A Little Princess .................................................................................................................................................1

Frances Hodgson Burnett .........................................................................................................................1

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 oddlooking 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 oldfashioned 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

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 grownup people and the world they

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

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

"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

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

itgenerally 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

"Couldn't you go to that place with me, papa?" she had asked when she was five years old. "Couldn't you go

"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

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 booksthat 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.

He laughed at her oldfashioned 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

"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 polishedeven

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,

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 soldierseven brave onesdon't really like going into

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

"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

"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

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

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 rosecolored 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

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

After she had known Miss Minchin longer she learned why she had said it. She discovered that she said the

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

"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 grownup booksgreat, big, fat onesFrench and German as well as Englishhistory 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."

"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

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

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 princessperhaps 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

onesat dolls with black eyes and dolls with blueat dolls with brown curls and dolls with golden braids,

"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

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.

A flush had risen to her face and there was an expression in her greengray eyes as if she had just recognized

"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 herso

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

goldenbrown hair, which hung like a mantle about her, and her eyes were a deep, clear, grayblue, with

"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

"I should like her always to look as if she was a child with a good mother," said Sara. "I'm her mother, though

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 goldenbrown hair mingled

with it, both of them had laceruffled 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

"Heighho, 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 goodby. Sara sat on his knee

and held the lapels of his coat in her small hands, and looked long and hard at his face.

"No," she answered. "I know you by heart. You are inside my heart." And they put their arms round each

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

"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 betternatured

person of the two, but she never disobeyed Miss Minchin. She went downstairs again, looking almost

"I never saw such a funny, oldfashioned child, sister," she said. "She has locked herself in, and she is not

"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

"I've been opening her trunks and putting her things away," said Miss Amelia. "I never saw anything like

themsable and ermine on her coats, and real Valenciennes lace on her underclothing. You have seen some

"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

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

When Sara entered the schoolroom the next morning everybody looked at her with wide, interested eyes. By

that time every pupilfrom Lavinia Herbert, who was nearly thirteen and felt quite grown up, to Lottie

Legh, who was only just four and the baby of the schoolhad 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 themfrills 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

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

"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

"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

"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 sawbut 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 darkblue schoolroom frock and tied her hair with a darkblue ribbon, she went to

"You can read that while I am downstairs," she said; and, seeing Mariette looking at her curiously, she spoke

"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 distancein fact, from India. As soon as lessons are over you must make each other's

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

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

"I think he engaged her," she said, "because hehe 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

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

"II have never really learned French, butbut" 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

"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"

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

"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

" When Monsieur Dufarge comes," she thought, "I can make him understand." Monsieur Dufarge arrived

very shortly afterward. He was a very nice, intelligent, middleaged 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 papaCaptain Creweis 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

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, greengray 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 exactlynot out of

booksbut 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 bookand she held

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 landwhich 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

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

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

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

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

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 goodnaturedly 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 Englishit 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

She stared so hard and bit the ribbon on her pigtail so fast that she attracted the attention of Miss Minchin,

"Miss St. John!" she exclaimed severely. "What do you mean by such conduct? Remove your elbows! Take

Upon which Miss St. John gave another jump, and when Lavinia and Jessie tittered she became redder than

everso 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

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 windowseat, 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

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

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

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

"Good heavens!" he had said more than once, as he stared at her, "there are times when I think she is as

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.

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 got on to the windowseat, which was a big, deep one, and, tucking up her feet, sat with her hands

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

"Oh, no, I couldn't," said Ermengarde. "I never could speak it!" "Why?" inquired Sara, curiously.

"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 wasand 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

"Is it true," Ermengarde whispered, as they went through the hall"is it true that you have a playroom all to

"Yes," Sara answered. "Papa asked Miss Minchin to let me have one, becausewell, 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

They had reached the passage leading to Sara's room by this time, and Ermengarde stopped short, staring, and

"You make up stories!" she gasped. "Can you do thatas well as speak French? Can you?" Sara looked at

"Let us go very quietly to the door," she whispered, "and then I will open it quite suddenly; perhaps we may

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,

"Oh, she got back to her seat before we could see her!" Sara explained. "Of course they always do. They are

"Yes," answered Sara. "At least I believe she can. At least I pretend I believe she can. And that makes it seem

She was so bewitched by this odd, new companion that she actually stared at Sara instead of at

Emilynotwithstanding 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.

"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 lunchbell ring and were obliged to go downstairs.

Sara sat upon the hearthrug 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

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.

"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

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

"II scarcely ever see him," she stammered. "He is always in the libraryreading 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, huddledup knees, and sat very still for a few minutes.

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

"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

Ermengarde could only gaze at her, but she felt that she was beginning to adore her. She was so wonderful

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

"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 Ioh, 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."

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 selfopinionated, 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 selfsatisfied 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

"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 goodtempered? 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

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

This was the result of a charitable recollection of having heard Miss Amelia say that Lavinia was growing so

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 bestdressed 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 beingjust a

littleif I had so many fine things and was made such a fuss over. It's disgusting, the way Miss Minchin

"'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

"She's always doing something silly," snapped Lavinia. "My mamma says that way of hers of pretending

lt 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 havingit must be

confessedslapped 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

twentyand 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

usedthe one with cups which held quite a lot of muchsweetened 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

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

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 grownup

people talking her over in the early days, after her mother's death. So it became her habit to make great use of

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 shoutin a stately and

"Oh, Lottie!" screamed Miss Amelia. "Do stop, darling! Don't cry! Please don't!" "Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!"

"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,

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

"I stopped," explained Sara, "because I knew it was Lottieand I thought, perhapsjust perhaps, I could

"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

"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

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 stopmay 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 halfwhisper; "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.

"Oh, Sara!" almost whimpered Miss Amelia. "We never had such a dreadful child before. I don't believe we

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 tightshut

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

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

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

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 methough 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, curlyheaded creature, and her round

eyes were like wet forgetmenots. If her mamma had seen her during the last halfhour, she might not have

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

"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 liliesand when the soft wind blows over them it wafts

the scent of them into the airand 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 on to 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 camefar too soon. When it did come, she was so sorry that she

"I want to go there," she cried. "Ihaven'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

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

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

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.

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 meanshow 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, quickrising chest, and half laugh as if at

"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

aremore real than the schoolroom. I feel as if I were all the people in the storyone after the other. It is

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 wideopen 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

But the owner of the smudgy face and the wideopen eyes evidently was afraid that she ought not to have

been caught looking at pupils of importance. She dodged out of sight like a jackinthebox 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

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

"The Mermaids swam softly about in the crystalgreen water, and dragged after them a fishingnet woven of

deepsea 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

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

The hearth brush fell from the workroughened hand, and Lavinia Herbert looked round.

The culprit snatched up her brush, and scrambled to her feet. She caught at the coal box and simply scuttled

"Well," she remarked, "I do not know whether your mamma would like you to tell stories to servant girls, but

"My mamma!" said Sara, looking odd. "I don't believe she would mind in the least. She knows that stories

"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

"Sara's mamma knows everything," piped in Lottie. "So does my mamma'cept Sara is my mamma at Miss

Minchin'smy other one knows everything. The streets are shining, and there are fields and fields of lilies,

"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

Ah, indeed, Mademoiselle Sara might well ask. She was a forlorn little thing who had just taken the place of

scullery maidthough, as to being scullery maid, she was everything else besides. She blacked boots and

grates, and carried heavy coalscuttles 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

"What is her name?" asked Sara, who had sat by the table, with her chin on her hands, as she listened

Her name was Becky. Mariette heard everyone belowstairs calling, "Becky, do this," and "Becky, do that,"

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 illused 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

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 easychair before the bright fire,

Beckywith 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 hersat fast asleep, tired out beyond even the endurance

of her hardworking 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

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

lookpoor Beckylike a Sleeping Beauty at all. She looked only like an ugly, stunted, wornout little

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

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 rosecolored butterfly, and the enjoyment and exercise had

When she entered the room, she floated in with a few of the butterfly stepsand there sat Becky, nodding

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 illused 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

She took a seat on the edge of the table, and sat swinging her slim, rosecolored 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

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 glowand here she found herself

staring in wild alarm at the wonderful pupil, who sat perched quite near her, like a rosecolored fairy, with

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

"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 firean' me bein' so tired. Itit

"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 onein her

rosecolored dancing afternoon splendorwas looking at her as if she were not a culprit at allas if she

had a right to be tiredeven to fall asleep! The touch of the soft, slim little paw on her shoulder was the

The woeful fright in the coalsmutted 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 sameI am only a little girl like you. It's just an accident that I am not you,

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."

"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

"No one is anywhere about," she explained. "If your bedrooms are finished, perhaps you might stay a tiny

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

"Is that" she ventured, looking longingly at the rosecolored frock. And she asked it almost in a whisper.

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

growedup young lady, but she was pink all overgownd an' cloak, an' flowers an' all. I called her to mind

"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

"Yes, miss," confessed Becky, a little alarmed again. "I knowed I hadn't orter, but it was that beautiful II

"I liked you to listen to it," said Sara. "If you tell stories, you like nothing so much as to tell them to people

"Me hear it?" she cried. "Like as if I was a pupil, miss! All about the Princeand the little white Merbabies

"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 oneand

"Then," breathed Becky, devoutly, "I wouldn't mind how heavy the coal boxes wasor what the cook done

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

"If I was a princessa 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."

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

"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

"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 timeeven in school. She says

it makes her learn her lessons better. She wants Ermengarde to be one, too, but Ermengarde says she is too

"She says it has nothing to do with what you look like, or what you have. It has only to do with what you

"I suppose she thinks she could be a princess if she was a beggar," said Lavinia. "Let us begin to call her

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 windowseat, 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 Bastillemen 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

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

"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 illtempered."

She had to remember things quickly when she laid her book on the windowseat and jumped down from her

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.

"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

Lottle remembered that she had promised, but she preferred to lift up her voice.

"Yes, you have," said Sara, cheerfully. "Have you forgotten? Don't you know that Sara is your mamma?

"Come and sit in the windowseat with me," Sara went on, "and I'll whisper a story to you."

"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 youbut I don't want to slap you!" restraining herself.

"At least I both want to slap youand I should like to slap you but I won't slap you. We are not little

"Ah, yes, your royal highness," she said. "We are princesses, I believe. At least one of us is. The school ought

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

"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

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

Lavinia could only invent one remark, and it fell rather flat. "Dear me," she said, "I hope, when you ascend

"I won't," said Sara, and she did not utter another word, but stood quite still, and stared at her steadily as she

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,

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

"Lots of 'em, miss," Becky answered in quite a matteroffact 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

"You gets used to anythin' after a bit," said Becky. "You have to, miss, if you're born a scullery maid. I'd

"So would I," said Sara; "I suppose you might make friends with a rat in time, but I don't believe I should like

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

oldfashioned 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

"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 likeif 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

They were satisfyingand so were beef sandwiches, bought at a cookshopand 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

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 tothe 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. Sarawho was only

doing what she unconsciously liked better than anything else, Nature having made her for a giverhad 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 thatwarm things, kind things,

sweet thingshelp and comfort and laughterand sometimes gay, kind laughter is the best help of all.

Becky had scarcely known what laughter was through all her poor, little harddriven life. Sara made her

laugh, and laughed with her; and, though neither of them quite knew it, the laughter was as "fillin'" as the

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

"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

One of his many jokes had been to call her his "little missus" because she had such an oldfashioned 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 onesthe

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

"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

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

"Oh!" cried Sara, with a warm feeling in her heart. "What pains she has taken! I like it so, itit makes me

But the next moment she was mystified. On the under side of the pincushion was secured a card, bearing in

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

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

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 dustbin, 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 onso I

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

"Oh, Becky!" she cried out, with a queer little laugh, "I love you, BeckyI do, I do!"

"Oh, miss!" breathed Becky. "Thank yer, miss, kindly; it ain't good enough for that. Thethe flannin wasn't

When Sara entered the hollyhung 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

"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

"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,

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

"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

It was a bold thing to do. Miss Minchin was betrayed into something like a slight jump. Then she put her

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

Miss Minchin was scandalized. She glanced from one figure to the other. "My dear Sara," she said, "Becky is

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

"But Becky is," said Sara. "And I know she would enjoy herself. Please let her staybecause it is my

"As you ask it as a birthday favorshe 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

"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

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

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.

"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

"You are aware, young ladies," the speech beganfor it was a speech"that dear Sara is eleven years old

"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

Sara did not hear her; but as she stood with her greengray 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

"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

mannerswhich have caused you to call her Princess Saraare perfect. Her amiability she exhibits by

giving you this afternoon's party. I hope you appreciate her generosity. I wish you to express your

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

"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 fellowpupil, I beg you will express your feelings in some more ladylike manner. Now I will leave

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

"Does your papa send you books for a birthday present?" she exclaimed. "Why, he's as bad as mine. Don't

"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

"She's dressed for the theater," said Lavinia. "Her cloak is lined with ermine."

"Oh," cried Ermengarde, darting forward, "she has an operaglass in her handa blueandgold one!"

She sat down upon the floor and turned the key. The children crowded clamoring around her, as she lifted

tray after tray and revealed their contents. Never had the schoolroom been in such an uproar. There were lace

collars and silk stockings and handkerchiefs; there was a jewel case containing a necklace and a tiara which

looked quite as if they were made of real diamonds; there was a long sealskin and muff, there were ball

dresses and walking dresses and visiting dresses; there were hats and tea gowns and fans. Even Lavinia and

Jessie forgot that they were too elderly to care for dolls, and uttered exclamations of delight and caught up

"Suppose," Sara said, as she stood by the table, putting a large, blackvelvet hat on the impassively smiling

owner of all these splendors"suppose she understands human talk and feels proud of being admired."

"I know I am," answered Sara, undisturbedly. "I like it. There is nothing so nice as supposing. It's almost like

being a fairy. If you suppose anything hard enough it seems as if it were real."

"It's all very well to suppose things if you have everything," said Lavinia. "Could you suppose and pretend if

"I believe I could," she said. "If one was a beggar, one would have to suppose and pretend all the time. But it

She often thought afterward how strange it was that just as she had finished saying thisjust at that very

"Sara," she said, "your papa's solicitor, Mr. Barrow, has called to see Miss Minchin, and, as she must talk to

him alone and the refreshments are laid in her parlor, you had all better come and have your feast now, so that

Refreshments were not likely to be disdained at any hour, and many pairs of eyes gleamed. Miss Amelia

arranged the procession into decorum, and then, with Sara at her side heading it, she led it away, leaving the

Last Doll sitting upon a chair with the glories of her wardrobe scattered about her; dresses and coats hung

Becky, who was not expected to partake of refreshments, had the indiscretion to linger a moment to look at

"Go back to your work, Becky," Miss Amelia had said; but she had stopped to pick up reverently first a muff

and then a coat, and while she stood looking at them adoringly, she heard Miss Minchin upon the threshold,

and, being smitten with terror at the thought of being accused of taking liberties, she rashly darted under the

Miss Minchin came into the room, accompanied by a sharpfeatured, dry little gentleman, who looked rather

disturbed. Miss Minchin herself also looked rather disturbed, it must be admitted, and she gazed at the dry

Mr. Barrow did not sit down at once. His attention seemed attracted by the Last Doll and the things which

surrounded her. He settled his eyeglasses and looked at them in nervous disapproval. The Last Doll herself

did not seem to mind this in the least. She merely sat upright and returned his gaze indifferently.

"A hundred pounds," Mr. Barrow remarked succinctly. "All expensive material, and made at a Parisian

Miss Minchin felt offended. This seemed to be a disparagement of her best patron and was a liberty.

"Birthday presents," said Mr. Barrow in the same critical manner, "to a child eleven years old! Mad

Mr. Barrow wheeled round upon her. "Diamond mines!" he broke out. "There are none! Never were!"

"At any rate," answered Mr. Barrow, quite snappishly, "it would have been much better if there never had

"Any diamond mines?" ejaculated Miss Minchin, catching at the back of a chair and feeling as if a splendid

"Diamond mines spell ruin oftener than they spell wealth," said Mr. Barrow. "When a man is in the hands of

a very dear friend and is not a businessman himself, he had better steer clear of the dear friend's diamond

mines, or gold mines, or any other kind of mines dear friends want his money to put into. The late Captain

Here Miss Minchin stopped him with a gasp. "The late Captain Crewe!" she cried out. "The late! You don't

"He's dead, ma'am," Mr. Barrow answered with jerky brusqueness. "Died of jungle fever and business

troubles combined. The jungle fever might not have killed him if he had not been driven mad by the business

troubles, and the business troubles might not have put an end to him if the jungle fever had not assisted.

Miss Minchin dropped into her chair again. The words he had spoken filled her with alarm.

"Lost every penny. That young man had too much money. The dear friend was mad on the subject of the

diamond mine. He put all his own money into it, and all Captain Crewe's. Then the dear friend ran

awayCaptain Crewe was already stricken with fever when the news came. The shock was too much for

Now Miss Minchin understood, and never had she received such a blow in her life. Her show pupil, her show

patron, swept away from the Select Seminary at one blow. She felt as if she had been outraged and robbed,

"Do you mean to tell me," she cried out, "that he left nothing! That Sara will have no fortune! That the child

is a beggar! That she is left on my hands a little pauper instead of an heiress?" Mr. Barrow was a shrewd

businessman, and felt it as well to make his own freedom from responsibility quite clear without any delay.

"She is certainly left a beggar," he replied. "And she is certainly left on your hands, ma'amas she hasn't a

Miss Minchin started forward. She looked as if she was going to open the door and rush out of the room to

stop the festivities going on joyfully and rather noisily that moment over the refreshments.

"It is monstrous!" she said. "She's in my sitting room at this moment, dressed in silk gauze and lace

"She's giving it at your expense, madam, if she's giving it," said Mr. Barrow, calmly. "Barrow Skipworth are

not responsible for anything. There never was a cleaner sweep made of a man's fortune. Captain Crewe died

Miss Minchin turned back from the door in increased indignation. This was worse than anyone could have

"That is what has happened to me!" she cried. "I was always so sure of his payments that I went to all sorts of

ridiculous expenses for the child. I paid the bills for that ridiculous doll and her ridiculous fantastic wardrobe.

The child was to have anything she wanted. She has a carriage and a pony and a maid, and I've paid for all of

Mr. Barrow evidently did not intend to remain to listen to the story of Miss Minchin's grievances after he had

made the position of his firm clear and related the mere dry facts. He did not feel any particular sympathy for

irate keepers of boarding schools. "You had better not pay for anything more, ma'am," he remarked, "unless

you want to make presents to the young lady. No one will remember you. She hasn't a brass farthing to call

"But what am I to do?" demanded Miss Minchin, as if she felt it entirely his duty to make the matter right.

"There isn't anything to do," said Mr. Barrow, folding up his eyeglasses and slipping them into his pocket.

"Captain Crewe is dead. The child is left a pauper. Nobody is responsible for her but you."

"I have nothing to do with that, madam," he said uninterestedly. "Barrow Skipworth are not responsible. Very

"If you think she is to be foisted off on me, you are greatly mistaken," Miss Minchin gasped. "I have been

If she had not been so furious, she would have been too discreet to say quite so much. She saw herself

burdened with an extravagantly broughtup child whom she had always resented, and she lost all

"I wouldn't do that, madam," he commented; "it wouldn't look well. Unpleasant story to get about in

connection with the establishment. Pupil bundled out penniless and without friends."

He was a clever business man, and he knew what he was saying. He also knew that Miss Minchin was a

business woman, and would be shrewd enough to see the truth. She could not afford to do a thing which

" Better keep her and make use of her," he added. "She's a clever child, I believe. You can get a good deal out

"I will get a good deal out of her before she grows older!" exclaimed Miss Minchin.

"I am sure you will, ma'am," said Mr. Barrow, with a little sinister smile. "I am sure you will. Good

He bowed himself out and closed the door, and it must be confessed that Miss Minchin stood for a few

moments and glared at it. What he had said was quite true. She knew it. She had absolutely no redress. Her

show pupil had melted into nothingness, leaving only a friendless, beggared little girl. Such money as she

And as she stood there breathless under her sense of injury, there fell upon her ears a burst of gay voices from

her own sacred room, which had actually been given up to the feast. She could at least stop this.

But as she started toward the door it was opened by Miss Amelia, who, when she caught sight of the changed,

"A black frock?" Miss Amelia stammered again. "A black one?" "She has frocks of every other color. Has

"Noyees!" she said. "But it is too short for her. She has only the old black velvet, and she has outgrown

"Go and tell her to take off that preposterous pink silk gauze, and put the black one on, whether it is too short

"Captain Crewe is dead," she said. "He has died without a penny. That spoiled, pampered, fanciful child is

"Hundreds of pounds have I spent on nonsense for her. And I shall never see a penny of it. Put a stop to this

Poor Miss Amelia was accustomed to being called a goose. She knew, in fact, that she was rather a goose,

and that it was left to geese to do a great many disagreeable things. It was a somewhat embarrassing thing to

go into the midst of a room full of delighted children, and tell the giver of the feast that she had suddenly

been transformed into a little beggar, and must go upstairs and put on an old black frock which was too small

for her. But the thing must be done. This was evidently not the time when questions might be asked.

She rubbed her eyes with her handkerchief until they looked quite red. After which she got up and went out

of the room, without venturing to say another word. When her older sister looked and spoke as she had done

just now, the wisest course to pursue was to obey orders without any comment. Miss Minchin walked across

the room. She spoke to herself aloud without knowing that she was doing it. During the last year the story of

the diamond mines had suggested all sorts of possibilities to her. Even proprietors of seminaries might make

fortunes in stocks, with the aid of owners of mines. And now, instead of looking forward to gains, she was

" The Princess Sara, indeed!" she said. "The child has been pampered as if she were a queen."

