seem as if it was only made up.  It seems more real than you are—­more real than the schoolroom.  I feel as if I were all the people in the story—­one after the other.  It is queer.”

She had been at Miss Minchin’s school about two years when, one foggy winter’s afternoon, as she was getting out of her carriage, comfortably wrapped up in her warmest velvets and furs and looking very much grander than she knew, she caught sight, as she crossed the pavement, of a dingy little figure standing on the area steps, and stretching its neck so that its wide-open eyes might peer at her through the railings.  Something in the eagerness and timidity of the smudgy face made her look at it, and when she looked she smiled because it was her way to smile at people.

But the owner of the smudgy face and the wide-open eyes evidently was afraid that she ought not to have been caught looking at pupils of importance.  She dodged out of sight like a jack-in-the-box and scurried back into the kitchen, disappearing so suddenly that if she had not been such a poor little forlorn thing, Sara would have laughed in spite of herself.  That very evening, as Sara was sitting in the midst of a group of listeners in a corner of the schoolroom telling one of her stories, the very same figure timidly entered the room, carrying a coal box much too heavy for her, and knelt down upon the hearth rug to replenish the fire and sweep up the ashes.

She was cleaner than she had been when she peeped through the area railings, but she looked just as frightened.  She was evidently afraid to look at the children or seem to be listening.  She put on pieces of coal cautiously with her fingers so that she might make no disturbing noise, and she swept about the fire irons very softly.  But Sara saw in two minutes that she was deeply interested in what was going on, and that she was doing her work slowly in the hope of catching a word here and there.  And realizing this, she raised her voice and spoke more clearly.

“The Mermaids swam softly about in the crystal-green water, and dragged after them a fishing-net woven of deep-sea pearls,” she said.  “The Princess sat on the white rock and watched them.”

It was a wonderful story about a princess who was loved by a Prince Merman, and went to live with him in shining caves under the sea.

The small drudge before the grate swept the hearth once and then swept it again.  Having done it twice, she did it three times; and, as she was doing it the third time, the sound of the story so lured her to listen that she fell under the spell and actually forgot that she had no right to listen at all, and also forgot everything else.  She sat down upon her heels as she knelt on the hearth rug, and the brush hung idly in her fingers.  The voice of the storyteller went on and drew her with it into winding grottos under the sea, glowing with soft, clear blue light, and paved with pure golden sands.  Strange sea flowers and grasses waved about her, and far away faint singing and music echoed.

The hearth brush fell from the work-roughened hand, and Lavinia Herbert looked round.

“That girl has been listening,” she said.

The culprit snatched up her brush, and scrambled to her feet.  She caught at the coal box and simply scuttled out of the room like a frightened rabbit.

Sara felt rather hot-tempered.

“I knew she was listening,” she said.  “Why shouldn’t she?”

Lavinia tossed her head with great elegance.

“Well,” she remarked, “I do not know whether your mamma would like you to tell stories to servant girls, but I know my mamma wouldn’t like me to do it.”

“My mamma!” said Sara, looking odd.  “I don’t believe she would mind in the least.  She knows that stories belong to everybody.”

“I thought,” retorted Lavinia, in severe recollection, “that your mamma was dead.  How can she know things?”

“Do you think she doesn’t know things?” said Sara, in her stern little voice.  Sometimes she had a rather stern little voice.

“Sara’s mamma knows everything,” piped in Lottie.  “So does my mamma—­’cept Sara is my mamma at Miss Minchin’s—­my other one knows everything.  The streets are shining, and there are fields and fields of lilies, and everybody gathers them.  Sara tells me when she puts me to bed.”

“You wicked thing,” said Lavinia, turning on Sara; “making fairy stories about heaven.”

“There are much more splendid stories in Revelation,” returned Sara.  “Just look and see!  How do you know mine are fairy stories?  But I can tell you”—­with a fine bit of unheavenly temper—­“you will never find out whether they are or not if you’re not kinder to people than you are now.  Come along, Lottie.”  And she marched out of the room, rather hoping that she might see the little servant again somewhere, but she found no trace of her when she got into the hall.

“Who is that little girl who makes the fires?” she asked Mariette that night.

Mariette broke forth into a flow of description.

Ah, indeed, Mademoiselle Sara might well ask.  She was a forlorn little thing who had just taken the place of scullery maid—­ though, as to being scullery maid, she was everything else besides.  She blacked boots and grates, and carried heavy coal-scuttles up and down stairs, and scrubbed floors and cleaned windows, and was ordered about by everybody.  She was fourteen years old, but was so stunted in growth that she looked about twelve.  In truth, Mariette was sorry for her.  She was so timid that if one chanced to speak to her it appeared as if her poor, frightened eyes would jump out of her head.