She was sweeping angrily past the corner table as she said it, and the next moment she started at the sound of

"What is that!" she exclaimed angrily. The loud, sobbing sniff was heard again, and she stooped and raised

It was poor Becky who crawled out, and her cap was knocked on one side, and her face was red with

"If you please, 'mit's me, mum," she explained. "I know I hadn't ought to. But I was lookin' at the doll,

"No, mum," Becky protested, bobbing curtsies. "Not listenin'I thought I could slip out without your

noticin', but I couldn't an' I had to stay. But I didn't listen, mumI wouldn't for nothin'. But I couldn't help

hearin'." Suddenly it seemed almost as if she lost all fear of the awful lady before her. She burst into fresh

"Oh, please, 'm," she said; "I dare say you'll give me warnin, mumbut I'm so sorry for poor Miss

"Yes, 'm; I will, 'm," she said, trembling; "but oh, I just wanted to arst you: Miss Sarashe's been such a rich

young lady, an' she's been waited on, 'and and foot; an' what will she do now, mum, without no maid? Ifif,

oh please, would you let me wait on her after I've done my pots an' kettles? I'd do 'em that quickif you'd let

me wait on her now she's poor. Oh," breaking out afresh, "poor little Miss Sara, mumthat was called a

Somehow, she made Miss Minchin feel more angry than ever. That the very scullery maid should range

herself on the side of this childwhom she realized more fully than ever that she had never likedwas too

"Nocertainly not," she said. "She will wait on herself, and on other people, too. Leave the room this

Becky threw her apron over her head and fled. She ran out of the room and down the steps into the scullery,

and there she sat down among her pots and kettles, and wept as if her heart would break.

"It's exactly like the ones in the stories," she wailed. "Them pore princess ones that was drove into the

Miss Minchin had never looked quite so still and hard as she did when Sara came to her, a few hours later, in

response to a message she had sent her. Even by that time it seemed to Sara as if the birthday party had either

been a dream or a thing which had happened years ago, and had happened in the life of quite another little

Every sign of the festivities had been swept away; the holly had been removed from the schoolroom walls,

and the forms and desks put back into their places. Miss Minchin's sitting room looked as it always didall

traces of the feast were gone, and Miss Minchin had resumed her usual dress. The pupils had been ordered to

lay aside their party frocks; and this having been done, they had returned to the schoolroom and huddled

"Tell Sara to come to my room," Miss Minchin had said to her sister. "And explain to her clearly that I will

"Sister," replied Miss Amelia, "she is the strangest child I ever saw. She has actually made no fuss at all. You

remember she made none when Captain Crewe went back to India. When I told her what had happened, she

just stood quite still and looked at me without making a sound. Her eyes seemed to get bigger and bigger, and

she went quite pale. When I had finished, she still stood staring for a few seconds, and then her chin began to

shake, and she turned round and ran out of the room and upstairs. Several of the other children began to cry,

but she did not seem to hear them or to be alive to anything but just what I was saying. It made me feel quite

queer not to be answered; and when you tell anything sudden and strange, you expect people will say

Nobody but Sara herself ever knew what had happened in her room after she had run upstairs and locked her

door. In fact, she herself scarcely remembered anything but that she walked up and down, saying over and

over again to herself in a voice which did not seem her own, "My papa is dead! My papa is dead!"

Once she stopped before Emily, who sat watching her from her chair, and cried out wildly, "Emily! Do you

When she came into Miss Minchin's sitting room in answer to her summons, her face was white and her eyes

had dark rings around them. Her mouth was set as if she did not wish it to reveal what she had suffered and

was suffering. She did not look in the least like the rosecolored butterfly child who had flown about from

one of her treasures to the other in the decorated schoolroom. She looked instead a strange, desolate, almost

She had put on, without Mariette's help, the castaside blackvelvet frock. It was too short and tight, and her

slender legs looked long and thin, showing themselves from beneath the brief skirt. As she had not found a

piece of black ribbon, her short, thick, black hair tumbled loosely about her face and contrasted strongly with

its pallor. She held Emily tightly in one arm, and Emily was swathed in a piece of black material.

"Put down your doll," said Miss Minchin. "What do you mean by bringing her here?"

"No," Sara answered. "I will not put her down. She is all I have. My papa gave her to me."

She had always made Miss Minchin feel secretly uncomfortable, and she did so now. She did not speak with

rudeness so much as with a cold steadiness with which Miss Minchin felt it difficult to copeperhaps

"You will have no time for dolls in future," she said. "You will have to work and improve yourself and make

"Everything will be very different now," Miss Minchin went on. "I suppose Miss Amelia has explained

"You are a beggar," said Miss Minchin, her temper rising at the recollection of what all this meant. "It

appears that you have no relations and no home, and no one to take care of you."

"What are you staring at?" demanded Miss Minchin, sharply. "Are you so stupid that you cannot understand?

I tell you that you are quite alone in the world, and have no one to do anything for you, unless I choose to

"I understand," answered Sara, in a low tone; and there was a sound as if she had gulped down something

"That doll," cried Miss Minchin, pointing to the splendid birthday gift seated near"that ridiculous doll,

"The Last Doll," she said. "The Last Doll." And her little mournful voice had an odd sound.

"The Last Doll, indeed!" said Miss Minchin. "And she is mine, not yours. Everything you own is mine."

"Please take it away from me, then," said Sara. "I do not want it." If she had cried and sobbed and seemed

frightened, Miss Minchin might almost have had more patience with her. She was a woman who liked to

domineer and feel her power, and as she looked at Sara's pale little steadfast face and heard her proud little

"Don't put on grand airs," she said. "The time for that sort of thing is past. You are not a princess any longer.

Your carriage and your pony will be sent awayyour maid will be dismissed. You will wear your oldest and

plainest clothesyour extravagant ones are no longer suited to your station. You are like Beckyyou must

To her surprise, a faint gleam of light came into the child's eyesa shade of relief.

"Can I work?" she said. "If I can work it will not matter so much. What can I do?"

"You can do anything you are told," was the answer. "You are a sharp child, and pick up things readily. If

you make yourself useful I may let you stay here. You speak French well, and you can help with the younger

"May I?" exclaimed Sara. "Oh, please let me! I know I can teach them. I like them, and they like me."

"Don't talk nonsense about people liking you," said Miss Minchin. "You will have to do more than teach the

little ones. You will run errands and help in the kitchen as well as in the schoolroom. If you don't please me,

Sara stood still just a moment, looking at her. In her young soul, she was thinking deep and strange things.

Sara paused, and all the deep, strange thoughts surged up in her breast. "What for?" she said.

"For my kindness to you," replied Miss Minchin. "For my kindness in giving you a home."

Sara made two or three steps toward her. Her thin little chest heaved up and down, and she spoke in a strange

"You are not kind," she said. "You are not kind, and it is not a home." And she had turned and run out of the

room before Miss Minchin could stop her or do anything but stare after her with stony anger.

She went up the stairs slowly, but panting for breath and she held Emily tightly against her side.

"I wish she could talk," she said to herself. "If she could speakif she could speak!"

She meant to go to her room and lie down on the tigerskin, with her cheek upon the great cat's head, and

look into the fire and think and think and think. But just before she reached the landing Miss Amelia came

out of the door and closed it behind her, and stood before it, looking nervous and awkward. The truth was that

Somehow, all at once, Sara understood. She realized that this was the beginning of the change Miss Minchin

Sara knew where it was. Becky had told her about it. She turned, and mounted up two flights of stairs. The

last one was narrow, and covered with shabby strips of old carpet. She felt as if she were walking away and

leaving far behind her the world in which that other child, who no longer seemed herself, had lived. This

child, in her short, tight old frock, climbing the stairs to the attic, was quite a different creature.

When she reached the attic door and opened it, her heart gave a dreary little thump. Then she shut the door

Yes, this was another world. The room had a slanting roof and was whitewashed. The whitewash was dingy

and had fallen off in places. There was a rusty grate, an old iron bedstead, and a hard bed covered with a

faded coverlet. Some pieces of furniture too much worn to be used downstairs had been sent up. Under the

skylight in the roof, which showed nothing but an oblong piece of dull gray sky, there stood an old battered

red footstool. Sara went to it and sat down. She seldom cried. She did not cry now. She laid Emily across her

knees and put her face down upon her and her arms around her, and sat there, her little black head resting on

And as she sat in this silence there came a low tap at the doorsuch a low, humble one that she did not at

first hear it, and, indeed, was not roused until the door was timidly pushed open and a poor tearsmeared face

appeared peeping round it. It was Becky's face, and Becky had been crying furtively for hours and rubbing

"Oh, miss," she said under her breath. "Might Iwould you allow mejest to come in?"

Sara lifted her head and looked at her. She tried to begin a smile, and somehow she could not.

Suddenlyand it was all through the loving mournfulness of Becky's streaming eyesher face looked more

like a child's not so much too old for her years. She held out her hand and gave a little sob.

"Oh, Becky," she said. "I told you we were just the sameonly two little girlsjust two little girls. You see

Becky ran to her and caught her hand, and hugged it to her breast, kneeling beside her and sobbing with love

"Yes, miss, you are," she cried, and her words were all broken. "Whats'ever 'appens to

youwhats'everyou'd be a princess all the samean' nothin' couldn't make you nothin' different."

The first night she spent in her attic was a thing Sara never forgot. During its passing she lived through a

wild, unchildlike woe of which she never spoke to anyone about her. There was no one who would have

understood. It was, indeed, well for her that as she lay awake in the darkness her mind was forcibly

distracted, now and then, by the strangeness of her surroundings. It was, perhaps, well for her that she was

reminded by her small body of material things. If this had not been so, the anguish of her young mind might

have been too great for a child to bear. But, really, while the night was passing she scarcely knew that she had

It was not until long afterward that she realized that her bed had been so hard that she turned over and over in

it to find a place to rest, that the darkness seemed more intense than any she had ever known, and that the

wind howled over the roof among the chimneys like something which wailed aloud. Then there was

something worse. This was certain scufflings and scratchings and squeakings in the walls and behind the

skirting boards. She knew what they meant, because Becky had described them. They meant rats and mice

who were either fighting with each other� ()o� or playing together. Once or twice she even heard sharptoed

feet scurrying across the floor, and she remembered in those after days, when she recalled things, that when

first she heard them she started up in bed and sat trembling, and when she lay down again covered her head

"She must begin as she is to go on," Miss Minchin said to Miss Amelia. "She must be taught at once what she

Mariette had left the house the next morning. The glimpse Sara caught of her sitting room, as she passed its

open door, showed her that everything had been changed. Her ornaments and luxuries had been removed, and

When she went down to breakfast she saw that her seat at Miss Minchin's side was occupied by Lavinia, and

"You will begin your new duties, Sara," she said, "by taking your seat with the younger children at a smaller

table. You must keep them quiet, and see that they behave well and do not waste their food. You ought to

That was the beginning, and from day to day the duties given to her were added to. She taught the younger

children French and heard their other lessons, and these were the least of her labors. It was found that she

could be made use of in numberless directions. She could be sent on errands at any time and in all weathers.

She could be told to do things other people neglected. The cook and the housemaids took their tone from

Miss Minchin, and rather enjoyed ordering about the "young one" who had been made so much fuss over for

so long. They were not servants of the best class, and had neither good manners nor good tempers, and it was

During the first month or two, Sara thought that her willingness to do things as well as she could, and her

silence under reproof, might soften those who drove her so hard. In her proud little heart she wanted them to

see that she was trying to earn her living and not accepting charity. But the time came when she saw that no

one was softened at all; and the more willing she was to do as she was told, the more domineering and

exacting careless housemaids became, and the more ready a scolding cook was to blame her.

If she had been older, Miss Minchin would have given her the bigger girls to teach and saved money by

dismissing an instructress; but while she remained and looked like a child, she could be made more useful as

a sort of little superior errand girl and maid of all work. An ordinary errand boy would not have been so

clever and reliable. Sara could be trusted with difficult commissions and complicated messages. She could

even go and pay bills, and she combined with this the ability to dust a room well and to set things in order.

Her own lessons became things of the past. She was taught nothing, and only after long and busy days spent

in running here and there at everybody's orders was she grudgingly allowed to go into the deserted

schoolroom, with a pile of old books, and study alone at night. "If I do not remind myself of the things I have

learned, perhaps I may forget them," she said to herself. "I am almost a scullery maid, and if I am a scullery

maid who knows nothing, I shall be like poor Becky. I wonder if I could quite forget and begin to drop my h's

One of the most curious things in her new existence was her changed position among the pupils. Instead of

being a sort of small royal personage among them, she no longer seemed to be one of their number at all. She

was kept so constantly at work that she scarcely ever had an opportunity of speaking to any of them, and she

could not avoid seeing that Miss Minchin preferred that she should live a life apart from that of the occupants

"I will not have her forming intimacies and talking to the other children," that lady said. "Girls like a

grievance, and if she begins to tell romantic stories about herself, she will become an illused heroine, and

parents will be given a wrong impression. It is better that she should live a separate lifeone suited to her

circumstances. I am giving her a home, and that is more than she has any right to expect from me."

Sara did not expect much, and was far too proud to try to continue to be intimate with girls who evidently felt

rather awkward and uncertain about her. The fact was that Miss Minchin's pupils were a set of dull,

matteroffact young people. They were accustomed to being rich and comfortable, and as Sara's frocks

grew shorter and shabbier and queererlooking, and it became an established fact that she wore shoes with

holes in them and was sent out to buy groceries and carry them through the streets in a basket on her arm

when the cook wanted them in a hurry, they felt rather as if, when they spoke to her, they were addressing an

under servant. "To think that she was the girl with the diamond mines, Lavinia commented. "She does look

an object. And she's queerer than ever. I never liked her much, but I can't bear that way she has now of

"I am," said Sara, promptly, when she heard of this. "That's what I look at some people for. I like to know

The truth was that she had saved herself annoyance several times by keeping her eye on Lavinia, who was

quite ready to make mischief, and would have been rather pleased to have made it for the exshow pupil.

Sara never made any mischief herself, or interfered with anyone. She worked like a drudge; she tramped

through the wet streets, carrying parcels and baskets; she labored with the childish inattention of the little

ones' French lessons; as she became shabbier and more forlornlooking, she was told that she had better take

her meals downstairs; she was treated as if she was nobody's concern, and her heart grew proud and sore, but

"Soldiers don't complain," she would say between her small, shut teeth, "I am not going to do it; I will

But there were hours when her child heart might almost have broken with loneliness but for three people.

The first, it must be owned, was Beckyjust Becky. Throughout all that first night spent in the garret, she

had felt a vague comfort in knowing that on the other side of the wall in which the rats scuffled and squeaked

there was another young human creature. And during the nights that followed the sense of comfort grew.

They had little chance to speak to each other during the day. Each had her own tasks to perform, and any

attempt at conversation would have been regarded as a tendency to loiter and lose time. "Don't mind me,

miss," Becky whispered during the first morning, "if I don't say nothin' polite. Some un'd be down on us if I

did. I means 'please' an' 'thank you' an' 'beg pardon,' but I dassn't to take time to say it."

But before daybreak she used to slip into Sara's attic and button her dress and give her such help as she

required before she went downstairs to light the kitchen fire. And when night came Sara always heard the

humble knock at her door which meant that her handmaid was ready to help her again if she was needed.

During the first weeks of her grief Sara felt as if she were too stupefied to talk, so it happened that some time

passed before they saw each other much or exchanged visits. Becky's heart told her that it was best that

The second of the trio of comforters was Ermengarde, but odd things happened before Ermengarde found her

When Sara's mind seemed to awaken again to the life about her, she realized that she had forgotten that an

Ermengarde lived in the world. The two had always been friends, but Sara had felt as if she were years the

older. It could not be contested that Ermengarde was as dull as she was affectionate. She clung to Sara in a

simple, helpless way; she brought her lessons to her that she might be helped; she listened to her every word

and besieged her with requests for stories. But she had nothing interesting to say herself, and she loathed

books of every description. She was, in fact, not a person one would remember when one was caught in the

It had been all the easier to forget her because she had been suddenly called home for a few weeks. When she

came back she did not see Sara for a day or two, and when she met her for the first time she encountered her

coming down a corridor with her arms full of garments which were to be taken downstairs to be mended.

Sara herself had already been taught to mend them. She looked pale and unlike herself, and she was attired in

Ermengarde was too slow a girl to be equal to such a situation. She could not think of anything to say. She

knew what had happened, but, somehow, she had never imagined Sara could look like thisso odd and poor

and almost like a servant. It made her quite miserable, and she could do nothing but break into a short

hysterical laugh and exclaimaimlessly and as if without any meaning, "Oh, Sara, is that you?"

" Yes," answered Sara, and suddenly a strange thought passed through her mind and made her face flush. She

held the pile of garments in her arms, and her chin rested upon the top of it to keep it steady. Something in

the look of her straightgazing eyes made Ermengarde lose her wits still more. She felt as if Sara had

changed into a new kind of girl, and she had never known her before. Perhaps it was because she had

"I'mI'm quite well," said Ermengarde, overwhelmed with shyness. Then spasmodically she thought of

something to say which seemed more intimate. "Are youare you very unhappy?" she said in a rush.

Then Sara was guilty of an injustice. Just at that moment her torn heart swelled within her, and she felt that if

"What do you think?" she said. "Do you think I am very happy?" And she marched past her without another

In course of time she realized that if her wretchedness had not made her forget things, she would have known

that poor, dull Ermengarde was not to be blamed for her unready, awkward ways. She was always awkward,

"She is like the others," she had thought. "She does not really want to talk to me. She knows no one does."

So for several weeks a barrier stood between them. When they met by chance Sara looked the other way, and

Ermengarde felt too stiff and embarrassed to speak. Sometimes they nodded to each other in passing, but

"If she would rather not talk to me," Sara thought, "I will keep out of her way. Miss Minchin makes that easy

Miss Minchin made it so easy that at last they scarcely saw each other at all. At that time it was noticed that

Ermengarde was more stupid than ever, and that she looked listless and unhappy. She used to sit in the

windowseat, huddled in a heap, and stare out of the window without speaking. Once Jessie, who was

"You are," said Jessie. "A great big tear just rolled down the bridge of your nose and dropped off at the end of

"Well," said Ermengarde, "I'm miserableand no one need interfere." And she turned her plump back and

That night, when Sara went to her attic, she was later than usual. She had been kept at work until after the

hour at which the pupils went to bed, and after that she had gone to her lessons in the lonely schoolroom.

When she reached the top of the stairs, she was surprised to see a glimmer of light coming from under the

"Nobody goes there but myself," she thought quickly, "but someone has lighted a candle."

Someone had, indeed, lighted a candle, and it was not burning in the kitchen candlestick she was expected to

use, but in one of those belonging to the pupils' bedrooms. The someone was sitting upon the battered

footstool, and was dressed in her nightgown and wrapped up in a red shawl. It was Ermengarde.

"Ermengarde!" cried Sara. She was so startled that she was almost frightened. "You will get into trouble."

Ermengarde stumbled up from her footstool. She shuffled across the attic in her bedroom slippers, which

"I know I shallif I'm found out." she said. "But I don't careI don't care a bit. Oh, Sara, please tell me.

Something in her voice made the familiar lump rise in Sara's throat. It was so affectionate and simpleso

like the old Ermengarde who had asked her to be "best friends." It sounded as if she had not meant what she

"I do like you," Sara answered. "I thoughtyou see, everything is different now. I thought youwere

"Why, it was you who were different!" she cried. "You didn't want to talk to me. I didn't know what to do. It

"I am different," she explained, "though not in the way you think. Miss Minchin does not want me to talk to

the girls. Most of them don't want to talk to me. I thoughtperhapsyou didn't. So I tried to keep out of

"Oh, Sara," Ermengarde almost wailed in her reproachful dismay. And then after one more look they rushed

into each other's arms. It must be confessed that Sara's small black head lay for some minutes on the shoulder

covered by the red shawl. When Ermengarde had seemed to desert her, she had felt horribly lonely.

Afterward they sat down upon the floor together, Sara clasping her knees with her arms, and Ermengarde

rolled up in her shawl. Ermengarde looked at the odd, bigeyed little face adoringly.

"I couldn't bear it any more," she said. "I dare say you could live without me, Sara; but I couldn't live without

you. I was nearly dead. So tonight, when I was crying under the bedclothes, I thought all at once of creeping

"You are nicer than I am," said Sara. "I was too proud to try and make friends. You see, now that trials have

come, they have shown that I am not a nice child. I was afraid they would. Perhaps"wrinkling her forehead

"Neither do Ito speak the truth," admitted Sara, frankly. "But I suppose there might be good in things, even

"If I pretend it's quite different, I can," she answered; "or if I pretend it is a place in a story."

She spoke slowly. Her imagination was beginning to work for her. It had not worked for her at all since her

"Other people have lived in worse places. Think of the Count of Monte Cristo in the dungeons of the Chateau

"The Bastille," half whispered Ermengarde, watching her and beginning to be fascinated. She remembered

stories of the French Revolution which Sara had been able to fix in her mind by her dramatic relation of them.

"Yes," she said, hugging her knees, "that will be a good place to pretend about. I am a prisoner in the Bastille.

I have been here for years and yearsand years; and everybody has forgotten about me. Miss Minchin is the

jailerand Becky"a sudden light adding itself to the glow in her eyes"Becky is the prisoner in the next

"And will you tell me all about it?" she said. "May I creep up here at night, whenever it is safe, and hear the

things you have made up in the day? It will seem as if we were more 'best friends' than ever."

"Yes," answered Sara, nodding. "Adversity tries people, and mine has tried you and proved how nice you

The third person in the trio was Lottie. She was a small thing and did not know what adversity meant, and

was much bewildered by the alteration she saw in her young adopted mother. She had heard it rumored that

strange things had happened to Sara, but she could not understand why she looked differentwhy she wore

an old black frock and came into the schoolroom only to teach instead of to sit in her place of honor and learn

lessons herself. There had been much whispering among the little ones when it had been discovered that Sara

no longer lived in the rooms in which Emily had so long sat in state. Lottie's chief difficulty was that Sara

said so little when one asked her questions. At seven mysteries must be made very clear if one is to

"Are you very poor now, Sara?" she had asked confidentially the first morning her friend took charge of the

small French class. "Are you as poor as a beggar?" She thrust a fat hand into the slim one and opened round,

tearful eyes. "I don't want you to be as poor as a beggar." She looked as if she was going to cry. And Sara

"Beggars have nowhere to live," she said courageously. "I have a place to live in."

"Where do you live?" persisted Lottle. "The new girl sleeps in your room, and it isn't pretty any more."

"You must not talk," said Sara. "Miss Minchin is looking at us. She will be angry with me for letting you

She had found out already that she was to be held accountable for everything which was objected to. If the

children were not attentive, if they talked, if they were restless, it was she who would be reproved.

But Lottie was a determined little person. If Sara would not tell her where she lived, she would find out in

some other way. She talked to her small companions and hung about the elder girls and listened when they

were gossiping; and acting upon certain information they had unconsciously let drop, she started late one

afternoon on a voyage of discovery, climbing stairs she had never known the existence of, until she reached

the attic floor. There she found two doors near each other, and opening one, she saw her beloved Sara

"Sara!" she cried, aghast. "Mamma Sara!" She was aghast because the attic was so bare and ugly and seemed

so far away from all the world. Her short legs had seemed to have been mounting hundreds of stairs.

Sara turned round at the sound of her voice. It was her turn to be aghast. What would happen now? If Lottie

began to cry and any one chanced to hear, they were both lost. She jumped down from her table and ran to

the child. "Don't cry and make a noise," she implored. "I shall be scolded if you do, and I have been scolded

"Isn't it?" gasped Lottie, and as she looked round it she bit her lip. She was a spoiled child yet, but she was

fond enough of her adopted parent to make an effort to control herself for her sake. Then, somehow, it was

quite possible that any place in which Sara lived might turn out to be nice. "Why isn't it, Sara?" she almost

Sara hugged her close and tried to laugh. There was a sort of comfort in the warmth of the plump, childish

body. She had had a hard day and had been staring out of the windows with hot eyes.

"What sort of things?" demanded Lottie, with that cunosity Sara could always awaken even in bigger girls.

"Chimneysquite close to uswith smoke curling up in wreaths and clouds and going up into the

skyand sparrows hopping about and talking to each other just as if they were peopleand other attic

windows where heads may pop out any minute and you can wonder who they belong to. And it all feels as

Sara lifted her up, and they stood on the old table together and leaned on the edge of the flat window in the

Anyone who has not done this does not know what a different world they saw. The slates spread out on either

side of them and slanted down into the rain gutterpipes. The sparrows, being at home there, twittered and

hopped about quite without fear. Two of them perched on the chimney top nearest and quarrelled with each

other fiercely until one pecked the other and drove him away. The garret window next to theirs was shut

"I wish someone lived there," Sara said. "It is so close that if there was a little girl in the attic, we could talk

to each other through the windows and climb over to see each other, if we were not afraid of falling."

The sky seemed so much nearer than when one saw it from the street, that Lottie was enchanted. From the

attic window, among the chimney pots, the things which were happening in the world below seemed almost

unreal. One scarcely believed in the existence of Miss Minchin and Miss Amelia and the schoolroom, and the

"Oh, Sara!" cried Lottie, cuddling in her guarding arm. "I like this atticI like it! It is nicer than

"Look at that sparrow," whispered Sara. "I wish I had some crumbs to throw to him."

"I have some!" came in a little shriek from Lottie. "I have part of a bun in my pocket; I bought it with my

When they threw out a few crumbs the sparrow jumped and flew away to an adjacent chimney top. He was

evidently not accustomed to intimates in attics, and unexpected crumbs startled him. But when Lottie

remained quite still and Sara chirped very softlyalmost as if she were a sparrow herselfhe saw that the

thing which had alarmed him represented hospitality, after all. He put his head on one side, and from his

perch on the chimney looked down at the crumbs with twinkling eyes. Lottie could scarcely keep still.

"His eyes look as if he would," Sara whispered back. "He is thinking and thinking whether he dare. Yes, he

will! Yes, he is coming!" He flew down and hopped toward the crumbs, but stopped a few inches away from

them, putting his head on one side again, as if reflecting on the chances that Sara and Lottie might turn out to

be big cats and jump on him. At last his heart told him they were really nicer than they looked, and he hopped

nearer and nearer, darted at the biggest crumb with a lightning peck, seized it, and carried it away to the other

He did come back, and even brought a friend, and the friend went away and brought a relative, and among

them they made a hearty meal over which they twittered and chattered and exclaimed, stopping every now

and then to put their heads on one side and examine Lottie and Sara. Lottie was so delighted that she quite

forgot her first shocked impression of the attic. In fact, when she was lifted down from the table and returned

to earthly things, as it were, Sara was able to point out to her many beauties in the room which she herself

"It is so little and so high above everything," she said, "that it is almost like a nest in a tree. The slanting

ceiling is so funny. See, you can scarcely stand up at this end of the room; and when the morning begins to

come I can lie in bed and look right up into the sky through that flat window in the roof. It is like a square

patch of light. If the sun is going to shine, little pink clouds float about, and I feel as if I could touch them.

And if it rains, the drops patter and patter as if they were saying something nice. Then if there are stars, you

can lie and try to count how many go into the patch. It takes such a lot. And just look at that tiny, rusty grate

in the corner. If it was polished and there was a fire in it, just think how nice it would be. You see, it's really a

She was walking round the small place, holding Lottie's hand and making gestures which described all the

beauties she was making herself see. She quite made Lottie see them, too. Lottie could always believe in the

"You see," she said, "there could be a thick, soft blue Indian rug on the floor; and in that corner there could be

a soft little sofa, with cushions to curl up on; and just over it could be a shelf full of books so that one could

reach them easily; and there could be a fur rug before the fire, and hangings on the wall to cover up the

whitewash, and pictures. They would have to be little ones, but they could be beautiful; and there could be a

lamp with a deep rosecolored shade; and a table in the middle, with things to have tea with; and a little fat

copper kettle singing on the hob; and the bed could be quite different. It could be made soft and covered with

a lovely silk coverlet. It could be beautiful. And perhaps we could coax the sparrows until we made such

friends with them that they would come and peck at the window and ask to be let in."

When Sara had persuaded her to go downstairs again, and, after setting her on her way, had come back to her

attic, she stood in the middle of it and looked about her. The enchantment of her imaginings for Lottie had

died away. The bed was hard and covered with its dingy quilt. The whitewashed wall showed its broken

patches, the floor was cold and bare, the grate was broken and rusty, and the battered footstool, tilted

sideways on its injured leg, the only seat in the room. She sat down on it for a few minutes and let her head

drop in her hands. The mere fact that Lottie had come and gone away again made things seem a little

worsejust as perhaps prisoners feel a little more desolate after visitors come and go, leaving them behind.

"It's a lonely place," she said. "Sometimes it's the loneliest place in the world."

She was sitting in this way when her attention was attracted by a slight sound near her. She lifted her head to

see where it came from, and if she had been a nervous child she would have left her seat on the battered

footstool in a great hurry. A large rat was sitting up on his hind quarters and sniffing the air in an interested

manner. Some of Lottie's crumbs had dropped upon the floor and their scent had drawn him out of his hole.

He looked so queer and so like a graywhiskered dwarf or gnome that Sara was rather fascinated. He looked

at her with his bright eyes, as if he were asking a question. He was evidently so doubtful that one of the

"I dare say it is rather hard to be a rat," she mused. "Nobody likes you. People jump and run away and scream

out, 'Oh, a horrid rat!' I shouldn't like people to scream and jump and say, 'Oh, a horrid Sara!' the moment

they saw me. And set traps for me, and pretend they were dinner. It's so different to be a sparrow. But nobody

asked this rat if he wanted to be a rat when he was made. Nobody said, 'Wouldn't you rather be a sparrow?'"

She had sat so quietly that the rat had begun to take courage. He was very much afraid of her, but perhaps he

had a heart like the sparrow and it told him that she was not a thing which pounced. He was very hungry. He

had a wife and a large family in the wall, and they had had frightfully bad luck for several days. He had left

the children crying bitterly, and felt he would risk a good deal for a few crumbs, so he cautiously dropped

upon his feet. "Come on," said Sara; "I'm not a trap. You can have them, poor thing! Prisoners in the Bastille

How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there

is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul

hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul. But whatsoever

was the reason, the rat knew from that moment that he was safeeven though he was a rat. He knew that this

young human being sitting on the red footstool would not jump up and terrify him with wild, sharp noises or

throw heavy objects at him which, if they did not fall and crush him, would send him limping in his scurry

back to his hole. He was really a very nice rat, and did not mean the least harm. When he had stood on his

hind legs and sniffed the air, with his bright eyes fixed on Sara, he had hoped that she would understand this,

and would not begin by hating him as an enemy. When the mysterious thing which speaks without saying any

words told him that she would not, he went softly toward the crumbs and began to eat them. As he did it he

glanced every now and then at Sara, just as the sparrows had done, and his expression was so very apologetic

She sat and watched him without making any movement. One crumb was very much larger than the

othersin fact, it could scarcely be called a crumb. It was evident that he wanted that piece very much, but it

"I believe he wants it to carry to his family in the wall," Sara thought. "If I do not stir at all, perhaps he will

She scarcely allowed herself to breathe, she was so deeply interested. The rat shuffled a little nearer and ate a

few more crumbs, then he stopped and sniffed delicately, giving a side glance at the occupant of the

footstool; then he darted at the piece of bun with something very like the sudden boldness of the sparrow, and

the instant he had possession of it fled back to the wall, slipped down a crack in the skirting board, and was

"I knew he wanted it for his children," said Sara. "I do believe I could make friends with him."

A week or so afterward, on one of the rare nights when Ermengarde found it safe to steal up to the attic, when

she tapped on the door with the tips of her fingers Sara did not come to her for two or three minutes. There

was, indeed, such a silence in the room at first that Ermengarde wondered if she could have fallen asleep.

Then, to her surprise, she heard her utter a little, low laugh and speak coaxingly to someone.

"There!" Ermengarde heard her say. "Take it and go home, Melchisedec! Go home to your wife!"

Almost immediately Sara opened the door, and when she did so she found Ermengarde standing with alarmed

Sara drew her in cautiously, but she looked as if something pleased and amused her.

"You must promise not to be frightenednot to scream the least bit, or I can't tell you," she answered.

Ermengarde felt almost inclined to scream on the spot, but managed to control herself. She looked all round

the attic and saw no one. And yet Sara had certainly been speaking to someone. She thought of ghosts.

"Some people are afraid of them," said Sara. "I was at firstbut I am not now." "Was ita ghost?" quaked

Ermengarde made one bound, and landed in the middle of the little dingy bed. She tucked her feet under her

"I was afraid you would be frightened," said Sara. "But you needn't be. I am making him tame. He actually

knows me and comes out when I call him. Are you too frightened to want to see him?"

The truth was that, as the days had gone on and, with the aid of scraps brought up from the kitchen, her

curious friendship had developed, she had gradually forgotten that the timid creature she was becoming

At first Ermengarde was too much alarmed to do anything but huddle in a heap upon the bed and tuck up her

feet, but the sight of Sara's composed little countenance and the story of Melchisedec's first appearance began

at last to rouse her curiosity, and she leaned forward over the edge of the bed and watched Sara go and kneel

"No," answered Sara. "He's as polite as we are. He is just like a person. Now watch!"

She began to make a low, whistling soundso low and coaxing that it could only have been heard in entire

stillness. She did it several times, looking entirely absorbed in it. Ermengarde thought she looked as if she

were working a spell. And at last, evidently in response to it, a graywhiskered, brighteyed head peeped out

of the hole. Sara had some crumbs in her hand. She dropped them, and Melchisedec came quietly forth and

ate them. A piece of larger size than the rest he took and carried in the most businesslike manner back to his

"You see," said Sara, "that is for his wife and children. He is very nice. He only eats the little bits. After he

goes back I can always hear his family squeaking for joy. There are three kinds of squeaks. One kind is the

"I know I am queer," admitted Sara, cheerfully; "and I try to be nice." She rubbed her forehead with her little

brown paw, and a puzzled, tender look came into her face. "Papa always laughed at me," she said; "but I liked

it. He thought I was queer, but he liked me to make up things. II can't help making up things. If I didn't, I

don't believe I could live." She paused and glanced around the attic. "I'm sure I couldn't live here," she added

Ermengarde was interested, as she always was. "When you talk about things," she said, "they seem as if they

"He is a person," said Sara. "He gets hungry and frightened, just as we do; and he is married and has children.

How do we know he doesn't think things, just as we do? His eyes look as if he was a person. That was why I

"Besides," she said, "he is a Bastille rat sent to be my friend. I can always get a bit of bread the cook has

"Is it the Bastille yet?" asked Ermengarde, eagerly. "Do you always pretend it is the Bastille?" "Nearly

always," answered Sara. "Sometimes I try to pretend it is another kind of place; but the Bastille is generally

Just at that moment Ermengarde almost jumped off the bed, she was so startled by a sound she heard. It was

"That means," explained Sara, "'Then, fellowsufferer, we will sleep in peace. Good night.'"

"It is a story," said Sara. "Everything's a story. You are a storyI am a story. Miss Minchin is a story."

And she sat down again and talked until Ermengarde forgot that she was a sort of escaped prisoner herself,

and had to be reminded by Sara that she could not remain in the Bastille all night, but must steal noiselessly

But it was a perilous thing for Ermengarde and Lottie to make pilgrimages to the attic. They could never be

quite sure when Sara would be there, and they could scarcely ever be certain that Miss Amelia would not

make a tour of inspection through the bedrooms after the pupils were supposed to be asleep. So their visits

were rare ones, and Sara lived a strange and lonely life. It was a lonelier life when she was downstairs than

when she was in her attic. She had no one to talk to; and when she was sent out on errands and walked

through the streets, a forlorn little figure carrying a basket or a parcel, trying to hold her hat on when the wind

was blowing, and feeling the water soak through her shoes when it was raining, she felt as if the crowds

hurrying past her made her loneliness greater. When she had been the Princess Sara, driving through the

streets in her brougham, or walking, attended by Mariette, the sight of her bright, eager little face and

picturesque coats and hats had often caused people to look after her. A happy, beautifully cared for little girl

naturally attracts attention. Shabby, poorly dressed children are not rare enough and pretty enough to make

people turn around to look at them and smile. No one looked at Sara in these days, and no one seemed to see

her as she hurried along the crowded pavements. She had begun to grow very fast, and, as she was dressed

only in such clothes as the plainer remnants of her wardrobe would supply, she knew she looked very queer,

indeed. All her valuable garments had been disposed of, and such as had been left for her use she was

expected to wear so long as she could put them on at all. Sometimes, when she passed a shop window with a

mirror in it, she almost laughed outright on catching a glimpse of herself, and sometimes her face went red

In the evening, when she passed houses whose windows were lighted up, she used to look into the warm

rooms and amuse herself by imagining things about the people she saw sitting before the fires or about the

tables. It always interested her to catch glimpses of rooms before the shutters were closed. There were several

families in the square in which Miss Minchin lived, with which she had become quite familiar in a way of her

own. The one she liked best she called the Large Family. She called it the Large Family not because the

members of it were bigfor, indeed, most of them were littlebut because there were so many of them.

There were eight children in the Large Family, and a stout, rosy mother, and a stout, rosy father, and a stout,

rosy grandmother, and any number of servants. The eight children were always either being taken out to walk

or to ride in perambulators by comfortable nurses, or they were going to drive with their mamma, or they

were flying to the door in the evening to meet their papa and kiss him and dance around him and drag off his

overcoat and look in the pockets for packages, or they were crowding about the nursery windows and looking

out and pushing each other and laughingin fact, they were always doing something enjoyable and suited to

the tastes of a large family. Sara was quite fond of them, and had given them names out of booksquite

romantic names. She called them the Montmorencys when she did not call them the Large Family. The fat,

fair baby with the lace cap was Ethelberta Beauchamp Montmorency; the next baby was Violet

Cholmondeley Montmorency; the little boy who could just stagger and who had such round legs was Sydney

Cecil Vivian Montmorency; and then came Lilian Evangeline Maud Marion, Rosalind Gladys, Guy Clarence,

One evening a very funny thing happenedthough, perhaps, in one sense it was not a funny thing at all.

Several of the Montmorencys were evidently going to a children's party, and just as Sara was about to pass

the door they were crossing the pavement to get into the carriage which was waiting for them. Veronica

Eustacia and Rosalind Gladys, in whitelace frocks and lovely sashes, had just got in, and Guy Clarence,

aged five, was following them. He was such a pretty fellow and had such rosy cheeks and blue eyes, and such

a darling little round head covered with curls, that Sara forgot her basket and shabby cloak altogetherin

fact, forgot everything but that she wanted to look at him for a moment. So she paused and looked.

It was Christmas time, and the Large Family had been hearing many stories about children who were poor

and had no mammas and papas to fill their stockings and take them to the pantomimechildren who were, in

fact, cold and thinly clad and hungry. In the stories, kind peoplesometimes little boys and girls with tender

heartsinvariably saw the poor children and gave them money or rich gifts, or took them home to beautiful

dinners. Guy Clarence had been affected to tears that very afternoon by the reading of such a story, and he

had burned with a desire to find such a poor child and give her a certain sixpence he possessed, and thus

provide for her for life. An entire sixpence, he was sure, would mean affluence for evermore. As he crossed

the strip of red carpet laid across the pavement from the door to the carriage, he had this very sixpence in the

pocket of his very short manowar trousers; And just as Rosalind Gladys got into the vehicle and jumped on

the seat in order to feel the cushions spring under her, he saw Sara standing on the wet pavement in her

He thought that her eyes looked hungry because she had perhaps had nothing to eat for a long time. He did

not know that they looked so because she was hungry for the warm, merry life his home held and his rosy

face spoke of, and that she had a hungry wish to snatch him in her arms and kiss him. He only knew that she

had big eyes and a thin face and thin legs and a common basket and poor clothes. So he put his hand in his

Sara started, and all at once realized that she looked exactly like poor children she had seen, in her better

days, waiting on the pavement to watch her as she got out of her brougham. And she had given them pennies

Her face went red and then it went pale, and for a second she felt as if she could not take the dear little

Her voice was so unlike an ordinary street child's voice and her manner was so like the manner of a

wellbred little person that Veronica Eustacia (whose real name was Janet) and Rosalind Gladys (who was

But Guy Clarence was not to be thwarted in his benevolence. He thrust the sixpence into her hand.

"Yes, you must take it, poor little girl!" he insisted stoutly. "You can buy things to eat with it. It is a whole

There was something so honest and kind in his face, and he looked so likely to be heartbrokenly disappointed

if she did not take it, that Sara knew she must not refuse him. To be as proud as that would be a cruel thing.

So she actually put her pride in her pocket, though it must be admitted her cheeks burned.

"Thank you," she said. "You are a kind, kind little darling thing." And as he scrambled joyfully into the

carriage she went away, trying to smile, though she caught her breath quickly and her eyes were shining

through a mist. She had known that she looked odd and shabby, but until now she had not known that she

As the Large Family's carriage drove away, the children inside it were talking with interested excitement.

"Oh, Donald," (this was Guy Clarence's name), Janet exclaimed alarmedly, "why did you offer that little girl

"She didn't speak like a beggar!" cried Nora. "And her face didn't really look like a beggar's face!" "Besides,

she didn't beg," said Janet. "I was so afraid she might be angry with you. You know, it makes people angry to

"She wasn't angry," said Donald, a trifle dismayed, but still firm. "She laughed a little, and she said I was a

kind, kind little darling thing. And I was!"stoutly. "It was my whole sixpence."

"A beggar girl would never have said that," decided Janet. "She would have said, 'Thank yer kindly, little

Sara knew nothing about the fact, but from that time the Large Family was as profoundly interested in her as

she was in it. Faces used to appear at the nursery windows when she passed, and many discussions

"She is a kind of servant at the seminary," Janet said. "I don't believe she belongs to anybody. I believe she is

And afterward she was called by all of them, "Thelittlegirlwhoisnotabeggar," which was, of course,

rather a long name, and sounded very funny sometimes when the youngest ones said it in a hurry.

Sara managed to bore a hole in the sixpence and hung it on an old bit of narrow ribbon round her neck. Her

affection for the Large Family increasedas, indeed, her affection for everything she could love increased.

She grew fonder and fonder of Becky, and she used to look forward to the two mornings a week when she

went into the schoolroom to give the little ones their French lesson. Her small pupils loved her, and strove

with each other for the privilege of standing close to her and insinuating their small hands into hers. It fed her

hungry heart to feel them nestling up to her. She made such friends with the sparrows that when she stood

upon the table, put her head and shoulders out of the attic window, and chirped, she heard almost

immediately a flutter of wings and answering twitters, and a little flock of dingy town birds appeared and

alighted on the slates to talk to her and make much of the crumbs she scattered. With Melchisedec she had

become so intimate that he actually brought Mrs. Melchisedec with him sometimes, and now and then one or

two of his children. She used to talk to him, and, somehow, he looked quite as if he understood.

There had grown in her mind rather a strange feeling about Emily, who always sat and looked on at

everything. It arose in one of her moments of great desolateness. She would have liked to believe or pretend

to believe that Emily understood and sympathized with her. She did not like to own to herself that her only

companion could feel and hear nothing. She used to put her in a chair sometimes and sit opposite to her on

the old red footstool, and stare and pretend about her until her own eyes would grow large with something

which was almost like fearparticularly at night when everything was so still, when the only sound in the

attic was the occasional sudden scurry and squeak of Melchisedec's family in the wall. One of her "pretends"

was that Emily was a kind of good witch who could protect her. Sometimes, after she had stared at her until

she was wrought up to the highest pitch of fancifulness, she would ask her questions and find herself almost

"As to answering, though," said Sara, trying to console herself, "I don't answer very often. I never answer

when I can help it. When people are insulting you, there is nothing so good for them as not to say a

wordjust to look at them and think. Miss Minchin turns pale with rage when I do it, Miss Amelia looks

frightened, and so do the girls. When you will not fly into a passion people know you are stronger than they

are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they

wish they hadn't said afterward. There's nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it inthat's

stronger. It's a good thing not to answer your enemies. I scarcely ever do. Perhaps Emily is more like me than

I am like myself. Perhaps she would rather not answer her friends, even. She keeps it all in her heart."