“What is her name?” asked Sara, who had sat by the table, with her chin on her hands, as she listened absorbedly to the recital.

Her name was Becky.  Mariette heard everyone below-stairs calling, “Becky, do this,” and “Becky, do that,” every five minutes in the day.

Sara sat and looked into the fire, reflecting on Becky for some time after Mariette left her.  She made up a story of which Becky was the ill-used heroine.  She thought she looked as if she had never had quite enough to eat.  Her very eyes were hungry.  She hoped she should see her again, but though she caught sight of her carrying things up or down stairs on several occasions, she always seemed in such a hurry and so afraid of being seen that it was impossible to speak to her.

But a few weeks later, on another foggy afternoon, when she entered her sitting room she found herself confronting a rather pathetic picture.  In her own special and pet easy-chair before the bright fire, Becky—­with a coal smudge on her nose and several on her apron, with her poor little cap hanging half off her head, and an empty coal box on the floor near her—­sat fast asleep, tired out beyond even the endurance of her hard-working young body.  She had been sent up to put the bedrooms in order for the evening.  There were a great many of them, and she had been running about all day.  Sara’s rooms she had saved until the last.  They were not like the other rooms, which were plain and bare.  Ordinary pupils were expected to be satisfied with mere necessaries.  Sara’s comfortable sitting room seemed a bower of luxury to the scullery maid, though it was, in fact, merely a nice, bright little room.  But there were pictures and books in it, and curious things from India; there was a sofa and the low, soft chair; Emily sat in a chair of her own, with the air of a presiding goddess, and there was always a glowing fire and a polished grate.  Becky saved it until the end of her afternoon’s work, because it rested her to go into it, and she always hoped to snatch a few minutes to sit down in the soft chair and look about her, and think about the wonderful good fortune of the child who owned such surroundings and who went out on the cold days in beautiful hats and coats one tried to catch a glimpse of through the area railing.

On this afternoon, when she had sat down, the sensation of relief to her short, aching legs had been so wonderful and delightful that it had seemed to soothe her whole body, and the glow of warmth and comfort from the fire had crept over her like a spell, until, as she looked at the red coals, a tired, slow smile stole over her smudged face, her head nodded forward without her being aware of it, her eyes drooped, and she fell fast asleep.  She had really been only about ten minutes in the room when Sara entered, but she was in as deep a sleep as if she had been, like the Sleeping Beauty, slumbering for a hundred years.  But she did not look—­poor Becky—­ like a Sleeping Beauty at all.  She looked only like an ugly, stunted, worn-out little scullery drudge.

Sara seemed as much unlike her as if she were a creature from another world.

On this particular afternoon she had been taking her dancing lesson, and the afternoon on which the dancing master appeared was rather a grand occasion at the seminary, though it occurred every week.  The pupils were attired in their prettiest frocks, and as Sara danced particularly well, she was very much brought forward, and Mariette was requested to make her as diaphanous and fine as possible.

Today a frock the color of a rose had been put on her, and Mariette had bought some real buds and made her a wreath to wear on her black locks.  She had been learning a new, delightful dance in which she had been skimming and flying about the room, like a large rose-colored butterfly, and the enjoyment and exercise had brought a brilliant, happy glow into her face.

When she entered the room, she floated in with a few of the butterfly steps—­and there sat Becky, nodding her cap sideways off her head.

“Oh!” cried Sara, softly, when she saw her.  “That poor thing!”

It did not occur to her to feel cross at finding her pet chair occupied by the small, dingy figure.  To tell the truth, she was quite glad to find it there.  When the ill-used heroine of her story wakened, she could talk to her.  She crept toward her quietly, and stood looking at her.  Becky gave a little snore.

“I wish she’d waken herself,” Sara said.  “I don’t like to waken her.  But Miss Minchin would be cross if she found out.  I’ll just wait a few minutes.”

She took a seat on the edge of the table, and sat swinging her slim, rose-colored legs, and wondering what it would be best to do.  Miss Amelia might come in at any moment, and if she did, Becky would be sure to be scolded.

“But she is so tired,” she thought.  “She is so tired!”

A piece of flaming coal ended her perplexity for her that very moment.  It broke off from a large lump and fell on to the fender.  Becky started, and opened her eyes with a frightened gasp.  She did not know she had fallen asleep.  She had only sat down for one moment and felt the beautiful glow—­and here she found herself staring in wild alarm at the wonderful pupil, who sat perched quite near her, like a rose-colored fairy, with interested eyes.

She sprang up and clutched at her cap.  She felt it dangling over her ear, and tried wildly to put it straight.  Oh, she had got herself into trouble now with a vengeance!  To have impudently fallen asleep on such a young lady’s chair!  She would be turned out of doors without wages.