But though she tried to satisfy herself with these arguments, she did not find it easy. When, after a long, hard

day, in which she had been sent here and there, sometimes on long errands through wind and cold and rain,

she came in wet and hungry, and was sent out again because nobody chose to remember that she was only a

child, and that her slim legs might be tired and her small body might be chilled; when she had been given

only harsh words and cold, slighting looks for thanks; when the cook had been vulgar and insolent; when

Miss Minchin had been in her worst mood, and when she had seen the girls sneering among themselves at her

shabbinessthen she was not always able to comfort her sore, proud, desolate heart with fancies when Emily

One of these nights, when she came up to the attic cold and hungry, with a tempest raging in her young

breast, Emily's stare seemed so vacant, her sawdust legs and arms so inexpressive, that Sara lost all control

Emily simply stared. "I can't bear this," said the poor child, trembling. "I know I shall die. I'm cold; I'm wet;

I'm starving to death. I've walked a thousand miles today, and they have done nothing but scold me from

morning until night. And because I could not find that last thing the cook sent me for, they would not give me

any supper. Some men laughed at me because my old shoes made me slip down in the mud. I'm covered with

She looked at the staring glass eyes and complacent face, and suddenly a sort of heartbroken rage seized her.

She lifted her little savage hand and knocked Emily off the chair, bursting into a passion of sobbingSara

"You are nothing but a doll!" she cried. "Nothing but a dolldolldoll! You care for nothing. You are

stuffed with sawdust. You never had a heart. Nothing could ever make you feel. You are a doll!"

Emily lay on the floor, with her legs ignominiously doubled up over her head, and a new flat place on the end

of her nose; but she was calm, even dignified. Sara hid her face in her arms. The rats in the wall began to

fight and bite each other and squeak and scramble. Melchisedec was chastising some of his family.

Sara's sobs gradually quieted themselves. It was so unlike her to break down that she was surprised at herself.

After a while she raised her face and looked at Emily, who seemed to be gazing at her round the side of one

angle, and, somehow, by this time actually with a kind of glassyeyed sympathy. Sara bent and picked her

"You can't help being a doll," she said with a resigned sigh, "any more than Lavinia and Jessie can help not

having any sense. We are not all made alike. Perhaps you do your sawdust best." And she kissed her and

shook her clothes straight, and put her back upon her chair. She had wished very much that some one would

take the empty house next door. She wished it because of the attic window which was so near hers. It seemed

as if it would be so nice to see it propped open someday and a head and shoulders rising out of the square

"If it looked a nice head," she thought, "I might begin by saying, 'Good morning,' and all sorts of things might

happen. But, of course, it's not really likely that anyone but under servants would sleep there."

One morning, on turning the corner of the square after a visit to the grocer's, the butcher's, and the baker's,

she saw, to her great delight, that during her rather prolonged absence, a van full of furniture had stopped

before the next house, the front doors were thrown open, and men in shirt sleeves were going in and out

"It's taken!" she said. "It really is taken! Oh, I do hope a nice head will look out of the attic window!"

She would almost have liked to join the group of loiterers who had stopped on the pavement to watch the

things carried in. She had an idea that if she could see some of the furniture she could guess something about

"Miss Minchin's tables and chairs are just like her," she thought; "I remember thinking that the first minute I

saw her, even though I was so little. I told papa afterward, and he laughed and said it was true. I am sure the

Large Family have fat, comfortable armchairs and sofas, and I can see that their redflowery wallpaper is

She was sent out for parsley to the greengrocer's later in the day, and when she came up the area steps her

heart gave quite a quick beat of recognition. Several pieces of furniture had been set out of the van upon the

pavement. There was a beautiful table of elaborately wrought teakwood, and some chairs, and a screen

covered with rich Oriental embroidery. The sight of them gave her a weird, homesick feeling. She had seen

things so like them in India. One of the things Miss Minchin had taken from her was a carved teakwood desk

"They are beautiful things," she said; "they look as if they ought to belong to a nice person. All the things

The vans of furniture came and were unloaded and gave place to others all the day. Several times it so

happened that Sara had an opportunity of seeing things carried in. It became plain that she had been right in

guessing that the newcomers were people of large means. All the furniture was rich and beautiful, and a great

deal of it was Oriental. Wonderful rugs and draperies and ornaments were taken from the vans, many

pictures, and books enough for a library. Among other things there was a superb god Buddha in a splendid

"Someone in the family must have been in India," Sara thought. "They have got used to Indian things and like

them. I am glad. I shall feel as if they were friends, even if a head never looks out of the attic window."

When she was taking in the evening's milk for the cook (there was really no odd job she was not called upon

to do), she saw something occur which made the situation more interesting than ever. The handsome, rosy

man who was the father of the Large Family walked across the square in the most matteroffact manner,

and ran up the steps of the nextdoor house. He ran up them as if he felt quite at home and expected to run up

and down them many a time in the future. He stayed inside quite a long time, and several times came out and

gave directions to the workmen, as if he had a right to do so. It was quite certain that he was in some intimate

way connected with the newcomers and was acting for them. "If the new people have children," Sara

speculated, "the Large Family children will be sure to come and play with them, and they might come up into

At night, after her work was done, Becky came in to see her fellow prisoner and bring her news.

"It's a' Nindian gentleman that's comin' to live next door, miss," she said. "I don't know whether he's a black

gentleman or not, but he's a Nindian one. He's very rich, an' he's ill, an' the gentleman of the Large Family is

his lawyer. He's had a lot of trouble, an' it's made him ill an' low in his mind. He worships idols, miss. He's an

'eathen an' bows down to wood an' stone. I seen a' idol bein' carried in for him to worship. Somebody had

"I don't believe he worships that idol," she said; "some people like to keep them to look at because they are

But Becky was rather inclined to prefer to believe that the new neighbor was "an 'eathen." It sounded so

much more romantic than that he should merely be the ordinary kind of gentleman who went to church with a

prayer book. She sat and talked long that night of what he would be like, of what his wife would be like if he

had one, and of what his children would be like if they had children. Sara saw that privately she could not

help hoping very much that they would all be black, and would wear turbans, and, above all, thatlike their

"I never lived next door to no 'eathens, miss," she said; "I should like to see what sort o' ways they'd have."

It was several weeks before her curiosity was satisfied, and then it was revealed that the new occupant had

neither wife nor children. He was a solitary man with no family at all, and it was evident that he was shattered

A carriage drove up one day and stopped before the house. When the footman dismounted from the box and

opened the door the gentleman who was the father of the Large Family got out first. After him there

descended a nurse in uniform, then came down the steps two menservants. They came to assist their master,

who, when he was helped out of the carriage, proved to be a man with a haggard, distressed face, and a

skeleton body wrapped in furs. He was carried up the steps, and the head of the Large Family went with him,

looking very anxious. Shortly afterward a doctor's carriage arrived, and the doctor went inplainly to take

"There is such a yellow gentleman next door, Sara," Lottie whispered at the French class afterward. "Do you

"No, he is not Chinese," Sara whispered back; "he is very ill. Go on with your exercise, Lottie. 'Non,

There were fine sunsets even in the square, sometimes. One could only see parts of them, however, between

the chimneys and over the roofs. From the kitchen windows one could not see them at all, and could only

guess that they were going on because the bricks looked warm and the air rosy or yellow for a while, or

perhaps one saw a blazing glow strike a particular pane of glass somewhere. There was, however, one place

from which one could see all the splendor of them: the piles of red or gold clouds in the west; or the purple

ones edged with dazzling brightness; or the little fleecy, floating ones, tinged with rosecolor and looking

like flights of pink doves scurrying across the blue in a great hurry if there was a wind. The place where one

could see all this, and seem at the same time to breathe a purer air, was, of course, the attic window. When

the square suddenly seemed to begin to glow in an enchanted way and look wonderful in spite of its sooty

trees and railings, Sara knew something was going on in the sky; and when it was at all possible to leave the

kitchen without being missed or called back, she invariably stole away and crept up the flights of stairs, and,

climbing on the old table, got her head and body as far out of the window as possible. When she had

accomplished this, she always drew a long breath and looked all round her. It used to seem as if she had all

the sky and the world to herself. No one else ever looked out of the other attics. Generally the skylights were

closed; but even if they were propped open to admit air, no one seemed to come near them. And there Sara

would stand, sometimes turning her face upward to the blue which seemed so friendly and nearjust like a

lovely vaulted ceilingsometimes watching the west and all the wonderful things that happened there: the

clouds melting or drifting or waiting softly to be changed pink or crimson or snowwhite or purple or pale

dovegray. Sometimes they made islands or great mountains enclosing lakes of deep turquoiseblue, or

liquid amber, or chrysoprasegreen; sometimes dark headlands jutted into strange, lost seas; sometimes

slender strips of wonderful lands joined other wonderful lands together. There were places where it seemed

that one could run or climb or stand and wait to see what next was cominguntil, perhaps, as it all melted,

one could float away. At least it seemed so to Sara, and nothing had ever been quite so beautiful to her as the

things she saw as she stood on the tableher body half out of the skylightthe sparrows twittering with

sunset softness on the slates. The sparrows always seemed to her to twitter with a sort of subdued softness

There was such a sunset as this a few days after the Indian gentleman was brought to his new home; and, as it

fortunately happened that the afternoon's work was done in the kitchen and nobody had ordered her to go

anywhere or perform any task, Sara found it easier than usual to slip away and go upstairs.

She mounted her table and stood looking out. lt was a wonderful moment. There were floods of molten gold

covering the west, as if a glorious tide was sweeping over the world. A deep, rich yellow light filled the air;

"It's a Splendid one," said Sara, softly, to herself. "It makes me feel almost afraidas if something strange

She suddenly turned her head because she heard a sound a few yards away from her. It was an odd sound like

a queer little squeaky chattering. It came from the window of the next attic. Someone had come to look at the

sunset as she had. There was a head and a part of a body emerging from the skylight, but it was not the head

or body of a little girl or a housemaid; it was the picturesque whiteswathed form and darkfaced,

gleamingeyed, whiteturbaned head of a native Indian manservant"a Lascar," Sara said to herself

quicklyand the sound she had heard came from a small monkey he held in his arms as if he were fond of it,

As Sara looked toward him he looked toward her. The first thing she thought was that his dark face looked

sorrowful and homesick. She felt absolutely sure he had come up to look at the sun, because he had seen it so

seldom in England that he longed for a sight of it. She looked at him interestedly for a second, and then

smiled across the slates. She had learned to know how comforting a smile, even from a stranger, may be.

Hers was evidently a pleasure to him. His whole expression altered, and he showed such gleaming white teeth

as he smiled back that it was as if a light had been illuminated in his dusky face. The friendly look in Sara's

It was perhaps in making his salute to her that he loosened his hold on the monkey. He was an impish

monkey and always ready for adventure, and it is probable that the sight of a little girl excited him. He

suddenly broke loose, jumped on to the slates, ran across them chattering, and actually leaped on to Sara's

shoulder, and from there down into her attic room. It made her laugh and delighted her; but she knew he must

be restored to his masterif the Lascar was his masterand she wondered how this was to be done. Would

he let her catch him, or would he be naughty and refuse to be caught, and perhaps get away and run off over

the roofs and be lost? That would not do at all. Perhaps he belonged to the Indian gentleman, and the poor

She turned to the Lascar, feeling glad that she remembered still some of the Hindustani she had learned when

she lived with her father. She could make the man understand. She spoke to him in the language he knew.

She thought she had never seen more surprise and delight than the dark face expressed when she spoke in the

familiar tongue. The truth was that the poor fellow felt as if his gods had intervened, and the kind little voice

came from heaven itself. At once Sara saw that he had been accustomed to European children. He poured

forth a flood of respectful thanks. He was the servant of Missee Sahib. The monkey was a good monkey and

would not bite; but, unfortunately, he was difficult to catch. He would flee from one spot to another, like the

lightning. He was disobedient, though not evil. Ram Dass knew him as if he were his child, and Ram Dass he

would sometimes obey, but not always. If Missee Sahib would permit Ram Dass, he himself could cross the

roof to her room, enter the windows, and regain the unworthy little animal. But he was evidently afraid Sara

"Then come," she said; "he is flying from side to side of the room as if he was frightened."

Ram Dass slipped through his attic window and crossed to hers as steadily and lightly as if he had walked on

roofs all his life. He slipped through the skylight and dropped upon his feet without a sound. Then he turned

to Sara and salaamed again. The monkey saw him and uttered a little scream. Ram Dass hastily took the

precaution of shutting the skylight, and then went in chase of him. It was not a very long chase. The monkey

prolonged it a few minutes evidently for the mere fun of it, but presently he sprang chattering on to Ram

Dass's shoulder and sat there chattering and clinging to his neck with a weird little skinny arm.

Ram Dass thanked Sara profoundly. She had seen that his quick native eyes had taken in at a glance all the

bare shabbiness of the room, but he spoke to her as if he were speaking to the little daughter of a rajah, and

pretended that he observed nothing. He did not presume to remain more than a few moments after he had

caught the monkey, and those moments were given to further deep and grateful obeisance to her in return for

her indulgence. This little evil one, he said, stroking the monkey, was, in truth, not so evil as he seemed, and

his master, who was ill, was sometimes amused by him. He would have been made sad if his favorite had run

away and been lost. Then he salaamed once more and got through the skylight and across the slates again

When he had gone Sara stood in the middle of her attic and thought of many things his face and his manner

had brought back to her. The sight of his native costume and the profound reverence of his manner stirred all

her past memories. It seemed a strange thing to remember that shethe drudge whom the cook had said

insulting things to an hour agohad only a few years ago been surrounded by people who all treated her as

Ram Dass had treated her; who salaamed when she went by, whose foreheads almost touched the ground

when she spoke to them, who were her servants and her slaves. It was like a sort of dream. It was all over,

and it could never come back. It certainly seemed that there was no way in which any change could take

place. She knew what Miss Minchin intended that her future should be. So long as she was too young to be

used as a regular teacher, she would be used as an errand girl and servant and yet expected to remember what

she had learned and in some mysterious way to learn more. The greater number of her evenings she was

supposed to spend at study, and at various indefinite intervals she was examined and knew she would have

been severely admonished if she had not advanced as was expected of her. The truth, indeed, was that Miss

Minchin knew that she was too anxious to learn to require teachers. Give her books, and she would devour

them and end by knowing them by heart. She might be trusted to be equal to teaching a good deal in the

course of a few years. This was what would happen: when she was older she would be expected to drudge in

the schoolroom as she drudged now in various parts of the house; they would be obliged to give her more

respectable clothes, but they would be sure to be plain and ugly and to make her look somehow like a servant.

That was all there seemed to be to look forward to, and Sara stood quite still for several minutes and thought

Then a thought came back to her which made the color rise in her cheek and a spark light itself in her eyes.

"Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess

inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a

triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it. There was Marie Antoinette when she was in prison and

her throne was gone and she had only a black gown on, and her hair was white, and they insulted her and

called her Widow Capet. She was a great deal more like a queen then than when she was so gay and

everything was so grand. I like her best then. Those howling mobs of people did not frighten her. She was

This was not a new thought, but quite an old one, by this time. It had consoled her through many a bitter day,

and she had gone about the house with an expression in her face which Miss Minchin could not understand

and which was a source of great annoyance to her, as it seemed as if the child were mentally living a life

which held her above he rest of the world. It was as if she scarcely heard the rude and acid things said to her;

or, if she heard them, did not care for them at all. Sometimes, when she was in the midst of some harsh,

domineering speech, Miss Minchin would find the still, unchildish eyes fixed upon her with something like a

proud smile in them. At such times she did not know that Sara was saying to herself:

"You don't know that you are saying these things to a princess, and that if I chose I could wave my hand and

order you to execution. I only spare you because I am a princess, and you are a poor, stupid, unkind, vulgar

This used to interest and amuse her more than anything else; and queer and fanciful as it was, she found

comfort in it and it was a good thing for her. While the thought held possession of her, she could not be made

And so when the servants, taking their tone from their mistress, were insolent and ordered her about, she

would hold her head erect and reply to them with a quaint civility which often made them stare at her.

"She's got more airs and graces than if she come from Buckingham Palace, that young one," said the cook,

chuckling a little sometimes. "I lose my temper with her often enough, but I will say she never forgets her

manners. 'If you please, cook'; 'Will you be so kind, cook?' 'I beg your pardon, cook'; 'May I trouble you,

The morning after the interview with Ram Dass and his monkey, Sara was in the schoolroom with her small

pupils. Having finished giving them their lessons, she was putting the French exercisebooks together and

thinking, as she did it, of the various things royal personages in disguise were called upon to do: Alfred the

Great, for instance, burning the cakes and getting his ears boxed by the wife of the neatherd. How

frightened she must have been when she found out what she had done. If Miss Minchin should find out that

sheSara, whose toes were almost sticking out of her bootswas a princessa real one! The look in her

eyes was exactly the look which Miss Minchin most disliked. She would not have it; she was quite near her

and was so enraged that she actually flew at her and boxed her earsexactly as the neat herd's wife had

boxed King Alfred's. It made Sara start. She wakened from her dream at the shock, and, catching her breath,

stood still a second. Then, not knowing she was going to do it, she broke into a little laugh.

It took Sara a few seconds to control herself sufficiently to remember that she was a princess. Her cheeks

"I will beg your pardon for laughing, if it was rude," she said then; "but I won't beg your pardon for

Jessie tittered, and she and Lavinia nudged each other in unison. All the girls looked up from their books to

listen. Really, it always interested them a little when Miss Minchin attacked Sara. Sara always said something

queer, and never seemed the least bit frightened. She was not in the least frightened now, though her boxed

"I was thinking," she answered grandly and politely, "that you did not know what you were doing."

"Yes," said Sara, "and I was thinking what would happen if I were a princess and you boxed my earswhat I

should do to you. And I was thinking that if I were one, you would never dare to do it, whatever I said or did.

And I was thinking how surprised and frightened you would be if you suddenly found out"

She had the imagined future so clearly before her eyes that she spoke in a manner which had an effect even

upon Miss Minchin. It almost seemed for the moment to her narrow, unimaginative mind that there must be

"That I really was a princess," said Sara, "and could do anythinganything I liked."

Every pair of eyes in the room widened to its full limit. Lavinia leaned forward on her seat to look.

"Go to your room," cried Miss Minchin, breathlessly, "this instant! Leave the schoolroom! Attend to your

"Excuse me for laughing if it was impolite," she said, and walked out of the room, leaving Miss Minchin

"Did you see her? Did you see how queer she looked?" Jessie broke out. "I shouldn't be at all surprised if she

When one lives in a row of houses, it is interesting to think of the things which are being done and said on the

other side of the wall of the very rooms one is living in. Sara was fond of amusing herself by trying to

imagine the things hidden by the wall which divided the Select Seminary from the Indian gentleman's house.

She knew that the schoolroom was next to the Indian gentleman's study, and she hoped that the wall was

thick so that the noise made sometimes after lesson hours would not disturb him.

"I am growing quite fond of him," she said to Ermengarde; "I should not like him to be disturbed. I have

adopted him for a friend. You can do that with people you never speak to at all. You can just watch them, and

think about them and be sorry for them, until they seem almost like relations. I'm quite anxious sometimes

"I have very few relations," said Ermengarde, reflectively, "and I'm very glad of it. I don't like those I have.

My two aunts are always saying, 'Dear me, Ermengarde! You are very fat. You shouldn't eat sweets,' and my

uncle is always asking me things like, 'When did Edward the Third ascend the throne?' and, 'Who died of a

"People you never speak to can't ask you questions like that," she said; "and I'm sure the Indian gentleman

She had become fond of the Large Family because they looked happy; but she had become fond of the Indian

gentleman because he looked unhappy. He had evidently not fully recovered from some very severe illness.

In the kitchenwhere, of course, the servants, through some mysterious means, knew everythingthere

was much discussion of his case. He was not an Indian gentleman really, but an Englishman who had lived in

India. He had met with great misfortunes which had for a time so imperilled his whole fortune that he had

thought himself ruined and disgraced forever. The shock had been so great that he had almost died of brain

fever; and ever since he had been shattered in health, though his fortunes had changed and all his possessions

"And mines with diamonds in 'em!" said the cook. "No savin's of mine never goes into no minesparticular

"He felt as my papa felt," Sara thought. "He was ill as my papa was; but he did not die."

So her heart was more drawn to him than before. When she was sent out at night she used sometimes to feel

quite glad, because there was always a chance that the curtains of the house next door might not yet be closed

and she could look into the warm room and see her adopted friend. When no one was about she used

sometimes to stop, and, holding to the iron railings, wish him good night as if he could hear her.

"Perhaps you can feel if you can't hear," was her fancy. "Perhaps kind thoughts reach people somehow, even

through windows and doors and walls. Perhaps you feel a little warm and comforted, and don't know why,

when I am standing here in the cold and hoping you will get well and happy again. I am so sorry for you," she

would whisper in an intense little voice. "I wish you had a 'Little Missus' who could pet you as I used to pet

papa when he had a headache. I should like to be your 'Little Missus' myself, poor dear! Good nightgood

She would go away, feeling quite comforted and a little warmer herself. Her sympathy was so strong that it

seemed as if it must reach him somehow as he sat alone in his armchair by the fire, nearly always in a great

dressing gown, and nearly always with his forehead resting in his hand as he gazed hopelessly into the fire.

He looked to Sara like a man who had a trouble on his mind still, not merely like one whose troubles lay all

"He always seems as if he were thinking of something that hurts him now," she said to herself, "but he has

got his money back and he will get over his brain fever in time, so he ought not to look like that. I wonder if

If there was something elsesomething even servants did not hear ofshe could not help believing that the

father of the Large Family knew itthe gentleman she called Mr. Montmorency. Mr. Montmorency went to

see him often, and Mrs. Montmorency and all the little Montmorencys went, too, though less often. He

seemed particularly fond of the two elder little girlsthe Janet and Nora who had been so alarmed when

their small brother Donald had given Sara his sixpence. He had, in fact, a very tender place in his heart for all

children, and particularly for little girls. Janet and Nora were as fond of him as he was of them, and looked

forward with the greatest pleasure to the afternoons when they were allowed to cross the square and make

their wellbehaved little visits to him. They were extremely decorous little visits because he was an invalid.

"He is a poor thing," said Janet, "and he says we cheer him up. We try to cheer him up very quietly."

Janet was the head of the family, and kept the rest of it in order. It was she who decided when it was discreet

to ask the Indian gentleman to tell stories about India, and it was she who saw when was tired and it was the

time to steal quietly away and tell Ram Dass to go to him. They were very fond of Ram Dass. He could have

told any number of stories if he had been able to speak anything but Hindustani. The Indian gentleman's real

name was Mr. Carrisford, and Janet told Mr. Carrisford about the encounter with the

littlegirlwhowasnotabeggar. He was very much interested, and all the more so when he heard from

Ram Dass of the adventure of the monkey on the roof. Ram Dass made for him a very clear picture of the

attic and its desolatenessof the bare floor and broken plaster, the rusty, empty grate, and the hard, narrow

"Carmichael," he said to the father of the Large Family, after he had heard this description, "I wonder how

many of the attics in this square are like that one, and how many wretched little servant girls sleep on such

beds, while I toss on my down pillows, loaded and harassed by wealth that is, most of itnot mine." "My

dear fellow," Mr. Carmichael answered cheerily, "the sooner you cease tormenting yourself the better it will

be for you. If you possessed all the wealth of all the Indies, you could not set right all the discomforts in the

world, and if you began to refurnish all the attics in this square, there would still remain all the attics in all the

Mr. Carrisford sat and bit his nails as he looked into the glowing bed of coals in the grate.

"Do you suppose," he said slowly, after a pause"do you think it is possible that the other childthe child I

never cease thinking of, I believecould becould possibly be reduced to any such condition as the poor

Mr. Carmichael looked at him uneasily. He knew that the worst thing the man could do for himself, for his

reason and his health, was to begin to think in the particular way of this particular subject.

"If the child at Madame Pascal's school in Paris was the one you are in search of," he answered soothingly,

"she would seem to be in the hands of people who can afford to take care of her. They adopted her because

she had been the favorite companion of their little daughter who died. They had no other children, and

"And the wretched woman actually did not know where they had taken her!" exclaimed Mr. Carrisford.

"She was a shrewd, worldly Frenchwoman, and was evidently only too glad to get the child so comfortably

off her hands when the father's death left her totally unprovided for. Women of her type do not trouble

themselves about the futures of children who might prove burdens. The adopted parents apparently

disappeared and left no trace." "But you say 'if' the child was the one I am in search of. You say 'if.' We are

"Madame Pascal pronounced it as if it were Carew instead of Crewebut that might be merely a matter of

pronunciation. The circumstances were curiously similar. An English officer in India had placed his

motherless little girl at the school. He had died suddenly after losing his fortune." Mr. Carmichael paused a

moment, as if a new thought had occurred to him. "Are you sure the child was left at a school in Paris? Are

"My dear fellow," broke forth Carrisford, with restless bitterness, "I am sure of nothing. I never saw either the

child or her mother. Ralph Crewe and I loved each other as boys, but we had not met since our school days,

until we met in India. I was absorbed in the magnificent promise of the mines. He became absorbed, too. The

whole thing was so huge and glittering that we half lost our heads. When we met we scarcely spoke of

anything else. I only knew that the child had been sent to school somewhere. I do not even remember, now,

He was beginning to be excited. He always became excited when his still weakened brain was stirred by

Mr. Carmichael watched him anxiously. It was necessary to ask some questions, but they must be put quietly

"Yes," was the answer, "because her mother was a Frenchwoman, and I had heard that she wished her child

"Yes," Mr. Carmichael said, "it seems more than probable." The Indian gentleman leaned forward and struck

"Carmichael," he said, "I must find her. If she is alive, she is somewhere. If she is friendless and penniless, it

is through my fault. How is a man to get back his nerve with a thing like that on his mind? This sudden

change of luck at the mines has made realities of all our most fantastic dreams, and poor Crewe's child may

"No, no," said Carmichael. "Try to be calm. Console yourself with the fact that when she is found you have a

"Why was I not man enough to stand my ground when things looked black?" Carrisford groaned in petulant

misery. "I believe I should have stood my ground if I had not been responsible for other people's money as

well as my own. Poor Crewe had put into the scheme every penny that he owned. He trusted mehe loved

me. And he died thinking I had ruined himITom Carrisford, who played cricket at Eton with him. What

"I don't reproach myself because the speculation threatened to failI reproach myself for losing my courage.

I ran away like a swindler and a thief, because I could not face my best friend and tell him I had ruined him

The goodhearted father of the Large Family put his hand on his shoulder comfortingly.

"You ran away because your brain had given way under the strain of mental torture," he said. "You were half

delirious already. If you had not been you would have stayed and fought it out. You were in a hospital,

strapped down in bed, raving with brain fever, two days after you left the place. Remember that."

Carrisford dropped his forehead in his hands. "Good God! Yes," he said. "I was driven mad with dread and

horror. I had not slept for weeks. The night I staggered out of my house all the air seemed full of hideous

"That is explanation enough in itself," said Mr. Carmichael. "How could a man on the verge of brain fever

"And when I returned to consciousness poor Crewe was deadand buried. And I seemed to remember

nothing. I did not remember the child for months and months. Even when I began to recall her existence

He stopped a moment and rubbed his forehead. "It sometimes seems so now when I try to remember. Surely I

must sometime have heard Crewe speak of the school she was sent to. Don't you think so?"

"He might not have spoken of it definitely. You never seem even to have heard her real name."

"He used to call her by an odd pet name he had invented. He called her his 'Little Missus.' But the wretched

mines drove everything else out of our heads. We talked of nothing else. If he spoke of the school, I

"Come, come," said Carmichael. "We shall find her yet. We will continue to search for Madame Pascal's

goodnatured Russians. She seemed to have a vague idea that they lived in Moscow. We will take that as a

"If I were able to travel, I would go with you," said Carrisford; "but I can only sit here wrapped in furs and

stare at the fire. And when I look into it I seem to see Crewe's gay young face gazing back at me. He looks as

if he were asking me a question. Sometimes I dream of him at night, and he always stands before me and asks

"He always says, 'Tom, old manTomwhere is the Little Missus?'" He caught at Carmichael's hand and

clung to it. "I must be able to answer himI must!" he said. "Help me to find her. Help me."

On the other side of the wall Sara was sitting in her garret talking to Melchisedec, who had come out for his

"It has been hard to be a princess today, Melchisedec," she said. "It has been harder than usual. It gets harder

as the weather grows colder and the streets get more sloppy. When Lavinia laughed at my muddy skirt as I

passed her in the hall, I thought of something to say all in a flashand I only just stopped myself in time.

You can't sneer back at people like thatif you are a princess. But you have to bite your tongue to hold

yourself in. I bit mine. It was a cold afternoon, Melchisedec. And it's a cold night."

Quite suddenly she put her black head down in her arms, as she often did when she was alone.

"Oh, papa," she whispered, "what a long time it seems since I was your 'Little Missus'!"

The winter was a wretched one. There were days on which Sara tramped through snow when she went on her

errands; there were worse days when the snow melted and combined itself with mud to form slush; there

were others when the fog was so thick that the lamps in the street were lighted all day and London looked as

it had looked the afternoon, several years ago, when the cab had driven through the thoroughfares with Sara

tucked up on its seat, leaning against her father's shoulder. On such days the windows of the house of the

Large Family always looked delightfully cozy and alluring, and the study in which the Indian gentleman sat

glowed with warmth and rich color. But the attic was dismal beyond words. There were no longer sunsets or

sunrises to look at, and scarcely ever any stars, it seemed to Sara. The clouds hung low over the skylight and

were either gray or mudcolor, or dropping heavy rain. At four o'clock in the afternoon, even when there was

no special fog, the daylight was at an end. If it was necessary to go to her attic for anything, Sara was obliged

to light a candle. The women in the kitchen were depressed, and that made them more illtempered than ever.

"'Twarn't for you, miss," she said hoarsely to Sara one night when she had crept into the attic"'twarn't for

you, an' the Bastille, an' bein' the prisoner in the next cell, I should die. That there does seem real now,

doesn't it? The missus is more like the head jailer every day she lives. I can jest see them big keys you say she

carries. The cook she's like one of the underjailers. Tell me some more, please, misstell me about the

"I'll tell you something warmer," shivered Sara. "Get your coverlet and wrap it round you, and I'll get mine,

and we will huddle close together on the bed, and I'll tell you about the tropical forest where the Indian

gentleman's monkey used to live. When I see him sitting on the table near the window and looking out into

the street with that mournful expression, I always feel sure he is thinking about the tropical forest where he

used to swing by his tail from coconut trees. I wonder who caught him, and if he left a family behind who had

"That is warmer, miss," said Becky, gratefully; "but, someways, even the Bastille is sort of heatin' when you

"That is because it makes you think of something else," said Sara, wrapping the coverlet round her until only

her small dark face was to be seen looking out of it. "I've noticed this. What you have to do with your mind,

"Sometimes I can and sometimes I can't," she said stoutly. "But when I can I'm all right. And what I believe

is that we always couldif we practiced enough. I've been practicing a good deal lately, and it's beginning to

be easier than it used to be. When things are horriblejust horribleI think as hard as ever I can of being a

princess. I say to myself, 'I am a princess, and I am a fairy one, and because I am a fairy nothing can hurt me

She had many opportunities of making her mind think of something else, and many opportunities of proving

to herself whether or not she was a princess. But one of the strongest tests she was ever put to came on a

certain dreadful day which, she often thought afterward, would never quite fade out of her memory even in

For several days it had rained continuously; the streets were chilly and sloppy and full of dreary, cold mist;

there was mud everywheresticky London mudand over everything the pall of drizzle and fog. Of course

there were several long and tiresome errands to be donethere always were on days like thisand Sara was

sent out again and again, until her shabby clothes were damp through. The absurd old feathers on her forlorn

hat were more draggled and absurd than ever, and her downtrodden shoes were so wet that they could not

hold any more water. Added to this, she had been deprived of her dinner, because Miss Minchin had chosen

to punish her. She was so cold and hungry and tired that her face began to have a pinched look, and now and

then some kindhearted person passing her in the street glanced at her with sudden sympathy. But she did not

know that. She hurried on, trying to make her mind think of something else. It was really very necessary. Her

way of doing it was to "pretend" and "suppose" with all the strength that was left in her. But really this time it

was harder than she had ever found it, and once or twice she thought it almost made her more cold and

hungry instead of less so. But she persevered obstinately, and as the muddy water squelched through her

broken shoes and the wind seemed trying to drag her thin jacket from her, she talked to herself as she walked,

"Suppose I had dry clothes on," she thought. "Suppose I had good shoes and a long, thick coat and merino

stockings and a whole umbrella. And supposesupposejust when I was near a baker's where they sold hot

buns, I should find sixpencewhich belonged to nobody. Suppose, if I did, I should go into the shop and buy

It certainly was an odd thing that happened to Sara. She had to cross the street just when she was saying this

to herself The mud was dreadfulshe almost had to wade. She picked her way as carefully as she could, but

she could not save herself much; only, in picking her way, she had to look down at her feet and the mud, and

in looking downjust as she reached the pavementshe saw something shining in the gutter. It was

actually a piece of silvera tiny piece trodden upon by many feet, but still with spirit enough left to shine a

In one second it was in her cold little redandblue hand. "Oh," she gasped, "it is true! It is true!"

And then, if you will believe me, she looked straight at the shop directly facing her. And it was a baker's

shop, and a cheerful, stout, motherly woman with rosy cheeks was putting into the window a tray of delicious

newly baked hot buns, fresh from the ovenlarge, plump, shiny buns, with currants in them.

It almost made Sara feel faint for a few secondsthe shock, and the sight of the buns, and the delightful

She knew she need not hesitate to use the little piece of money. It had evidently been lying in the mud for

some time, and its owner was completely lost in the stream of passing people who crowded and jostled each

"But I'll go and ask the baker woman if she has lost anything," she said to herself, rather faintly. So she

crossed the pavement and put her wet foot on the step. As she did so she saw something that made her stop.

It was a little figure more forlorn even than herselfa little figure which was not much more than a bundle

of rags, from which small, bare, red muddy feet peeped out, only because the rags with which their owner

was trying to cover them were not long enough. Above the rags appeared a shock head of tangled hair, and a

Sara knew they were hungry eyes the moment she saw them, and she felt a sudden sympathy.

"This," she said to herself, with a little sigh, "is one of the populaceand she is hungrier than I am."

The childthis "one of the populace"stared up at Sara, and shuffled herself aside a little, so as to give her

room to pass. She was used to being made to give room to everybody. She knew that if a policeman chanced

Sara clutched her little fourpenny piece and hesitated for a few seconds. Then she spoke to her.

"No dinner," more hoarsely still and with more shuffling. "Nor yet no bre'fastnor yet no supper. No

Just to look at her made Sara more hungry and faint. But those queer little thoughts were at work in her brain,

"If I'm a princess," she was saying, "if I'm a princesswhen they were poor and driven from their

thronesthey always sharedwith the populaceif they met one poorer and hungrier than themselves.

They always shared. Buns are a penny each. If it had been sixpence I could have eaten six. It won't be enough

She went into the shop. It was warm and smelled deliciously. The woman was just going to put some more

"If you please," said Sara, "have you lost fourpencea silver fourpence?" And she held the forlorn little

The woman looked at it and then at herat her intense little face and draggled, once fine clothes.

"Bless us, no," she answered. "Did you find it?" "Yes," said Sara. "In the gutter."

"Keep it, then," said the woman. "It may have been there for a week, and goodness knows who lost it. You

"Not many would," said the woman, looking puzzled and interested and goodnatured all at once.

"I'll throw in two for makeweight," said the woman with her goodnatured look. "I dare say you can eat them

"Yes," she answered. "I am very hungry, and I am much obliged to you for your kindness; and"she was

going to add"there is a child outside who is hungrier than I am." But just at that moment two or three

customers came in at once, and each one seemed in a hurry, so she could only thank the woman again and go

The beggar girl was still huddled up in the corner of the step. She looked frightful in her wet and dirty rags.

She was staring straight before her with a stupid look of suffering, and Sara saw her suddenly draw the back

of her roughened black hand across her eyes to rub away the tears which seemed to have surprised her by

forcing their way from under her lids. She was muttering to herself. Sara opened the paper bag and took out

"See," she said, putting the bun in the ragged lap, "this is nice and hot. Eat it, and you will not feel so

The child started and stared up at her, as if such sudden, amazing good luck almost frightened her; then she

snatched up the bun and began to cram it into her mouth with great wolfish bites.

"She is hungrier than I am," she said to herself. "She's starving." But her hand trembled when she put down

The little ravening London savage was still snatching and devouring when she turned away. She was too

ravenous to give any thanks, even if she had ever been taught politenesswhich she had not. She was only a

When she reached the other side of the street she looked back. The child had a bun in each hand and had

stopped in the middle of a bite to watch her. Sara gave her a little nod, and the child, after another starea

curious lingering starejerked her shaggy head in response, and until Sara was out of sight she did not take

"Well, I never!" she exclaimed. "If that young un hasn't given her buns to a beggar child! It wasn't because

she didn't want them, either. Well, well, she looked hungry enough. I'd give something to know what she did

She stood behind her window for a few moments and pondered. Then her curiosity got the better of her. She

"Who gave you those buns?" she asked her. The child nodded her head toward Sara's vanishing figure.

"Left just one for herself," she said in a low voice. "And she could have eaten the whole sixI saw it in her

She looked after the little draggled faraway figure and felt more disturbed in her usually comfortable mind

"I wish she hadn't gone so quick," she said. "I'm blest if she shouldn't have had a dozen." Then she turned to

The child got up and shuffled in. To be invited into a warm place full of bread seemed an incredible thing.

"Get yourself warm," said the woman, pointing to a fire in the tiny back room. "And look here; when you are

hard up for a bit of bread, you can come in here and ask for it. I'm blest if I won't give it to you for that young

Sara found some comfort in her remaining bun. At all events, it was very hot, and it was better than nothing.

As she walked along she broke off small pieces and ate them slowly to make them last longer.

"Suppose it was a magic bun," she said, "and a bite was as much as a whole dinner. I should be overeating

It was dark when she reached the square where the Select Seminary was situated. The lights in the houses

were all lighted. The blinds were not yet drawn in the windows of the room where she nearly always caught

glimpses of members of the Large Family. Frequently at this hour she could see the gentleman she called Mr.

Montmorency sitting in a big chair, with a small swarm round him, talking, laughing, perching on the arms of

his seat or on his knees or leaning against them. This evening the swarm was about him, but he was not

seated. On the contrary, there was a good deal of excitement going on. It was evident that a journey was to be

taken, and it was Mr. Montmorency who was to take it. A brougham stood before the door, and a big

portmanteau had been strapped upon it. The children were dancing about, chattering and hanging on to their

father. The pretty rosy mother was standing near him, talking as if she was asking final questions. Sara

paused a moment to see the little ones lifted up and kissed and the bigger ones bent over and kissed also. "I

wonder if he will stay away long," she thought. "The portmanteau is rather big. Oh, dear, how they will miss

When the door opened she moved awayremembering the sixpencebut she saw the traveler come out and

stand against the background of the warmlylighted hall, the older children still hovering about him.

"Will Moscow be covered with snow?" said the little girl Janet. "Will there be ice everywhere?"

"I will write and tell you all about it," he answered, laughing. "And I will send you pictures of muzhiks and

things. Run into the house. It is a hideous damp night. I would rather stay with you than go to Moscow. Good

night! Good night, duckies! God bless you!" And he ran down the steps and jumped into the brougham.

"If you find the little girl, give her our love," shouted Guy Clarence, jumping up and down on the door mat.

"Did you see," said Janet to Nora, as they went back to the room"the littlegirlwhoisnotabeggar

was passing? She looked all cold and wet, and I saw her turn her head over her shoulder and look at us.

Mamma says her clothes always look as if they had been given her by someone who was quite

richsomeone who only let her have them because they were too shabby to wear. The people at the school

"I wonder who the little girl is," she thought"the little girl he is going to look for." And she went down the

area steps, lugging her basket and finding it very heavy indeed, as the father of the Large Family drove

quickly on his way to the station to take the train which was to carry him to Moscow, where he was to make

On this very afternoon, while Sara was out, a strange thing happened in the attic. Only Melchisedec saw and

heard it; and he was so much alarmed and mystified that he scuttled back to his hole and hid there, and really

quaked and trembled as he peeped out furtively and with great caution to watch what was going on.

The attic had been very still all the day after Sara had left it in the early morning. The stillness had only been

broken by the pattering of the rain upon the slates and the skylight. Melchisedec had, in fact, found it rather

dull; and when the rain ceased to patter and perfect silence reigned, he decided to come out and reconnoiter,

though experience taught him that Sara would not return for some time. He had been rambling and sniffing

about, and had just found a totally unexpected and unexplained crumb left from his last meal, when his

attention was attracted by a sound on the roof. He stopped to listen with a palpitating heart. The sound

suggested that something was moving on the roof. It was approaching the skylight; it reached the skylight.

The skylight was being mysteriously opened. A dark face peered into the attic; then another face appeared

behind it, and both looked in with signs of caution and interest. Two men were outside on the roof, and were

making silent preparations to enter through the skylight itself. One was Ram Dass and the other was a young

man who was the Indian gentleman's secretary; but of course Melchisedec did not know this. He only knew

that the men were invading the silence and privacy of the attic; and as the one with the dark face let himself

down through the aperture with such lightness and dexterity that he did not make the slightest sound,

Melchisedec turned tail and fled precipitately back to his hole. He was frightened to death. He had ceased to

be timid with Sara, and knew she would never throw anything but crumbs, and would never make any sound

other than the soft, low, coaxing whistling; but strange men were dangerous things to remain near. He lay

close and flat near the entrance of his home, just managing to peep through the crack with a bright, alarmed

eye. How much he understood of the talk he heard I am not in the least able to say; but, even if he had

The secretary, who was light and young, slipped through the skylight as noiselessly as Ram Dass had done;

"Was that a rat?" he asked Ram Dass in a whisper. "Yes; a rat, Sahib," answered Ram Dass, also whispering.

"Ugh!" exclaimed the young man. "It is a wonder the child is not terrified of them."

Ram Dass made a gesture with his hands. He also smiled respectfully. He was in this place as the intimate

"The child is the little friend of all things, Sahib," he answered. "She is not as other children. I see her when

she does not see me. I slip across the slates and look at her many nights to see that she is safe. I watch her

from my window when she does not know I am near. She stands on the table there and looks out at the sky as

if it spoke to her. The sparrows come at her call. The rat she has fed and tamed in her loneliness. The poor

slave of the house comes to her for comfort. There is a little child who comes to her in secret; there is one

older who worships her and would listen to her forever if she might. This I have seen when I have crept

across the roof. By the mistress of the housewho is an evil womanshe is treated like a pariah; but she

"All her life each day I know," answered Ram Dass. "Her going out I know, and her coming in; her sadness

and her poor joys; her coldness and her hunger. I know when she is alone until midnight, learning from her

books; I know when her secret friends steal to her and she is happieras children can be, even in the midst

of povertybecause they come and she may laugh and talk with them in whispers. If she were ill I should

"You are sure no one comes near this place but herself, and that she will not return and surprise us. She

would be frightened if she found us here, and the Sahib Carrisford's plan would be spoiled."

"None mount here but herself, Sahib," he said. "She has gone out with her basket and may be gone for hours.

If I stand here I can hear any step before it reaches the last flight of the stairs."

"Keep your ears open," he said; and he began to walk slowly and softly round the miserable little room,

First he went to the narrow bed. He pressed his hand upon the mattress and uttered an exclamation.

"As hard as a stone," he said. "That will have to be altered some day when she is out. A special journey can

be made to bring it across. It cannot be done tonight." He lifted the covering and examined the one thin

"Coverlet dingy and worn, blanket thin, sheets patched and ragged," he said. "What a bed for a child to sleep

inand in a house which calls itself respectable! There has not been a fire in that grate for many a day,"

"Never since I have seen it," said Ram Dass. "The mistress of the house is not one who remembers that

The secretary was writing quickly on his tablet. He looked up from it as he tore off a leaf and slipped it into

"It is a strange way of doing the thing," he said. "Who planned it?" Ram Dass made a modestly apologetic

"It is true that the first thought was mine, Sahib," he said; "though it was naught but a fancy. I am fond of this

child; we are both lonely. It is her way to relate her visions to her secret friends. Being sad one night, I lay

close to the open skylight and listened. The vision she related told what this miserable room might be if it had

comforts in it. She seemed to see it as she talked, and she grew cheered and warmed as she spoke. Then she

came to this fancy; and the next day, the Sahib being ill and wretched, I told him of the thing to amuse him. It

seemed then but a dream, but it pleased the Sahib. To hear of the child's doings gave him entertainment. He

became interested in her and asked questions. At last he began to please himself with the thought of making

"You think that it can be done while she sleeps? Suppose she awakened," suggested the secretary; and it was

evident that whatsoever the plan referred to was, it had caught and pleased his fancy as well as the Sahib

"I can move as if my feet were of velvet," Ram Dass replied; "and children sleep soundlyeven the unhappy

ones. I could have entered this room in the night many times, and without causing her to turn upon her

pillow. If the other bearer passes to me the things through the window, I can do all and she will not stir. When

He smiled as if his heart warmed under his white robe, and the secretary smiled back at him.