She made a sound like a big breathless sob.

“Oh, miss!  Oh, miss!” she stuttered.  “I arst yer pardon, miss!  Oh, I do, miss!”

Sara jumped down, and came quite close to her.

“Don’t be frightened,” she said, quite as if she had been speaking to a little girl like herself.  “It doesn’t matter the least bit.”

“I didn’t go to do it, miss,” protested Becky.  “It was the warm fire—­an’ me bein’ so tired.  It—­it wasn’t impertience!”

Sara broke into a friendly little laugh, and put her hand on her shoulder.

“You were tired,” she said; “you could not help it.  You are not really awake yet.”

How poor Becky stared at her!  In fact, she had never heard such a nice, friendly sound in anyone’s voice before.  She was used to being ordered about and scolded, and having her ears boxed.  And this one—­in her rose-colored dancing afternoon splendor—­was looking at her as if she were not a culprit at all—­as if she had a right to be tired—­even to fall asleep!  The touch of the soft, slim little paw on her shoulder was the most amazing thing she had ever known.

“Ain’t—­ain’t yer angry, miss?” she gasped.  “Ain’t yer goin’ to tell the missus?”

“No,” cried out Sara.  “Of course I’m not.”

The woeful fright in the coal-smutted face made her suddenly so sorry that she could scarcely bear it.  One of her queer thoughts rushed into her mind.  She put her hand against Becky’s cheek.

“Why,” she said, “we are just the same—­I am only a little girl like you.  It’s just an accident that I am not you, and you are not me!”

Becky did not understand in the least.  Her mind could not grasp such amazing thoughts, and “an accident” meant to her a calamity in which some one was run over or fell off a ladder and was carried to “the ’orspital.”

“A’ accident, miss,” she fluttered respectfully.  “Is it?”

“Yes,” Sara answered, and she looked at her dreamily for a moment.  But the next she spoke in a different tone.  She realized that Becky did not know what she meant.

“Have you done your work?” she asked.  “Dare you stay here a few minutes?”

Becky lost her breath again.

“Here, miss?  Me?”

Sara ran to the door, opened it, and looked out and listened.

“No one is anywhere about,” she explained.  “If your bedrooms are finished, perhaps you might stay a tiny while.  I thought—­ perhaps—­you might like a piece of cake.”

The next ten minutes seemed to Becky like a sort of delirium.  Sara opened a cupboard, and gave her a thick slice of cake.  She seemed to rejoice when it was devoured in hungry bites.  She talked and asked questions, and laughed until Becky’s fears actually began to calm themselves, and she once or twice gathered boldness enough to ask a question or so herself, daring as she felt it to be.

“Is that—­” she ventured, looking longingly at the rose-colored frock.  And she asked it almost in a whisper.  “Is that there your best?”

“It is one of my dancing-frocks,” answered Sara.  “I like it, don’t you?”

For a few seconds Becky was almost speechless with admiration.  Then she said in an awed voice, “Onct I see a princess.  I was standin’ in the street with the crowd outside Covin’ Garden, watchin’ the swells go inter the operer.  An’ there was one everyone stared at most.  They ses to each other, `That’s the princess.’  She was a growed-up young lady, but she was pink all over—­gownd an’ cloak, an’ flowers an’ all.  I called her to mind the minnit I see you, sittin’ there on the table, miss.  You looked like her.”

“I’ve often thought,” said Sara, in her reflecting voice, “that I should like to be a princess; I wonder what it feels like.  I believe I will begin pretending I am one.”

Becky stared at her admiringly, and, as before, did not understand her in the least.  She watched her with a sort of adoration.  Very soon Sara left her reflections and turned to her with a new question.

“Becky,” she said, “weren’t you listening to that story?”

“Yes, miss,” confessed Becky, a little alarmed again.  “I knowed I hadn’t orter, but it was that beautiful I—­I couldn’t help it.”

“I liked you to listen to it,” said Sara.  “If you tell stories, you like nothing so much as to tell them to people who want to listen.  I don’t know why it is.  Would you like to hear the rest?”

Becky lost her breath again.

“Me hear it?” she cried.  “Like as if I was a pupil, miss!  All about the Prince—­and the little white Mer-babies swimming about laughing—­with stars in their hair?”

Sara nodded.

“You haven’t time to hear it now, I’m afraid,” she said; “but if you will tell me just what time you come to do my rooms, I will try to be here and tell you a bit of it every day until it is finished.  It’s a lovely long one—­and I’m always putting new bits to it.”

“Then,” breathed Becky, devoutly, “I wouldn’t mind how heavy the coal boxes was—­or what the cook done to me, if—­if I might have that to think of.”

“You may,” said Sara.  “I’ll tell it all to you.”