"It will be like a story from the Arabian Nights," he said. "Only an Oriental could have planned it. It does not

They did not remain very long, to the great relief of Melchisedec, who, as he probably did not comprehend

their conversation, felt their movements and whispers ominous. The young secretary seemed interested in

everything. He wrote down things about the floor, the fireplace, the broken footstool, the old table, the

wallswhich last he touched with his hand again and again, seeming much pleased when he found that a

"Yesterday, when she was out," he said, "I entered, bringing with me small, sharp nails which can be pressed

into the wall without blows from a hammer. I placed many in the plaster where I may need them. They are

The Indian gentleman's secretary stood still and looked round him as he thrust his tablets back into his

"I think I have made notes enough; we can go now," he said. "The Sahib Carrisford has a warm heart. It is a

"If he should find her his strength would be restored to him," said Ram Dass. "His God may lead her to him

Then they slipped through the skylight as noiselessly as they had entered it. And, after he was quite sure they

had gone, Melchisedec was greatly relieved, and in the course of a few minutes felt it safe to emerge from his

hole again and scuffle about in the hope that even such alarming human beings as these might have chanced

When Sara had passed the house next door she had seen Ram Dass closing the shutters, and caught her

"It is a long time since I saw a nice place from the inside," was the thought which crossed her mind.

There was the usual bright fire glowing in the grate, and the Indian gentleman was sitting before it. His head

And this was what he was "supposing" at that very moment. "Suppose," he was thinking, "supposeeven if

Carmichael traces the people to Moscowthe little girl they took from Madame Pascal's school in Paris is

not the one we are in search of. Suppose she proves to be quite a different child. What steps shall I take

When Sara went into the house she met Miss Minchin, who had come downstairs to scold the cook.

"It was so wet and muddy," Sara answered, "it was hard to walk, because my shoes were so bad and slipped

Sara went in to the cook. The cook had received a severe lecture and was in a fearful temper as a result. She

was only too rejoiced to have someone to vent her rage on, and Sara was a convenience, as usual.

"Tea's over and done with," was the answer. "Did you expect me to keep it hot for you?"

"I had no dinner," she said next, and her voice was quite low. She made it low because she was afraid it

"There's some bread in the pantry," said the cook. "That's all you'll get at this time of day."

Sara went and found the bread. It was old and hard and dry. The cook was in too vicious a humor to give her

anything to eat with it. It was always safe and easy to vent her spite on Sara. Really, it was hard for the child

to climb the three long flights of stairs leading to her attic. She often found them long and steep when she was

tired; but tonight it seemed as if she would never reach the top. Several times she was obliged to stop to rest.

When she reached the top landing she was glad to see the glimmer of a light coming from under her door.

That meant that Ermengarde had managed to creep up to pay her a visit. There was some comfort in that. It

was better than to go into the room alone and find it empty and desolate. The mere presence of plump,

Yes; there Ermengarde was when she opened the door. She was sitting in the middle of the bed, with her feet

tucked safely under her. She had never become intimate with Melchisedec and his family, though they rather

fascinated her. When she found herself alone in the attic she always preferred to sit on the bed until Sara

arrived. She had, in fact, on this occasion had time to become rather nervous, because Melchisedec had

appeared and sniffed about a good deal, and once had made her utter a repressed squeal by sitting up on his

"Oh, Sara," she cried out, "I am glad you have come. Melchy would sniff about so. I tried to coax him to go

back, but he wouldn't for such a long time. I like him, you know; but it does frighten me when he sniffs right

"I am tired," said Sara, dropping on to the lopsided footstool. "Oh, there's Melchisedec, poor thing. He's come

Melchisedec had come out of his hole as if he had been listening for her footstep. Sara was quite sure he

knew it. He came forward with an affectionate, expectant expression as Sara put her hand in her pocket and

"I'm very sorry," she said. "I haven't one crumb left. Go home, Melchisedec, and tell your wife there was

nothing in my pocket. I'm afraid I forgot because the cook and Miss Minchin were so cross."

Melchisedec seemed to understand. He shuffled resignedly, if not contentedly, back to his home.

"I did not expect to see you tonight, Ermie," Sara said. Ermengarde hugged herself in the red shawl.

"Miss Amelia has gone out to spend the night with her old aunt," she explained. "No one else ever comes and

looks into the bedrooms after we are in bed. I could stay here until morning if I wanted to."

She pointed toward the table under the skylight. Sara had not looked toward it as she came in. A number of

Sara looked round and got up at once. She ran to the table, and picking up the top volume, turned over its

"Ah," she cried out, "how beautiful! Carlyle's French Revolution. I have so wanted to read that!"

"I haven't," said Ermengarde. "And papa will be so cross if I don't. He'll expect me to know all about it when

Sara stopped turning over the leaves and looked at her with an excited flush on her cheeks. "Look here," she

cried, "if you'll lend me these books, I'll read themand tell you everything that's in them afterwardand

"I know I can," Sara answered. "The little ones always remember what I tell them."

"Sara," said Ermengarde, hope gleaming in her round face, "if you'll do that, and make me remember,

"I don't want you to give me anything," said Sara. "I want your booksI want them!" And her eyes grew big,

"Take them, then," said Ermengarde. "I wish I wanted thembut I don't. I'm not clever, and my father is, and

Sara was opening one book after the other. "What are you going to tell your father?" she asked, a slight doubt

Sara put down her book and shook her head slowly. "That's almost like telling lies," she said. "And

lieswell, you see, they are not only wickedthey're vulgar. Sometimes"reflectively"I've thought

perhaps I might do something wickedI might suddenly fly into a rage and kill Miss Minchin, you know,

when she was illtreating mebut I couldn't be vulgar. Why can't you tell your father I read them?"

"He wants me to read them," said Ermengarde, a little discouraged by this unexpected turn of affairs.

"He wants you to know what is in them," said Sara. "And if I can tell it to you in an easy way and make you

remember it, I should think he would like that." "He'll like it if I learn anything in any way," said rueful

"It's not your fault that" began Sara. She pulled herself up and stopped rather suddenly. She had been

"That you can't learn things quickly," amended Sara. "If you can't, you can't. If I canwhy, I can; that's all."

She always felt very tender of Ermengarde, and tried not to let her feel too strongly the difference between

being able to learn anything at once, and not being able to learn anything at all. As she looked at her plump

"Perhaps," she said, "to be able to learn things quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to

other people. If Miss Minchin knew everything on earth and was like what she is now, she'd still be a

detestable thing, and everybody would hate her. Lots of clever people have done harm and have been wicked.

She stopped and examined Ermengarde's countenance, which was beginning to look bewildered. "Don't you

remember?" she demanded. "I told you about him not long ago. I believe you've forgotten."

"Well, you wait a minute," said Sara, "and I'll take off my wet things and wrap myself in the coverlet and tell

She took off her hat and coat and hung them on a nail against the wall, and she changed her wet shoes for an

old pair of slippers. Then she jumped on the bed, and drawing the coverlet about her shoulders, sat with her

arms round her knees. "Now, listen," she said. She plunged into the gory records of the French Revolution,

and told such stories of it that Ermengarde's eyes grew round with alarm and she held her breath. But though

she was rather terrified, there was a delightful thrill in listening, and she was not likely to forget Robespierre

"You know they put her head on a pike and danced round it," Sara explained. "And she had beautiful floating

blonde hair; and when I think of her, I never see her head on her body, but always on a pike, with those

It was agreed that Mr. St. John was to be told the plan they had made, and for the present the books were to

"Now let's tell each other things," said Sara. "How are you getting on with your French lessons?"

"Ever so much better since the last time I came up here and you explained the conjugations. Miss Minchin

"She doesn't understand why Lottie is doing her sums so well," she said; "but it is because she creeps up here,

too, and I help her." She glanced round the room. "The attic would be rather niceif it wasn't so dreadful,"

The truth was that Ermengarde did not know anything of the sometimes almost unbearable side of life in the

attic and she had not a sufficiently vivid imagination to depict it for herself. On the rare occasions that she

could reach Sara's room she only saw the side of it which was made exciting by things which were

"pretended" and stories which were told. Her visits partook of the character of adventures; and though

sometimes Sara looked rather pale, and it was not to be denied that she had grown very thin, her proud little

spirit would not admit of complaints. She had never confessed that at times she was almost ravenous with

hunger, as she was tonight. She was growing rapidly, and her constant walking and running about would have

given her a keen appetite even if she had had abundant and regular meals of a much more nourishing nature

than the unappetizing, inferior food snatched at such odd times as suited the kitchen convenience. She was

"I suppose soldiers feel like this when they are on a long and weary march," she often said to herself. She

liked the sound of the phrase, "long and weary march." It made her feel rather like a soldier. She had also a

"If I lived in a castle," she argued, "and Ermengarde was the lady of another castle, and came to see me, with

knights and squires and vassals riding with her, and pennons flying, when I heard the clarions sounding

outside the drawbridge I should go down to receive her, and I should spread feasts in the banquet hall and call

in minstrels to sing and play and relate romances. When she comes into the attic I can't spread feasts, but I

can tell stories, and not let her know disagreeable things. I dare say poor chatelaines had to do that in time of

famine, when their lands had been pillaged." She was a proud, brave little chatelaine, and dispensed

generously the one hospitality she could offerthe dreams she dreamedthe visions she sawthe

So, as they sat together, Ermengarde did not know that she was faint as well as ravenous, and that while she

talked she now and then wondered if her hunger would let her sleep when she was left alone. She felt as if she

"I wish I was as thin as you, Sara," Ermengarde said suddenly. "I believe you are thinner than you used to be.

Your eyes look so big, and look at the sharp little bones sticking out of your elbow!"

"I always was a thin child," she said bravely, "and I always had big green eyes."

"I love your queer eyes," said Ermengarde, looking into them with affectionate admiration. "They always

look as if they saw such a long way. I love themand I love them to be greenthough they look black

"They are cat's eyes," laughed Sara; "but I can't see in the dark with thembecause I have tried, and I

It was just at this minute that something happened at the skylight which neither of them saw. If either of them

had chanced to turn and look, she would have been startled by the sight of a dark face which peered

cautiously into the room and disappeared as quickly and almost as silently as it had appeared. Not quite as

silently, however. Sara, who had keen ears, suddenly turned a little and looked up at the roof.

"Perhaps I didn't," said Sara; "but I thought I did. It sounded as if something was on the slatessomething

that dragged softly." "What could it be?" said Ermengarde. "Could it berobbers?"

She broke off in the middle of her words. They both heard the sound that checked her. It was not on the

slates, but on the stairs below, and it was Miss Minchin's angry voice. Sara sprang off the bed, and put out the

"She is scolding Becky," she whispered, as she stood in the darkness. "She is making her cry."

It was very seldom that Miss Minchin mounted the last flight of stairs. Sara could only remember that she had

done it once before. But now she was angry enough to be coming at least part of the way up, and it sounded

"You impudent, dishonest child!" they heard her say. "Cook tells me she has missed things repeatedly."

"'T warn't me, mum," said Becky sobbing. "I was 'ungry enough, but 't warn't menever!"

"You deserve to be sent to prison," said Miss Minchin's voice. "Picking and stealing! Half a meat pie,

"'T warn't me," wept Becky. "I could 'ave eat a whole unbut I never laid a finger on it."

Miss Minchin was out of breath between temper and mounting the stairs. The meat pie had been intended for

Both Sara and Ermengarde heard the slap, and then heard Becky run in her slipshod shoes up the stairs and

into her attic. They heard her door shut, and knew that she threw herself upon her bed.

"I could 'ave e't two of 'em," they heard her cry into her pillow. "An' I never took a bite. 'T was cook give it to

Sara stood in the middle of the room in the darkness. She was clenching her little teeth and opening and

shutting fiercely her outstretched hands. She could scarcely stand still, but she dared not move until Miss

"The wicked, cruel thing!" she burst forth. "The cook takes things herself and then says Becky steals them.

She doesn't! She doesn't! She's so hungry sometimes that she eats crusts out of the ash barrel!" She pressed

her hands hard against her face and burst into passionate little sobs, and Ermengarde, hearing this unusual

thing, was overawed by it. Sara was crying! The unconquerable Sara! It seemed to denote something

newsome mood she had never known. Supposesupposea new dread possibility presented itself to her

kind, slow, little mind all at once. She crept off the bed in the dark and found her way to the table where the

candle stood. She struck a match and lit the candle. When she had lighted it, she bent forward and looked at

"Sara," she said in a timid, almost awestricken voice, areareyou never told meI don't want to be

It was too much just at that moment. The barrier broke down. Sara lifted her face from her hands.

"Yes," she said in a new passionate way. "Yes, I am. I'm so hungry now that I could almost eat you. And it

makes it worse to hear poor Becky. She's hungrier than I am." Ermengarde gasped.

"I didn't want you to know," Sara said. "It would have made me feel like a street beggar. I know I look like a

"No, you don'tyou don't!" Ermengarde broke in. "Your clothes are a little queerbut you couldn't look

"A little boy once gave me a sixpence for charity," said Sara, with a short little laugh in spite of herself. "Here

it is." And she pulled out the thin ribbon from her neck. "He wouldn't have given me his Christmas sixpence

Somehow the sight of the dear little sixpence was good for both of them. It made them laugh a little, though

"Who was he?" asked Ermengarde, looking at it quite as if it had not been a mere ordinary silver sixpence.

"He was a darling little thing going to a party," said Sara. " He was one of the Large Family, the little one

with the round legsthe one I call Guy Clarence. I suppose his nursery was crammed with Christmas

Ermengarde gave a little jump backward. The last sentences had recalled something to her troubled mind and

"Something splendid!" said Ermengarde, in an excited hurry. "This very afternoon my nicest aunt sent me a

box. It is full of good things. I never touched it, I had so much pudding at dinner, and I was so bothered about

papa's books." Her words began to tumble over each other. "It's got cake in it, and little meat pies, and jam

tarts and buns, and oranges and redcurrant wine, and figs and chocolate. I'll creep back to my room and get

Sara almost reeled. When one is faint with hunger the mention of food has sometimes a curious effect. She

"I know I could," answered Ermengarde, and she ran to the dooropened it softlyput her head out into the

darkness, and listened. Then she went back to Sara. "The lights are out. Everybody's in bed. I can creepand

It was so delightful that they caught each other's hands and a sudden light sprang into Sara's eyes.

"Ermie!" she said. "Let us pretend! Let us pretend it's a party! And oh, won't you invite the prisoner in the

Sara went to the wall. Through it she could hear poor Becky crying more softly. She knocked four times.

"That means, 'Come to me through the secret passage under the wall,' she explained. 'I have something to

Almost immediately the door of the attic opened and Becky appeared. Her eyes were red and her cap was

sliding off, and when she caught sight of Ermengarde she began to rub her face nervously with her apron.

"Don't mind me a bit, Becky!" cried Ermengarde. "Miss Ermengarde has asked you to come in," said Sara,

"And you shall have as much as you want to eat," put in Ermengarde. "I'll go this minute!"

She was in such haste that as she tiptoed out of the attic she dropped her red shawl and did not know it had

fallen. No one saw it for a minute or so. Becky was too much overpowered by the good luck which had

"Oh, miss! oh, miss!" she gasped; "I know it was you that asked her to let me come. Itit makes me cry to

think of it." And she went to Sara's side and stood and looked at her worshipingly.

But in Sara's hungry eyes the old light had begun to glow and transform her world for her. Here in the

atticwith the cold night outsidewith the afternoon in the sloppy streets barely passedwith the memory

of the awful unfed look in the beggar child's eyes not yet fadedthis simple, cheerful thing had happened

"Somehow, something always happens," she cried, "just before things get to the very worst. It is as if the

Magic did it. If I could only just remember that always. The worst thing never quite comes."

"No, no! You mustn't cry!" she said. "We must make haste and set the table." "Set the table, miss?" said

That moment she saw something and pounced upon it. It was Ermengarde's red shawl which lay upon the

"Here's the shawl," she cried. "I know she won't mind it. It will make such a nice red tablecloth."

They pulled the old table forward, and threw the shawl over it. Red is a wonderfully kind and comfortable

"How nice a red rug would look on the floor!" exclaimed Sara. "We must pretend there is one!"

Her eye swept the bare boards with a swift glance of admiration. The rug was laid down already.

"How soft and thick it is!" she said, with the little laugh which Becky knew the meaning of; and she raised

"Yes, miss," answered Becky, watching her with serious rapture. She was always quite serious.

"What next, now?" said Sara, and she stood still and put her hands over her eyes. "Something will come if I

One of her favorite fancies was that on "the outside," as she called it, thoughts were waiting for people to call

them. Becky had seen her stand and wait many a time before, and knew that in a few seconds she would

"There!" she cried. "It has come! I know now! I must look among the things in the old trunk I had when I was

She flew to its corner and kneeled down. It had not been put in the attic for her benefit, but because there was

no room for it elsewhere. Nothing had been left in it but rubbish. But she knew she should find something.

In a corner lay a package so insignificantlooking that it had been overlooked, and when she herself had

found it she had kept it as a relic. It contained a dozen small white handkerchiefs. She seized them joyfully

and ran to the table. She began to arrange them upon the red tablecover, patting and coaxing them into

shape with the narrow lace edge curling outward, her Magic working its spells for her as she did it.

"These are the plates," she said. "They are golden plates. These are the richly embroidered napkins. Nuns

"You must pretend it," said Sara. "If you pretend it enough, you will see them."

"Yes, miss," said Becky; and as Sara returned to the trunk she devoted herself to the effort of accomplishing

Sara turned suddenly to find her standing by the table, looking very queer indeed. She had shut her eyes, and

was twisting her face in strange convulsive contortions, her hands hanging stiffly clenched at her sides. She

Becky opened her eyes with a start. I was a'pretendin',' miss," she answered a little sheepishly; "I was tryin'

to see it like you do. I almost did," with a hopeful grin. "But it takes a lot o' stren'th."

"Perhaps it does if you are not used to it," said Sara, with friendly sympathy; "but you don't know how easy it

is when you've done it often. I wouldn't try so hard just at first. It will come to you after a while. I'll just tell

She held an old summer hat in her hand which she had fished out of the bottom of the trunk. There was a

"These are garlands for the feast," she said grandly. "They fill all the air with perfume. There's a mug on the

"What are they now, miss?" she inquired. "You'd think they was made of crockerybut I know they ain't."

"This is a carven flagon," said Sara, arranging tendrils of the wreath about the mug. "And this"bending

tenderly over the soap dish and heaping it with roses"is purest alabaster encrusted with gems."

She touched the things gently, a happy smile hovering about her lips which made her look as if she were a

"If we just had something for bonbon dishes," Sara murmured. "There!"darting to the trunk again. "I

It was only a bundle of wool wrapped in red and white tissue paper, but the tissue paper was soon twisted into

the form of little dishes, and was combined with the remaining flowers to ornament the candlestick which

was to light the feast. Only the Magic could have made it more than an old table covered with a red shawl and

set with rubbish from a longunopened trunk. But Sara drew back and gazed at it, seeing wonders; and

"This 'ere," she suggested, with a glance round the attic"is it the Bastille nowor has it turned into

"My eye, miss!" ejaculated Becky. "A blanket 'all!" and she turned to view the splendors about her with awed

"A banquet hall," said Sara. "A vast chamber where feasts are given. It has a vaulted roof, and a minstrels'

gallery, and a huge chimney filled with blazing oaken logs, and it is brilliant with waxen tapers twinkling on

Then the door opened, and Ermengarde came in, rather staggering under the weight of her hamper. She

started back with an exclamation of joy. To enter from the chill darkness outside, and find one's self

confronted by a totally unanticipated festal board, draped with red, adorned with white napery, and wreathed

"Isn't it nice?" said Sara. "They are things out of my old trunk. I asked my Magic, and it told me to go and

"But oh, miss," cried Becky, "wait till she's told you what they are! They ain't justoh, miss, please tell her,"

So Sara told her, and because her Magic helped her she made her almost see it all: the golden plattersthe

vaulted spacesthe blazing logsthe twinkling waxen tapers. As the things were taken out of the

hamperthe frosted cakesthe fruitsthe bonbons and the winethe feast became a splendid thing.

"I'll tell you what, Sara," she said. "Pretend you are a princess now and this is a royal feast."

"But it's your feast," said Sara; "you must be the princess, and we will be your maids of honor."

"Oh, I can't," said Ermengarde. "I'm too fat, and I don't know how. You be her."

"There is a lot of paper and rubbish stuffed in here!" she exclaimed. "If we light it, there will be a bright blaze

for a few minutes, and we shall feel as if it was a real fire." She struck a match and lighted it up with a great

"By the time it stops blazing," Sara said, "we shall forget about its not being real."

She led the way to the table. She waved her hand graciously to Ermengarde and Becky. She was in the midst

"Advance, fair damsels," she said in her happy dreamvoice, "and be seated at the banquet table. My noble

father, the king, who is absent on a long journey, has commanded me to feast you." She turned her head

slightly toward the corner of the room. "What, ho, there, minstrels! Strike up with your viols and bassoons.

Princesses," she explained rapidly to Ermengarde and Becky, "always had minstrels to play at their feasts.

They had barely had time to take their pieces of cake into their handsnot one of them had time to do more,

whenthey all three sprang to their feet and turned pale faces toward the doorlisteninglistening.

Someone was coming up the stairs. There was no mistake about it. Each of them recognized the angry,

"Yes," said Sara, her eyes growing shocked and large in her small white face. "Miss Minchin has found us

Miss Minchin struck the door open with a blow of her hand. She was pale herself, but it was with rage. She

looked from the frightened faces to the banquet table, and from the banquet table to the last flicker of the

"I have been suspecting something of this sort," she exclaimed; "but I did not dream of such audacity. Lavinia

So they knew that it was Lavinia who had somehow guessed their secret and had betrayed them. Miss

Sara stood quite still, her eyes growing larger, her face paler. Ermengarde burst into tears.

"Oh, don't send her away," she sobbed. "My aunt sent me the hamper. We'reonlyhaving a party."

"So I see," said Miss Minchin, witheringly. "With the Princess Sara at the head of the table." She turned

fiercely on Sara. "It is your doing, I know," she cried. "Ermengarde would never have thought of such a

thing. You decorated the table, I supposewith this rubbish." She stamped her foot at Becky. "Go to your

attic!" she commanded, and Becky stole away, her face hidden in her apron, her shoulders shaking.

"I will attend to you tomorrow. You shall have neither breakfast, dinner, nor supper!"

"I have not had either dinner or supper today, Miss Minchin," said Sara, rather faintly.

"Then all the better. You will have something to remember. Don't stand there. Put those things into the

She began to sweep them off the table into the hamper herself, and caught sight of Ermengarde's new books.

"And you"to Ermengarde"have brought your beautiful new books into this dirty attic. Take them up and

go back to bed. You will stay there all day tomorrow, and I shall write to your papa. What would he say if he

Something she saw in Sara's grave, fixed gaze at this moment made her turn on her fiercely.

"I was wondering," answered Sara, as she had answered that notable day in the schoolroom.

It was very like the scene in the schoolroom. There was no pertness in Sara's manner. It was only sad and

"I was wondering," she said in a low voice, "what my papa would say if he knew where I am tonight."

Miss Minchin was infuriated just as she had been before and her anger expressed itself, as before, in an

She picked up the books, swept the rest of the feast back into the hamper in a jumbled heap, thrust it into

"I will leave you to wonder," she said. "Go to bed this instant." And she shut the door behind herself and poor

The dream was quite at an end. The last spark had died out of the paper in the grate and left only black tinder;

the table was left bare, the golden plates and richly embroidered napkins, and the garlands were transformed

again into old handkerchiefs, scraps of red and white paper, and discarded artificial flowers all scattered on

the floor; the minstrels in the minstrel gallery had stolen away, and the viols and bassoons were still. Emily

was sitting with her back against the wall, staring very hard. Sara saw her, and went and picked her up with

"There isn't any banquet left, Emily," she said. "And there isn't any princess. There is nothing left but the

What would have happened if she had not hidden it just then, and if she had chanced to look up at the

skylight at the wrong moment, I do not knowperhaps the end of this chapter might have been quite

differentbecause if she had glanced at the skylight she would certainly have been startled by what she

would have seen. She would have seen exactly the same face pressed against the glass and peering in at her as

it had peered in earlier in the evening when she had been talking to Ermengarde.

But she did not look up. She sat with her little black head in her arms for some time. She always sat like that

when she was trying to bear something in silence. Then she got up and went slowly to the bed.

"I can't pretend anything elsewhile I am awake," she said. "There wouldn't be any use in trying. If I go to

She suddenly felt so tiredperhaps through want of foodthat she sat down on the edge of the bed quite

"Suppose there was a bright fire in the grate, with lots of little dancing flames," she murmured. "Suppose

there was a comfortable chair before itand suppose there was a small table near, with a little hothot

supper on it. And suppose"as she drew the thin coverings over her"suppose this was a beautiful soft

bed, with fleecy blankets and large downy pillows. Supposesuppose" And her very weariness was

She did not know how long she slept. But she had been tired enough to sleep deeply and profoundlytoo

deeply and soundly to be disturbed by anything, even by the squeaks and scamperings of Melchisedec's entire

family, if all his sons and daughters had chosen to come out of their hole to fight and tumble and play.

When she awakened it was rather suddenly, and she did not know that any particular thing had called her out

of her sleep. The truth was, however, that it was a sound which had called her backa real soundthe click

of the skylight as it fell in closing after a lithe white figure which slipped through it and crouched down close

by upon the slates of the roofjust near enough to see what happened in the attic, but not near enough to be

At first she did not open her eyes. She felt too sleepy andcuriously enoughtoo warm and comfortable.

She was so warm and comfortable, indeed, that she did not believe she was really awake. She never was as

Of course it was a dream. She felt as if warm, delightful bedclothes were heaped upon her. She could actually

feel blankets, and when she put out her hand it touched something exactly like a satincovered eiderdown

quilt. She must not awaken from this delightshe must be quite still and make it last.

But she could noteven though she kept her eyes closed tightly, she could not. Something was forcing her to

awakensomething in the room. It was a sense of light, and a soundthe sound of a crackling, roaring little

Her eyes opened in spite of herself. And then she actually smiledfor what she saw she had never seen in

"Oh, I haven't awakened," she whispered, daring to rise on her elbow and look all about her. "I am dreaming

yet." She knew it must be a dream, for if she were awake such things could notcould not be.

Do you wonder that she felt sure she had not come back to earth? This is what she saw. In the grate there was

a glowing, blazing fire; on the hob was a little brass kettle hissing and boiling; spread upon the floor was a

thick, warm crimson rug; before the fire a foldingchair, unfolded, and with cushions on it; by the chair a

small foldingtable, unfolded, covered with a white cloth, and upon it spread small covered dishes, a cup, a

saucer, a teapot; on the bed were new warm coverings and a satincovered down quilt; at the foot a curious

wadded silk robe, a pair of quilted slippers, and some books. The room of her dream seemed changed into

fairylandand it was flooded with warm light, for a bright lamp stood on the table covered with a rosy

"It does notmelt away," she panted. "Oh, I never had such a dream before." She scarcely dared to stir; but

at last she pushed the bedclothes aside, and put her feet on the floor with a rapturous smile.

"I am dreamingI am getting out of bed," she heard her own voice say; and then, as she stood up in the

midst of it all, turning slowly from side to side"I am dreaming it staysreal! I'm dreaming it feels real. It's

bewitchedor I'm bewitched. I only think I see it all." Her words began to hurry themselves. "If I can only

The blazing fire drew her to it, and she knelt down and held out her hands close to itso close that the heat

She sprang up, touched the table, the dishes, the rug; she went to the bed and touched the blankets. She took

up the soft wadded dressinggown, and suddenly clutched it to her breast and held it to her cheek.

She almost staggered to the books and opened the one which lay upon the top. Something was written on the

When she saw thatwasn't it a strange thing for her to doshe put her face down upon the page and burst

"I don't know who it is," she said; "but somebody cares for me a little. I have a friend."

She took her candle and stole out of her own room and into Becky's, and stood by her bedside.

When Becky wakened, and she sat upright staring aghast, her face still smudged with traces of tears, beside

her stood a little figure in a luxurious wadded robe of crimson silk. The face she saw was a shining,

wonderful thing. The Princess Saraas she remembered herstood at her very bedside, holding a candle in

Becky was too frightened to speak. She simply got up and followed her, with her mouth and eyes open, and

And when they crossed the threshold, Sara shut the door gently and drew her into the warm, glowing midst of

things which made her brain reel and her hungry senses faint. "It's true! It's true!" she cried. "I've touched

them all. They are as real as we are. The Magic has come and done it, Becky, while we were asleepthe

Imagine, if you can, what the rest of the evening was like. How they crouched by the fire which blazed and

leaped and made so much of itself in the little grate. How they removed the covers of the dishes, and found

rich, hot, savory soup, which was a meal in itself, and sandwiches and toast and muffins enough for both of

them. The mug from the washstand was used as Becky's tea cup, and the tea was so delicious that it was not

necessary to pretend that it was anything but tea. They were warm and fullfed and happy, and it was just

like Sara that, having found her strange good fortune real, she should give herself up to the enjoyment of it to

the utmost. She had lived such a life of imaginings that she was quite equal to accepting any wonderful thing

"I don't know anyone in the world who could have done it," she said; "but there has been someone. And here

we are sitting by their fireandandit's true! And whoever it iswherever they areI have a friend,

It cannot be denied that as they sat before the blazing fire, and ate the nourishing, comfortable food, they felt

a kind of rapturous awe, and looked into each other's eyes with something like doubt.

"Do you think," Becky faltered once, in a whisper, "do you think it could melt away, miss? Hadn't we better

be quick?" And she hastily crammed her sandwich into her mouth. If it was only a dream, kitchen manners

"No, it won't melt away," said Sara. "I am eating this muffin, and I can taste it. You never really eat things in

dreams. You only think you are going to eat them. Besides, I keep giving myself pinches; and I touched a hot

The sleepy comfort which at length almost overpowered them was a heavenly thing. It was the drowsiness of

happy, wellfed childhood, and they sat in the fire glow and luxuriated in it until Sara found herself turning

There were even blankets enough to share with Becky. The narrow couch in the next attic was more

As she went out of the room, Becky turned upon the threshold and looked about her with devouring eyes.

"If it ain't here in the mornin', miss," she said, "it's been here tonight, anyways, an' I shan't never forget it."

She looked at each particular thing, as if to commit it to memory. "The fire was there," pointing with her

finger, "an' the table was before it; an' the lamp was there, an' the light looked rosy red; an' there was a satin

cover on your bed, an' a warm rug on the floor, an' everythin' looked beautiful; an'"she paused a second,

and laid her hand on her stomach tenderly"there was soup an' sandwiches an' muffinsthere was." And,

Through the mysterious agency which works in schools and among servants, it was quite well known in the

morning that Sara Crewe was in horrible disgrace, that Ermengarde was under punishment, and that Becky

would have been packed out of the house before breakfast, but that a scullery maid could not be dispensed

with at once. The servants knew that she was allowed to stay because Miss Minchin could not easily find

another creature helpless and humble enough to work like a bounden slave for so few shillings a week. The

elder girls in the schoolroom knew that if Miss Minchin did not send Sara away it was for practical reasons of

"She's growing so fast and learning such a lot, somehow," said Jessie to Lavinia, "that she will be given

classes soon, and Miss Minchin knows she will have to work for nothing. It was rather nasty of you, Lavvy,

"I got it out of Lottie. She's such a baby she didn't know she was telling me. There was nothing nasty at all in

speaking to Miss Minchin. I felt it my duty"priggishly. "She was being deceitful. And it's ridiculous that

"What were they doing when Miss Minchin caught them?" "Pretending some silly thing. Ermengarde had

taken up her hamper to share with Sara and Becky. She never invites us to share things. Not that I care, but

it's rather vulgar of her to share with servant girls in attics. I wonder Miss Minchin didn't turn Sara outeven

"If she was turned out where would she go?" inquired Jessie, a trifle anxiously.

"How do I know?" snapped Lavinia. "She'll look rather queer when she comes into the schoolroom this

morning, I should thinkafter what's happened. She had no dinner yesterday, and she's not to have any

Jessie was not as illnatured as she was silly. She picked up her book with a little jerk.

"Well, I think it's horrid," she said. "They've no right to starve her to death."

When Sara went into the kitchen that morning the cook looked askance at her, and so did the housemaids; but

she passed them hurriedly. She had, in fact, overslept herself a little, and as Becky had done the same, neither

Sara went into the scullery. Becky was violently scrubbing a kettle, and was actually gurgling a little song in

"It was there when I wakened, missthe blanket," she whispered excitedly. "It was as real as it was last

"So was mine," said Sara. "It is all there nowall of it. While I was dressing I ate some of the cold things we

"Oh, laws! Oh, laws!" Becky uttered the exclamation in a sort of rapturous groan, and ducked her head over

Miss Minchin had expected to see in Sara, when she appeared in the schoolroom, very much what Lavinia

had expected to see. Sara had always been an annoying puzzle to her, because severity never made her cry or

look frightened. When she was scolded she stood still and listened politely with a grave face; when she was

punished she performed her extra tasks or went without her meals, making no complaint or outward sign of

rebellion. The very fact that she never made an impudent answer seemed to Miss Minchin a kind of

impudence in itself. But after yesterday's deprivation of meals, the violent scene of last night, the prospect of

hunger today, she must surely have broken down. It would be strange indeed if she did not come downstairs

Miss Minchin saw her for the first time when she entered the schoolroom to hear the little French class recite

its lessons and superintend its exercises. And she came in with a springing step, color in her cheeks, and a

smile hovering about the corners of her mouth. It was the most astonishing thing Miss Minchin had ever

known. It gave her quite a shock. What was the child made of? What could such a thing mean? She called her

"You do not look as if you realize that you are in disgrace," she said. "Are you absolutely hardened?"

The truth is that when one is still a childor even if one is grown upand has been well fed, and has slept

long and softly and warm; when one has gone to sleep in the midst of a fairy story, and has wakened to find it

real, one cannot be unhappy or even look as if one were; and one could not, if one tried, keep a glow of joy

out of one's eyes. Miss Minchin was almost struck dumb by the look of Sara's eyes when she made her

"Be good enough not to forget it and look as if you had come into a fortune. It is an impertinence. And

"Yes, Miss Minchin," Sara answered; but as she turned away her heart leaped with the memory of what

yesterday had been. "If the Magic had not saved me just in time," she thought, "how horrible it would have

"She can't be very hungry," whispered Lavinia. "Just look at her. Perhaps she is pretending she has had a

"She's different from other people," said Jessie, watching Sara with her class. "Sometimes I'm a bit frightened

All through the day the light was in Sara's face, and the color in her cheek. The servants cast puzzled glances

at her, and whispered to each other, and Miss Amelia's small blue eyes wore an expression of bewilderment.

What such an audacious look of wellbeing, under august displeasure could mean she could not understand.

It was, however, just like Sara's singular obstinate way. She was probably determined to brave the matter out.

One thing Sara had resolved upon, as she thought things over. The wonders which had happened must be

kept a secret, if such a thing were possible. If Miss Minchin should choose to mount to the attic again, of

course all would be discovered. But it did not seem likely that she would do so for some time at least, unless

she was led by suspicion. Ermengarde and Lottie would be watched with such strictness that they would not

dare to steal out of their beds again. Ermengarde could be told the story and trusted to keep it secret. If Lottie

made any discoveries, she could be bound to secrecy also. Perhaps the Magic itself would help to hide its

own marvels. "But whatever happens," Sara kept saying to herself all day"whatever happens, somewhere

in the world there is a heavenly kind person who is my friendmy friend. If I never know who it isif I

never can even thank himI shall never feel quite so lonely. Oh, the Magic was good to me!"

If it was possible for weather to be worse than it had been the day before, it was worse this daywetter,

muddier, colder. There were more errands to be done, the cook was more irritable, and, knowing that Sara

was in disgrace, she was more savage. But what does anything matter when one's Magic has just proved itself

one's friend. Sara's supper of the night before had given her strength, she knew that she should sleep well and

warmly, and, even though she had naturally begun to be hungry again before evening, she felt that she could

bear it until breakfasttime on the following day, when her meals would surely be given to her again. It was

quite late when she was at last allowed to go upstairs. She had been told to go into the schoolroom and study

until ten o'clock, and she had become interested in her work, and remained over her books later.

When she reached the top flight of stairs and stood before the attic door, it must be confessed that her heart

"Of course it might all have been taken away," she whispered, trying to be brave. "It might only have been

lent to me for just that one awful night. But it was lent to meI had it. It was real."

She pushed the door open and went in. Once inside, she gasped slightly, shut the door, and stood with her

The Magic had been there again. It actually had, and it had done even more than before. The fire was blazing,

in lovely leaping flames, more merrily than ever. A number of new things had been brought into the attic

which so altered the look of it that if she had not been past doubting she would have rubbed her eyes. Upon

the low table another supper stoodthis time with cups and plates for Becky as well as herself; a piece of

bright, heavy, strange embroidery covered the battered mantel, and on it some ornaments had been placed.

All the bare, ugly things which could be covered with draperies had been concealed and made to look quite

pretty. Some odd materials of rich colors had been fastened against the wall with fine, sharp tacksso sharp

that they could be pressed into the wood and plaster without hammering. Some brilliant fans were pinned up,

and there were several large cushions, big and substantial enough to use as seats. A wooden box was covered

with a rug, and some cushions lay on it, so that it wore quite the air of a sofa.

Sara slowly moved away from the door and simply sat down and looked and looked again.

"It is exactly like something fairy come true," she said. "There isn't the least difference. I feel as if I might

wish for anythingdiamonds or bags of goldand they would appear! That wouldn't be any stranger than

this. Is this my garret? Am I the same cold, ragged, damp Sara? And to think I used to pretend and pretend

and wish there were fairies! The one thing I always wanted was to see a fairy story come true. I am living in a

fairy story. I feel as if I might be a fairy myself, and able to turn things into anything else."

She rose and knocked upon the wall for the prisoner in the next cell, and the prisoner came.

When she entered she almost dropped in a heap upon the floor. For a few seconds she quite lost her breath.

"You see," said Sara. On this night Becky sat on a cushion upon the hearth rug and had a cup and saucer of

When Sara went to bed she found that she had a new thick mattress and big downy pillows. Her old mattress

and pillow had been removed to Becky's bedstead, and, consequently, with these additions Becky had been

"Where does it all come from?" Becky broke forth once. "Laws, who does it, miss?"

"Don't let us even ask," said Sara. "If it were not that I want to say, 'Oh, thank you,' I would rather not know.

From that time life became more wonderful day by day. The fairy story continued. Almost every day

something new was done. Some new comfort or ornament appeared each time Sara opened the door at night,

until in a short time the attic was a beautiful little room full of all sorts of odd and luxurious things. The ugly

walls were gradually entirely covered with pictures and draperies, ingenious pieces of folding furniture

appeared, a bookshelf was hung up and filled with books, new comforts and conveniences appeared one by

one, until there seemed nothing left to be desired. When Sara went downstairs in the morning, the remains of

the supper were on the table; and when she returned to the attic in the evening, the magician had removed

them and left another nice little meal. Miss Minchin was as harsh and insulting as ever, Miss Amelia as

peevish, and the servants were as vulgar and rude. Sara was sent on errands in all weathers, and scolded and

driven hither and thither; she was scarcely allowed to speak to Ermengarde and Lottie; Lavinia sneered at the

increasing shabbiness of her clothes; and the other girls stared curiously at her when she appeared in the

schoolroom. But what did it all matter while she was living in this wonderful mysterious story? It was more

romantic and delightful than anything she had ever invented to comfort her starved young soul and save

herself from despair. Sometimes, when she was scolded, she could scarcely keep from smiling.

The comfort and happiness she enjoyed were making her stronger, and she had them always to look forward

to. If she came home from her errands wet and tired and hungry, she knew she would soon be warm and well

fed after she had climbed the stairs. During the hardest day she could occupy herself blissfully by thinking of

what she should see when she opened the attic door, and wondering what new delight had been prepared for

her. In a very short time she began to look less thin. Color came into her cheeks, and her eyes did not seem so

"Sara Crewe looks wonderfully well," Miss Minchin remarked disapprovingly to her sister.

"Yes," answered poor, silly Miss Amelia. "She is absolutely fattening. She was beginning to look like a little

"Starved!" exclaimed Miss Minchin, angrily. "There was no reason why she should look starved. She always

"Ofof course," agreed Miss Amelia, humbly, alarmed to find that she had, as usual, said the wrong thing.

"There is something very disagreeable in seeing that sort of thing in a child of her age," said Miss Minchin,

"It might almost be called defiance," answered Miss Minchin, feeling annoyed because she knew the thing

she resented was nothing like defiance, and she did not know what other unpleasant term to use. "The spirit

and will of any other child would have been entirely humbled and broken byby the changes she has had to

submit to. But, upon my word, she seems as little subdued as ifas if she were a princess."

"Do you remember," put in the unwise Miss Amelia, "what she said to you that day in the schoolroom about

"No, I don't," said Miss Minchin. "Don't talk nonsense." But she remembered very clearly indeed.

Very naturally, even Becky was beginning to look plumper and less frightened. She could not help it. She had

her share in the secret fairy story, too. She had two mattresses, two pillows, plenty of bedcovering, and

every night a hot supper and a seat on the cushions by the fire. The Bastille had melted away, the prisoners no

longer existed. Two comforted children sat in the midst of delights. Sometimes Sara read aloud from her

books, sometimes she learned her own lessons, sometimes she sat and looked into the fire and tried to

imagine who her friend could be, and wished she could say to him some of the things in her heart.

Then it came about that another wonderful thing happened. A man came to the door and left several parcels.

All were addressed in large letters, "To the Little Girl in the righthand attic."

Sara herself was sent to open the door and take them in. She laid the two largest parcels on the hall table, and

"Take the things to the young lady to whom they belong," she said severely. "Don't stand there staring at

"I don't know where they come from," said Sara, "but they are addressed to me. I sleep in the righthand

Miss Minchin came to her side and looked at the parcels with an excited expression.

Sara did as she was told. When the packages were unfolded Miss Minchin's countenance wore suddenly a

singular expression. What she saw was pretty and comfortable clothingclothing of different kinds: shoes,

stockings, and gloves, and a warm and beautiful coat. There were even a nice hat and an umbrella. They were

all good and expensive things, and on the pocket of the coat was pinned a paper, on which were written these

Miss Minchin was quite agitated. This was an incident which suggested strange things to her sordid mind.

Could it be that she had made a mistake, after all, and that the neglected child had some powerful though

eccentric friend in the backgroundperhaps some previously unknown relation, who had suddenly traced

her whereabouts, and chose to provide for her in this mysterious and fantastic way? Relations were

sometimes very oddparticularly rich old bachelor uncles, who did not care for having children near them.

A man of that sort might prefer to overlook his young relation's welfare at a distance. Such a person,

however, would be sure to be crotchety and hottempered enough to be easily offended. It would not be very

pleasant if there were such a one, and he should learn all the truth about the thin, shabby clothes, the scant

food, and the hard work. She felt very queer indeed, and very uncertain, and she gave a side glance at Sara.

"Well," she said, in a voice such as she had never used since the little girl lost her father, "someone is very

kind to you. As the things have been sent, and you are to have new ones when they are worn out, you may as

well go and put them on and look respectable. After you are dressed you may come downstairs and learn your

About half an hour afterward, when the schoolroom door opened and Sara walked in, the entire seminary was

"My word!" ejaculated Jessie, jogging Lavinia's elbow. "Look at the Princess Sara!"