When Becky went downstairs, she was not the same Becky who had staggered up, loaded down by the weight of the coal scuttle.  She had an extra piece of cake in her pocket, and she had been fed and warmed, but not only by cake and fire.  Something else had warmed and fed her, and the something else was Sara.

When she was gone Sara sat on her favorite perch on the end of her table.  Her feet were on a chair, her elbows on her knees, and her chin in her hands.

“If I was a princess—­a real princess,” she murmured, “I could scatter largess to the populace.  But even if I am only a pretend princess, I can invent little things to do for people.  Things like this.  She was just as happy as if it was largess.  I’ll pretend that to do things people like is scattering largess.  I’ve scattered largess.”

6

The Diamond Mines

Not very long after this a very exciting thing happened.  Not only Sara, but the entire school, found it exciting, and made it the chief subject of conversation for weeks after it occurred.  In one of his letters Captain Crewe told a most interesting story.  A friend who had been at school with him when he was a boy had unexpectedly come to see him in India.  He was the owner of a large tract of land upon which diamonds had been found, and he was engaged in developing the mines.  If all went as was confidently expected, he would become possessed of such wealth as it made one dizzy to think of; and because he was fond of the friend of his school days, he had given him an opportunity to share in this enormous fortune by becoming a partner in his scheme.  This, at least, was what Sara gathered from his letters.  It is true that any other business scheme, however magnificent, would have had but small attraction for her or for the schoolroom; but “diamond mines” sounded so like the Arabian Nights that no one could be indifferent.  Sara thought them enchanting, and painted pictures, for Ermengarde and Lottie, of labyrinthine passages in the bowels of the earth, where sparkling stones studded the walls and roofs and ceilings, and strange, dark men dug them out with heavy picks.  Ermengarde delighted in the story, and Lottie insisted on its being retold to her every evening.  Lavinia was very spiteful about it, and told Jessie that she didn’t believe such things as diamond mines existed.

“My mamma has a diamond ring which cost forty pounds,” she said.  “And it is not a big one, either.  If there were mines full of diamonds, people would be so rich it would be ridiculous.”

“Perhaps Sara will be so rich that she will be ridiculous,” giggled Jessie.

“She’s ridiculous without being rich,” Lavinia sniffed.

“I believe you hate her,” said Jessie.

“No, I don’t,” snapped Lavinia.  “But I don’t believe in mines full of diamonds.”

“Well, people have to get them from somewhere,” said Jessie.  “Lavinia,” with a new giggle, “what do you think Gertrude says?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure; and I don’t care if it’s something more about that everlasting Sara.”

“Well, it is.  One of her `pretends’ is that she is a princess.  She plays it all the time—­even in school.  She says it makes her learn her lessons better.  She wants Ermengarde to be one, too, but Ermengarde says she is too fat.”

“She is too fat,” said Lavinia.  “And Sara is too thin.”

Naturally, Jessie giggled again.

“She says it has nothing to do with what you look like, or what you have.  It has only to do with what you think of, and what you do.”  “I suppose she thinks she could be a princess if she was a beggar,” said Lavinia.  “Let us begin to call her Your Royal Highness.”

Lessons for the day were over, and they were sitting before the schoolroom fire, enjoying the time they liked best.  It was the time when Miss Minchin and Miss Amelia were taking their tea in the sitting room sacred to themselves.  At this hour a great deal of talking was done, and a great many secrets changed hands, particularly if the younger pupils behaved themselves well, and did not squabble or run about noisily, which it must be confessed they usually did.  When they made an uproar the older girls usually interfered with scolding and shakes.  They were expected to keep order, and there was danger that if they did not, Miss Minchin or Miss Amelia would appear and put an end to festivities.  Even as Lavinia spoke the door opened and Sara entered with Lottie, whose habit was to trot everywhere after her like a little dog.

“There she is, with that horrid child!” exclaimed Lavinia in a whisper.  “If she’s so fond of her, why doesn’t she keep her in her own room?  She will begin howling about something in five minutes.”

It happened that Lottie had been seized with a sudden desire to play in the schoolroom, and had begged her adopted parent to come with her.  She joined a group of little ones who were playing in a corner.  Sara curled herself up in the window-seat, opened a book, and began to read.  It was a book about the French Revolution, and she was soon lost in a harrowing picture of the prisoners in the Bastille—­men who had spent so many years in dungeons that when they were dragged out by those who rescued them, their long, gray hair and beards almost hid their faces, and they had forgotten that an outside world existed at all, and were like beings in a dream.

She was so far away from the schoolroom that it was not agreeable to be dragged back suddenly by a howl from Lottie.  Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book.  People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment.  The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage.

“It makes me feel as if someone had hit me,” Sara had told Ermengarde once in confidence.  “And as if I want to hit back.  I have to remember things quickly to keep from saying something ill-tempered.”

She had to remember things quickly when she laid her book on the window-seat and jumped down from her comfortable corner.

Lottie had been sliding across the schoolroom floor, and, having first irritated Lavinia and Jessie by making a noise, had ended by falling down and hurting her fat knee.  She was screaming and dancing up and down in the midst of a group of friends and enemies, who were alternately coaxing and scolding her.

“Stop this minute, you cry-baby!  Stop this minute!” Lavinia commanded.

“I’m not a cry-baby . . .  I’m not!” wailed Lottle.  “Sara, Sa—­ ra!”

“If she doesn’t stop, Miss Minchin will hear her,” cried Jessie.  “Lottie darling, I’ll give you a penny!”

“I don’t want your penny,” sobbed Lottie; and she looked down at the fat knee, and, seeing a drop of blood on it, burst forth again.

Sara flew across the room and, kneeling down, put her arms round her.

“Now, Lottie,” she said.  “Now, Lottie, you promised Sara.”

“She said I was a cry-baby,” wept Lottie.

Sara patted her, but spoke in the steady voice Lottie knew.

“But if you cry, you will be one, Lottie pet.  You promised.”  Lottle remembered that she had promised, but she preferred to lift up her voice.

“I haven’t any mamma,” she proclaimed.  “I haven’t—­a bit—­of mamma.”

“Yes, you have,” said Sara, cheerfully.  “Have you forgotten?  Don’t you know that Sara is your mamma?  Don’t you want Sara for your mamma?”

Lottie cuddled up to her with a consoled sniff.

“Come and sit in the window-seat with me,” Sara went on, “and I’ll whisper a story to you.”

“Will you?” whimpered Lottie.  “Will you—­tell me—­about the diamond mines?”

“The diamond mines?” broke out Lavinia.  “Nasty, little spoiled thing, I should like to slap her!”

Sara got up quickly on her feet.  It must be remembered that she had been very deeply absorbed in the book about the Bastille, and she had had to recall several things rapidly when she realized that she must go and take care of her adopted child.  She was not an angel, and she was not fond of Lavinia.

“Well,” she said, with some fire, “I should like to slap you—­ but I don’t want to slap you!” restraining herself.  “At least I both want to slap you—­and I should like to slap you—­but I won’t slap you.  We are not little gutter children.  We are both old enough to know better.”

Here was Lavinia’s opportunity.

“Ah, yes, your royal highness,” she said.  “We are princesses, I believe.  At least one of us is.  The school ought to be very fashionable now Miss Minchin has a princess for a pupil.”

Sara started toward her.  She looked as if she were going to box her ears.  Perhaps she was.  Her trick of pretending things was the joy of her life.  She never spoke of it to girls she was not fond of.  Her new “pretend” about being a princess was very near to her heart, and she was shy and sensitive about it.  She had meant it to be rather a secret, and here was Lavinia deriding it before nearly all the school.  She felt the blood rush up into her face and tingle in her ears.  She only just saved herself.  If you were a princess, you did not fly into rages.  Her hand dropped, and she stood quite still a moment.  When she spoke it was in a quiet, steady voice; she held her head up, and everybody listened to her.

“It’s true,” she said.  “Sometimes I do pretend I am a princess.  I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one.”

Lavinia could not think of exactly the right thing to say.  Several times she had found that she could not think of a satisfactory reply when she was dealing with Sara.  The reason for this was that, somehow, the rest always seemed to be vaguely in sympathy with her opponent.  She saw now that they were pricking up their ears interestedly.  The truth was, they liked princesses, and they all hoped they might hear something more definite about this one, and drew nearer Sara accordingly.

Lavinia could only invent one remark, and it fell rather flat.

“Dear me,” she said, “I hope, when you ascend the throne, you won’t forget us!”

“I won’t,” said Sara, and she did not utter another word, but stood quite still, and stared at her steadily as she saw her take Jessie’s arm and turn away.

After this, the girls who were jealous of her used to speak of her as “Princess Sara” whenever they wished to be particularly disdainful, and those who were fond of her gave her the name among themselves as a term of affection.  No one called her “princess” instead of “Sara,” but her adorers were much pleased with the picturesqueness and grandeur of the title, and Miss Minchin, hearing of it, mentioned it more than once to visiting parents, feeling that it rather suggested a sort of royal boarding school.

To Becky it seemed the most appropriate thing in the world.  The acquaintance begun on the foggy afternoon when she had jumped up terrified from her sleep in the comfortable chair, had ripened and grown, though it must be confessed that Miss Minchin and Miss Amelia knew very little about it.  They were aware that Sara was “kind” to the scullery maid, but they knew nothing of certain delightful moments snatched perilously when, the upstairs rooms being set in order with lightning rapidity, Sara’s sitting room was reached, and the heavy coal box set down with a sigh of joy.  At such times stories were told by installments, things of a satisfying nature were either produced and eaten or hastily tucked into pockets to be disposed of at night, when Becky went upstairs to her attic to bed.

“But I has to eat ’em careful, miss,” she said once; “’cos if I leaves crumbs the rats come out to get ’em.”

“Rats!” exclaimed Sara, in horror.  “Are there rats there?”

“Lots of ’em, miss,” Becky answered in quite a matter-of-fact manner.  “There mostly is rats an’ mice in attics.  You gets used to the noise they makes scuttling about.  I’ve got so I don’t mind ’em s’ long as they don’t run over my piller.”

“Ugh!” said Sara.

“You gets used to anythin’ after a bit,” said Becky.  “You have to, miss, if you’re born a scullery maid.  I’d rather have rats than cockroaches.”

“So would I,” said Sara; “I suppose you might make friends with a rat in time, but I don’t believe I should like to make friends with a cockroach.”

Sometimes Becky did not dare to spend more than a few minutes in the bright, warm room, and when this was the case perhaps only a few words could be exchanged, and a small purchase slipped into the old-fashioned pocket Becky carried under her dress skirt, tied round her waist with a band of tape.  The search for and discovery of satisfying things to eat which could be packed into small compass, added a new interest to Sara’s existence.  When she drove or walked out, she used to look into shop windows eagerly.  The first time it occurred to her to bring home two or three little meat pies, she felt that she had hit upon a discovery.  When she exhibited them, Becky’s eyes quite sparkled.

“Oh, miss!” she murmured.  “Them will be nice an’ fillin.’  It’s fillin’ness that’s best.  Sponge cake’s a ’evenly thing, but it melts away like—­if you understand, miss.  These’ll just stay in yer stummick.”

“Well,” hesitated Sara, “I don’t think it would be good if they stayed always, but I do believe they will be satisfying.”

They were satisfying—­and so were beef sandwiches, bought at a cook-shop—­and so were rolls and Bologna sausage.  In time, Becky began to lose her hungry, tired feeling, and the coal box did not seem so unbearably heavy.

However heavy it was, and whatsoever the temper of the cook, and the hardness of the work heaped upon her shoulders, she had always the chance of the afternoon to look forward to—­the chance that Miss Sara would be able to be in her sitting room.  In fact, the mere seeing of Miss Sara would have been enough without meat pies.  If there was time only for a few words, they were always friendly, merry words that put heart into one; and if there was time for more, then there was an installment of a story to be told, or some other thing one remembered afterward and sometimes lay awake in one’s bed in the attic to think over.  Sara—­who was only doing what she unconsciously liked better than anything else, Nature having made her for a giver—­had not the least idea what she meant to poor Becky, and how wonderful a benefactor she seemed.  If Nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that—­warm things, kind things, sweet things—­help and comfort and laughter—­and sometimes gay, kind laughter is the best help of all.

Becky had scarcely known what laughter was through all her poor, little hard-driven life.  Sara made her laugh, and laughed with her; and, though neither of them quite knew it, the laughter was as “fillin’” as the meat pies.

A few weeks before Sara’s eleventh birthday a letter came to her from her father, which did not seem to be written in such boyish high spirits as usual.  He was not very well, and was evidently overweighted by the business connected with the diamond mines.

“You see, little Sara,” he wrote, “your daddy is not a businessman at all, and figures and documents bother him.  He does not really understand them, and all this seems so enormous.  Perhaps, if I was not feverish I should not be awake, tossing about, one half of the night and spend the other half in troublesome dreams.  If my little missus were here, I dare say she would give me some solemn, good advice.  You would, wouldn’t you, Little Missus?”

One of his many jokes had been to call her his “little missus” because she had such an old-fashioned air.

He had made wonderful preparations for her birthday.  Among other things, a new doll had been ordered in Paris, and her wardrobe was to be, indeed, a marvel of splendid perfection.  When she had replied to the letter asking her if the doll would be an acceptable present, Sara had been very quaint.

“I am getting very old,” she wrote; “you see, I shall never live to have another doll given me.  This will be my last doll.  There is something solemn about it.  If I could write poetry, I am sure a poem about `A Last Doll’ would be very nice.  But I cannot write poetry.  I have tried, and it made me laugh.  It did not sound like Watts or Coleridge or Shakespeare at all.  No one could ever take Emily’s place, but I should respect the Last Doll very much; and I am sure the school would love it.  They all like dolls, though some of the big ones—­the almost fifteen ones—­ pretend they are too grown up.”

Captain Crewe had a splitting headache when he read this letter in his bungalow in India.  The table before him was heaped with papers and letters which were alarming him and filling him with anxious dread, but he laughed as he had not laughed for weeks.

“Oh,” he said, “she’s better fun every year she lives.  God grant this business may right itself and leave me free to run home and see her.  What wouldn’t I give to have her little arms round my neck this minute!  What wouldn’t I give!”

The birthday was to be celebrated by great festivities.  The schoolroom was to be decorated, and there was to be a party.  The boxes containing the presents were to be opened with great ceremony, and there was to be a glittering feast spread in Miss Minchin’s sacred room.  When the day arrived the whole house was in a whirl of excitement.  How the morning passed nobody quite knew, because there seemed such preparations to be made.  The schoolroom was being decked with garlands of holly; the desks had been moved away, and red covers had been put on the forms which were arrayed round the room against the wall.

When Sara went into her sitting room in the morning, she found on the table a small, dumpy package, tied up in a piece of brown paper.  She knew it was a present, and she thought she could guess whom it came from.  She opened it quite tenderly.  It was a square pincushion, made of not quite clean red flannel, and black pins had been stuck carefully into it to form the words, “Menny hapy returns.”

“Oh!” cried Sara, with a warm feeling in her heart.  “What pains she has taken!  I like it so, it—­it makes me feel sorrowful.”

But the next moment she was mystified.  On the under side of the pincushion was secured a card, bearing in neat letters the name “Miss Amelia Minchin.”

Sara turned it over and over.

“Miss Amelia!” she said to herself “How can it be!”

And just at that very moment she heard the door being cautiously pushed open and saw Becky peeping round it.

There was an affectionate, happy grin on her face, and she shuffled forward and stood nervously pulling at her fingers.

“Do yer like it, Miss Sara?” she said.  “Do yer?”

“Like it?” cried Sara.  “You darling Becky, you made it all yourself.”

Becky gave a hysteric but joyful sniff, and her eyes looked quite moist with delight.

“It ain’t nothin’ but flannin, an’ the flannin ain’t new; but I wanted to give yer somethin’ an’ I made it of nights.  I knew yer could pretend it was satin with diamond pins in. I tried to when I was makin’ it.  The card, miss,” rather doubtfully; “’t warn’t wrong of me to pick it up out o’ the dust-bin, was it?  Miss ‘Meliar had throwed it away.  I hadn’t no card o’ my own, an’ I knowed it wouldn’t be a proper presink if I didn’t pin a card on—­ so I pinned Miss ’Meliar’s.”

Sara flew at her and hugged her.  She could not have told herself or anyone else why there was a lump in her throat.

“Oh, Becky!” she cried out, with a queer little laugh, “I love you, Becky—­I do, I do!”

“Oh, miss!” breathed Becky.  “Thank yer, miss, kindly; it ain’t good enough for that.  The—­the flannin wasn’t new.”

7

The Diamond Mines Again

When Sara entered the holly-hung schoolroom in the afternoon, she did so as the head of a sort of procession.  Miss Minchin, in her grandest silk dress, led her by the hand.  A manservant followed, carrying the box containing the Last Doll, a housemaid carried a second box, and Becky brought up the rear, carrying a third and wearing a clean apron and a new cap.  Sara would have much preferred to enter in the usual way, but Miss Minchin had sent for her, and, after an interview in her private sitting room, had expressed her wishes.

“This is not an ordinary occasion,” she said.  “I do not desire that it should be treated as one.”

So Sara was led grandly in and felt shy when, on her entry, the big girls stared at her and touched each other’s elbows, and the little ones began to squirm joyously in their seats.

“Silence, young ladies!” said Miss Minchin, at the murmur which arose.  “James, place the box on the table and remove the lid.  Emma, put yours upon a chair.  Becky!” suddenly and severely.

Becky had quite forgotten herself in her excitement, and was grinning at Lottie, who was wriggling with rapturous expectation.  She almost dropped her box, the disapproving voice so startled her, and her frightened, bobbing curtsy of apology was so funny that Lavinia and Jessie tittered.

“It is not your place to look at the young ladies,” said Miss Minchin.  “You forget yourself.  Put your box down.”

Becky obeyed with alarmed haste and hastily backed toward the door.

“You may leave us,” Miss Minchin announced to the servants with a wave of her hand.

Becky stepped aside respectfully to allow the superior servants to pass out first.  She could not help casting a longing glance at the box on the table.  Something made of blue satin was peeping from between the folds of tissue paper.

“If you please, Miss Minchin,” said Sara, suddenly, “mayn’t Becky stay?”

It was a bold thing to do.  Miss Minchin was betrayed into something like a slight jump.  Then she put her eyeglass up, and gazed at her show pupil disturbedly.

“Becky!” she exclaimed.  “My dearest Sara!”

Sara advanced a step toward her.

“I want her because I know she will like to see the presents,” she explained.  “She is a little girl, too, you know.”

Miss Minchin was scandalized.  She glanced from one figure to the other.

“My dear Sara,” she said, “Becky is the scullery maid.  Scullery maids—­er—­are not little girls.”

It really had not occurred to her to think of them in that light.  Scullery maids were machines who carried coal scuttles and made fires.

“But Becky is,” said Sara.  “And I know she would enjoy herself.  Please let her stay—­because it is my birthday.”

Miss Minchin replied with much dignity: 

“As you ask it as a birthday favor—­she may stay.  Rebecca, thank Miss Sara for her great kindness.”

Becky had been backing into the corner, twisting the hem of her apron in delighted suspense.  She came forward, bobbing curtsies, but between Sara’s eyes and her own there passed a gleam of friendly understanding, while her words tumbled over each other.

“Oh, if you please, miss!  I’m that grateful, miss!  I did want to see the doll, miss, that I did.  Thank you, miss.  And thank you, ma’am,”—­turning and making an alarmed bob to Miss Minchin—­ “for letting me take the liberty.”

Miss Minchin waved her hand again—­this time it was in the direction of the corner near the door.

“Go and stand there,” she commanded.  “Not too near the young ladies.”

Becky went to her place, grinning.  She did not care where she was sent, so that she might have the luck of being inside the room, instead of being downstairs in the scullery, while these delights were going on.  She did not even mind when Miss Minchin cleared her throat ominously and spoke again.

“Now, young ladies, I have a few words to say to you,” she announced.

“She’s going to make a speech,” whispered one of the girls.  “I wish it was over.”

Sara felt rather uncomfortable.  As this was her party, it was probable that the speech was about her.  It is not agreeable to stand in a schoolroom and have a speech made about you.

“You are aware, young ladies,” the speech began—­for it was a speech—­“that dear Sara is eleven years old today.”

“Dear Sara!” murmured Lavinia.

“Several of you here have also been eleven years old, but Sara’s birthdays are rather different from other little girls’ birthdays.  When she is older she will be heiress to a large fortune, which it will be her duty to spend in a meritorious manner.”

“The diamond mines,” giggled Jessie, in a whisper.

Sara did not hear her; but as she stood with her green-gray eyes fixed steadily on Miss Minchin, she felt herself growing rather hot.  When Miss Minchin talked about money, she felt somehow that she always hated her—­and, of course, it was disrespectful to hate grown-up people.

“When her dear papa, Captain Crewe, brought her from India and gave her into my care,” the speech proceeded, “he said to me, in a jesting way, `I am afraid she will be very rich, Miss Minchin.’  My reply was, `Her education at my seminary, Captain Crewe, shall be such as will adorn the largest fortune.’  Sara has become my most accomplished pupil.  Her French and her dancing are a credit to the seminary.  Her manners—­which have caused you to call her Princess Sara—­are perfect.  Her amiability she exhibits by giving you this afternoon’s party.  I hope you appreciate her generosity.  I wish you to express your appreciation of it by saying aloud all together, `Thank you, Sara!’”

The entire schoolroom rose to its feet as it had done the morning Sara remembered so well.

“Thank you, Sara!” it said, and it must be confessed that Lottie jumped up and down.  Sara looked rather shy for a moment.  She made a curtsy—­and it was a very nice one.

“Thank you,” she said, “for coming to my party.”

“Very pretty, indeed, Sara,” approved Miss Minchin.  “That is what a real princess does when the populace applauds her.  Lavinia”—­scathingly—­“the sound you just made was extremely like a snort.  If you are jealous of your fellow-pupil, I beg you will express your feelings in some more lady-like manner.  Now I will leave you to enjoy yourselves.”

The instant she had swept out of the room the spell her presence always had upon them was broken.  The door had scarcely closed before every seat was empty.  The little girls jumped or tumbled out of theirs; the older ones wasted no time in deserting theirs.  There was a rush toward the boxes.  Sara had bent over one of them with a delighted face.

“These are books, I know,” she said.

The little children broke into a rueful murmur, and Ermengarde looked aghast.

“Does your papa send you books for a birthday present?” she exclaimed.  “Why, he’s as bad as mine.  Don’t open them, Sara.”

“I like them,” Sara laughed, but she turned to the biggest box.  When she took out the Last Doll it was so magnificent that the children uttered delighted groans of joy, and actually drew back to gaze at it in breathless rapture.

“She is almost as big as Lottie,” someone gasped.

Lottie clapped her hands and danced about, giggling.

“She’s dressed for the theater,” said Lavinia.  “Her cloak is lined with ermine.”

“Oh,” cried Ermengarde, darting forward, “she has an o