It was the Princess Sara indeed. At least, since the days when she had been a princess, Sara had never looked

as she did now. She did not seem the Sara they had seen come down the back stairs a few hours ago. She was

dressed in the kind of frock Lavinia had been used to envying her the possession of. It was deep and warm in

color, and beautifully made. Her slender feet looked as they had done when Jessie had admired them, and the

hair, whose heavy locks had made her look rather like a Shetland pony when it fell loose about her small, odd

"Perhaps someone has left her a fortune," Jessie whispered. "I always thought something would happen to

"Perhaps the diamond mines have suddenly appeared again," said Lavinia, scathingly. "Don't please her by

And while the whole schoolroom stared and pushed with elbows, and scarcely made any effort to conceal its

excited curiosity, Sara went to her old seat of honor, and bent her head over her books.

That night, when she went to her room, after she and Becky had eaten their supper she sat and looked at the

"Are you making something up in your head, miss?" Becky inquired with respectful softness. When Sara sat

in silence and looked into the coals with dreaming eyes it generally meant that she was making a new story.

Becky staredstill respectfully. She was filled with something approaching reverence for everything Sara

"I can't help thinking about my friend," Sara explained. "If he wants to keep himself a secret, it would be rude

to try and find out who he is. But I do so want him to know how thankful I am to himand how happy he

has made me. Anyone who is kind wants to know when people have been made happy. They care for that

She stopped short because her eyes at that instant fell upon something standing on a table in a corner. It was

something she had found in the room when she came up to it only two days before. It was a little

"I can write to him," she said joyfully, "and leave it on the table. Then perhaps the person who takes the

things away will take it, too. I won't ask him anything. He won't mind my thanking him, I feel sure."

I hope you will not think it is impolite that I should write this note to you when you wish to keep yourself a

secret. Please believe I do not mean to be impolite or try to find out anything at all; only I want to thank you

for being so kind to meso heavenly kindand making everything like a fairy story. I am so grateful to

you, and I am so happyand so is Becky. Becky feels just as thankful as I doit is all just as beautiful and

wonderful to her as it is to me. We used to be so lonely and cold and hungry, and nowoh, just think what

you have done for us! Please let me say just these words. It seems as if I ought to say them. Thank

The next morning she left this on the little table, and in the evening it had been taken away with the other

things; so she knew the Magician had received it, and she was happier for the thought. She was reading one

of her new books to Becky just before they went to their respective beds, when her attention was attracted by

a sound at the skylight. When she looked up from her page she saw that Becky had heard the sound also, as

She left her chair and went to the skylight. It was a queer little sound she heardlike a soft scratching. She

suddenly remembered something and laughed. She remembered a quaint little intruder who had made his way

into the attic once before. She had seen him that very afternoon, sitting disconsolately on a table before a

"Suppose," she whispered in pleased excitement"just suppose it was the monkey who got away again. Oh,

She climbed on a chair, very cautiously raised the skylight, and peeped out. It had been snowing all day, and

on the snow, quite near her, crouched a tiny, shivering figure, whose small black face wrinkled itself

"It is the monkey," she cried out. "He has crept out of the Lascar's attic, and he saw the light."

"Yes," Sara answered joyfully. "It's too cold for monkeys to be out. They're delicate. I'll coax him in."

She put a hand out delicately, speaking in a coaxing voiceas she spoke to the sparrows and to

He knew she would not hurt him. He knew it before she laid her soft, caressing little paw on him and drew

him towards her. He had felt human love in the slim brown hands of Ram Dass, and he felt it in hers. He let

her lift him through the skylight, and when he found himself in her arms he cuddled up to her breast and

"Nice monkey! Nice monkey!" she crooned, kissing his funny head. "Oh, I do love little animal things."

He was evidently glad to get to the fire, and when she sat down and held him on her knee he looked from her

"He looks like a very ugly baby," laughed Sara. "I beg your pardon, monkey; but I'm glad you are not a baby.

Your mother couldn't be proud of you, and no one would dare to say you looked like any of your relations.

"Perhaps he's sorry he's so ugly," she said, "and it's always on his mind. I wonder if he has a mind. Monkey,

"I shall let him sleep with me tonight, and then take him back to the Indian gentleman tomorrow. I am sorry

to take you back, monkey; but you must go. You ought to be fondest of your own family; and I'm not a real

And when she went to bed she made him a nest at her feet, and he curled up and slept there as if he were a

The next afternoon three members of the Large Family sat in the Indian gentleman's library, doing their best

to cheer him up. They had been allowed to come in to perform this office because he had specially invited

them. He had been living in a state of suspense for some time, and today he was waiting for a certain event

very anxiously. This event was the return of Mr. Carmichael from Moscow. His stay there had been

prolonged from week to week. On his first arrival there, he had not been able satisfactorily to trace the family

he had gone in search of. When he felt at last sure that he had found them and had gone to their house, he had

been told that they were absent on a journey. His efforts to reach them had been unavailing, so he had

decided to remain in Moscow until their return. Mr. Carrisford sat in his reclining chair, and Janet sat on the

floor beside him. He was very fond of Janet. Nora had found a footstool, and Donald was astride the tiger's

head which ornamented the rug made of the animal's skin. It must be owned that he was riding it rather

"Don't chirrup so loud, Donald," Janet said. "When you come to cheer an ill person up you don't cheer him up

at the top of your voice. Perhaps cheering up is too loud, Mr. Carrisford?" turning to the Indian gentleman.

Donald made a bridle of his handkerchief and bounced up and down on the tiger's head.

"I don't believe fifty thousand mice would," said Janet, severely; "and we have to be as quiet as one mouse."

"Papa won't be very long now," she said. "May we talk about the lost little girl?"

"I don't think I could talk much about anything else just now," the Indian gentleman answered, knitting his

"Why?" the Indian gentleman inquired, because the fancies of the Large Family always made him forget

It was Janet who answered. "It is because, though she is not exactly a fairy, she will be so rich when she is

found that she will be like a princess in a fairy tale. We called her the fairy princess at first, but it didn't quite

"Is it true," said Nora, "that her papa gave all his money to a friend to put in a mine that had diamonds in it,

and then the friend thought he had lost it all and ran away because he felt as if he was a robber?"

"I am sorry for the friend," Janet said; "I can't help it. He didn't mean to do it, and it would break his heart. I

"You are an understanding little woman, Janet," the Indian gentleman said, and he held her hand close.

"Did you tell Mr. Carrisford," Donald shouted again, "about the littlegirlwhoisn'tabeggar? Did you

tell him she has new nice clothes? P'r'aps she's been found by somebody when she was lost."

All three of them incontinently fled from the room and tumbled into the hall. It was in this way they always

welcomed their father. They were to be heard jumping up and down, clapping their hands, and being caught

Mr. Carmichael's voice approached the door. "No, children," he was saying; "you may come in after I have

Then the door opened and he came in. He looked rosier than ever, and brought an atmosphere of freshness

and health with him; but his eyes were disappointed and anxious as they met the invalid's look of eager

"She is not the child we are looking for," was Mr. Carmichael's answer. "She is much younger than Captain

Crewe's little girl. Her name is Emily Carew. I have seen and talked to her. The Russians were able to give

How wearied and miserable the Indian gentleman looked! His hand dropped from Mr. Carmichael's.

"Then the search has to be begun over again," he said. "That is all. Please sit down."

Mr. Carmichael took a seat. Somehow, he had gradually grown fond of this unhappy man. He was himself so

well and happy, and so surrounded by cheerfulness and love, that desolation and broken health seemed

pitifully unbearable things. If there had been the sound of just one gay little highpitched voice in the house,

it would have been so much less forlorn. And that a man should be compelled to carry about in his breast the

thought that he had seemed to wrong and desert a child was not a thing one could face.

"We must begin at once. No time must be lost," Mr. Carrisford fretted. "Have you any new suggestion to

makeany whatsoever?" Mr. Carmichael felt rather restless, and he rose and began to pace the room with a

"Well, perhaps," he said. "I don't know what it may be worth. The fact is, an idea occurred to me as I was

"Yes; she is somewhere. We have searched the schools in Paris. Let us give up Paris and begin in London.

"There are schools enough in London," said Mr. Carrisford. Then he slightly started, roused by a recollection.

"No," said Carrisford. "There is a child there who interests me; but she is not a pupil. And she is a little dark,

Perhaps the Magic was at work again at that very momentthe beautiful Magic. It really seemed as if it

might be so. What was it that brought Ram Dass into the roomeven as his master spokesalaaming

respectfully, but with a scarcely concealed touch of excitement in his dark, flashing eyes?

"Sahib," he said, "the child herself has comethe child the sahib felt pity for. She brings back the monkey

who had again run away to her attic under the roof. I have asked that she remain. lt was my thought that it

"God knows," Mr. Carrrisford answered. "She is the child I spoke of. A little drudge at the school." He waved

his hand to Ram Dass, and addressed him. "Yes, I should like to see her. Go and bring her in." Then he turned

to Mr. Carmichael. "While you have been away," he explained, "I have been desperate. The days were so

dark and long. Ram Dass told me of this child's miseries, and together we invented a romantic plan to help

her. I suppose it was a childish thing to do; but it gave me something to plan and think of. Without the help of

an agile, softfooted Oriental like Ram Dass, however, it could not have been done."

Then Sara came into the room. She carried the monkey in her arms, and he evidently did not intend to part

from her, if it could be helped. He was clinging to her and chattering, and the interesting excitement of

finding herself in the Indian gentleman's room had brought a flush to Sara's cheeks.

"Your monkey ran away again," she said, in her pretty voice. "He came to my garret window last night, and I

took him in because it was so cold. I would have brought him back if it had not been so late. I knew you were

"Oh, I know Lascars," Sara said, handing over the reluctant monkey. "I was born in India."

The Indian gentleman sat upright so suddenly, and with such a change of expression, that she was for a

"You were born in India," he exclaimed, "were you? Come here." And he held out his hand. Sara went to him

and laid her hand in his, as he seemed to want to take it. She stood still, and her greengray eyes met his

"I sleep in the attic, next to the scullery maid," she said. "I run errands for the cookI do anything she tells

"Question her, Carmichael," said Mr. Carrisford, sinking back as if he had lost his strength. "Question her; I

The big, kind father of the Large Family knew how to question little girls. Sara realized how much practice

"He died," said Sara, very quietly. "He lost all his money and there was none left for me. There was no one to

"We must not frighten her," Mr. Carmichael said aside to him in a quick, low voice. And he added aloud to

Sara, "So you were sent up into the attic, and made into a little drudge. That was about it, wasn't it?"

"There was no one to take care of me," said Sara. "There was no money; I belong to nobody."

"How did your father lose his money?" the Indian gentleman broke in breathlessly.

"He did not lose it himself," Sara answered, wondering still more each moment. "He had a friend he was very

fond ofhe was very fond of him. It was his friend who took his money. He trusted his friend too much."

"The friend might have meant to do no harm," he said. "It might have happened through a mistake."

Sara did not know how unrelenting her quiet young voice sounded as she answered. If she had known, she

"His name was Ralph Crewe," Sara answered, feeling startled. "Captain Crewe. He died in India."

For a moment Sara thought he was going to die. Ram Dass poured out drops from a bottle, and held them to

his lips. Sara stood near, trembling a little. She looked in a bewildered way at Mr. Carmichael.

"He was your father's friend," Mr. Carmichael answered her. "Don't be frightened. We have been looking for

Sara put her hand up to her forehead, and her mouth trembled. She spoke as if she were in a dream.

"And I was at Miss Minchin's all the while," she half whispered. "Just on the other side of the wall."

It was pretty, comfortable Mrs. Carmichael who explained everything. She was sent for at once, and came

across the square to take Sara into her warm arms and make clear to her all that had happened. The

excitement of the totally unexpected discovery had been temporarily almost overpowering to Mr. Carrisford

"Upon my word," he said faintly to Mr. Carmichael, when it was suggested that the little girl should go into

"I will take care of her," Janet said, "and mamma will come in a few minutes." And it was Janet who led her

"We're so glad you are found," she said. "You don't know how glad we are that you are found."

Donald stood with his hands in his pockets, and gazed at Sara with reflecting and selfreproachful eyes.

"If I'd just asked what your name was when I gave you my sixpence," he said, "you would have told me it

was Sara Crewe, and then you would have been found in a minute." Then Mrs. Carmichael came in. She

"Was he," she said, with a glance toward the closed door of the library"was he the wicked friend? Oh, do

Mrs. Carmichael was crying as she kissed her again. She felt as if she ought to be kissed very often because

"He was not wicked, my dear," she answered. "He did not really lose your papa's money. He only thought he

had lost it; and because he loved him so much his grief made him so ill that for a time he was not in his right

mind. He almost died of brain fever, and long before he began to recover your poor papa was dead."

"And he did not know where to find me," murmured Sara. "And I was so near." Somehow, she could not

"He believed you were in school in France," Mrs. Carmichael explained. "And he was continually misled by

false clues. He has looked for you everywhere. When he saw you pass by, looking so sad and neglected, he

did not dream that you were his friend's poor child; but because you were a little girl, too, he was sorry for

you, and wanted to make you happier. And he told Ram Dass to climb into your attic window and try to make

"Did Ram Dass bring the things?" she cried out. "Did he tell Ram Dass to do it? Did he make the dream that

"Yes, my dearyes! He is kind and good, and he was sorry for you, for little lost Sara Crewe's sake."

The library door opened and Mr. Carmichael appeared, calling Sara to him with a gesture.

Sara did not wait. When the Indian gentleman looked at her as she entered, he saw that her face was all alight.

She went and stood before his chair, with her hands clasped together against her breast.

"You sent the things to me," she said, in a joyful emotional little voice, "the beautiful, beautiful things? You

"Yes, poor, dear child, I did," he answered her. He was weak and broken with long illness and trouble, but he

looked at her with the look she remembered in her father's eyesthat look of loving her and wanting to take

her in his arms. It made her kneel down by him, just as she used to kneel by her father when they were the

"Then it is you who are my friend," she said; "it is you who are my friend!" And she dropped her face on his

"The man will be himself again in three weeks," Mr. Carmichael said aside to his wife. "Look at his face

In fact, he did look changed. Here was the "Little Missus," and he had new things to think of and plan for

already. In the first place, there was Miss Minchin. She must be interviewed and told of the change which had

Sara was not to return to the seminary at all. The Indian gentleman was very determined upon that point. She

must remain where she was, and Mr. Carmichael should go and see Miss Minchin himself

"I am glad I need not go back," said Sara. "She will be very angry. She does not like me; though perhaps it is

But, oddly enough, Miss Minchin made it unnecessary for Mr. Carmichael to go to her, by actually coming in

search of her pupil herself. She had wanted Sara for something, and on inquiry had heard an astonishing

thing. One of the housemaids had seen her steal out of the area with something hidden under her cloak, and

"I don't know, I'm sure, sister," answered Miss Amelia. "Unless she has made friends with him because he

"It would be just like her to thrust herself upon him and try to gain his sympathies in some such impertinent

fashion," said Miss Minchin. "She must have been in the house for two hours. I will not allow such

presumption. I shall go and inquire into the matter, and apologize for her intrusion."

Sara was sitting on a footstool close to Mr. Carrisford's knee, and listening to some of the many things he felt

it necessary to try to explain to her, when Ram Dass announced the visitor's arrival. Sara rose involuntarily,

and became rather pale; but Mr. Carrisford saw that she stood quietly, and showed none of the ordinary signs

Miss Minchin entered the room with a sternly dignified manner. She was correctly and well dressed, and

"I am sorry to disturb Mr. Carrisford," she said; "but I have explanations to make. I am Miss Minchin, the

The Indian gentleman looked at her for a moment in silent scrutiny. He was a man who had naturally a rather

"In that case," the Indian gentleman replied, "you have arrived at the right time. My solicitor, Mr.

Mr. Carmichael bowed slightly, and Miiss Minchin looked from him to Mr. Carrisford in amazement.

"Your solicitor!" she said. "I do not understand. I have come here as a matter of duty. I have just discovered

that you have been intruded upon through the forwardness of one of my pupilsa charity pupil. I came to

explain that she intruded without my knowledge." She turned upon Sara. "Go home at once," she commanded

"No," said Mr. Carrisford. "She is not going homeif you give your house that name. Her home for the

"Kindly explain the matter, Carmichael," said the Indian gentleman; "and get it over as quickly as possible."

And he made Sara sit down again, and held her hands in hiswhich was another trick of her papa's.

Then Mr. Carmichael explainedin the quiet, leveltoned, steady manner of a man who knew his subject, and

all its legal significance, which was a thing Miss Minchin understood as a business woman, and did not

"Mr. Carrisford, madam," he said, "was an intimate friend of the late Captain Crewe. He was his partner in

certain large investments. The fortune which Captain Crewe supposed he had lost has been recovered, and is

"The fortune!" cried Miss Minchin; and she really lost color as she uttered the exclamation. "Sara's fortune!"

"It will be Sara's fortune," replied Mr. Carmichael, rather coldly. "It is Sara's fortune now, in fact. Certain

events have increased it enormously. The diamond mines have retrieved themselves."

"The diamond mines!" Miss Minchin gasped out. If this was true, nothing so horrible, she felt, had ever

"The diamond mines," Mr. Carmichael repeated, and he could not help adding, with a rather sly,

unlawyerlike smile, "There are not many princesses, Miss Minchin, who are richer than your little charity

pupil, Sara Crewe, will be. Mr. Carrisford has been searching for her for nearly two years; he has found her at

last, and he will keep her." After which he asked Miss Minchin to sit down while he explained matters to her

fully, and went into such detail as was necessary to make it quite clear to her that Sara's future was an assured

one, and that what had seemed to be lost was to be restored to her tenfold; also, that she had in Mr. Carrisford

Miss Minchin was not a clever woman, and in her excitement she was silly enough to make one desperate

effort to regain what she could not help seeing she had lost through her worldly folly.

"He found her under my care," she protested. "I have done everything for her. But for me she should have

"As to starving in the streets," he said, "she might have starved more comfortably there than in your attic."

"Captain Crewe left her in my charge," Miss Minchin argued. "She must return to it until she is of age. She

can be a parlor boarder again. She must finish her education. The law will interfere in my behalf"

"Come, come, Miss Minchin," Mr. Carmichael interposed, "the law will do nothing of the sort. If Sara herself

wishes to return to you, I dare say Mr. Carrisford might not refuse to allow it. But that rests with Sara."

"Then," said Miss Minchin, "I appeal to Sara. I have not spoiled you, perhaps," she said awkwardly to the

little girl; "but you know that your papa was pleased with your progress. AndahemI have always been

Sara's greengray eyes fixed themselves on her with the quiet, clear look Miss Minchin particularly disliked.

Miss Minchin reddened and drew herself up. "You ought to have known it," said she; "but children,

unfortunately, never know what is best for them. Amelia and I always said you were the cleverest child in the

Sara took a step toward her and stood still. She was thinking of the day when she had been told that she

belonged to nobody, and was in danger of being turned into the street; she was thinking of the cold, hungry

hours she had spent alone with Emily and Melchisedec in the attic. She looked Miss Minchin steadily in the

"You know why I will not go home with you, Miss Minchin," she said; "you know quite well."

"You will never see your companions again," she began. "I will see that Ermengarde and Lottie are kept

"Excuse me," he said; "she will see anyone she wishes to see. The parents of Miss Crewe's fellowpupils are

not likely to refuse her invitations to visit her at her guardian's house. Mr. Carrisford will attend to that."

It must be confessed that even Miss Minchin flinched. This was worse than the eccentric bachelor uncle who

might have a peppery temper and be easily offended at the treatment of his niece. A woman of sordid mind

could easily believe that most people would not refuse to allow their children to remain friends with a little

heiress of diamond mines. And if Mr. Carrisford chose to tell certain of her patrons how unhappy Sara Crewe

"You have not undertaken an easy charge," she said to the Indian gentleman, as she turned to leave the room;

"you will discover that very soon. The child is neither truthful nor grateful. I suppose"to Sara"that you

Sara looked down and flushed a little, because she thought her pet fancy might not be easy for

"Itried not to be anything else," she answered in a low voice"even when I was coldest and hungriestI

"Now it will not be necessary to try," said Miss Minchin, acidly, as Ram Dass salaamed her out of the room.

She returned home and, going to her sitting room, sent at once for Miss Amelia. She sat closeted with her all

the rest of the afternoon, and it must be admitted that poor Miss Amelia passed through more than one bad

quarter of an hour. She shed a good many tears, and mopped her eyes a good deal. One of her unfortunate

remarks almost caused her sister to snap her head entirely off, but it resulted in an unusual manner.

"I'm not as clever as you, sister," she said, "and I am always afraid to say things to you for fear of making you

angry. Perhaps if I were not so timid it would be better for the school and for both of us. I must say I've often

thought it would have been better if you had been less severe on Sara Crewe, and had seen that she was

decently dressed and more comfortable. I know she was worked too hard for a child of her age, and I know

"I don't know how I dare," Miss Amelia answered, with a kind of reckless courage; "but now I've begun I

may as well finish, whatever happens to me. The child was a clever child and a good childand she would

have paid you for any kindness you had shown her. But you didn't show her any. The fact was, she was too

clever for you, and you always disliked her for that reason. She used to see through us both"

"Amelia!" gasped her infuriated elder, looking as if she would box her ears and knock her cap off, as she had

But Miss Amelia's disappointment had made her hysterical enough not to care what occurred next.

"She did! She did!" she cried. "She saw through us both. She saw that you were a hardhearted, worldly

woman, and that I was a weak fool, and that we were both of us vulgar and mean enough to grovel on our

knees for her money, and behave ill to her because it was taken from herthough she behaved herself like a

little princess even when she was a beggar. She didshe didlike a little princess!" And her hysterics got

the better of the poor woman, and she began to laugh and cry both at once, and rock herself backward and

"And now you've lost her," she cried wildly; "and some other school will get her and her money; and if she

were like any other child she'd tell how she's been treated, and all our pupils would be taken away and we

should be ruined. And it serves us right; but it serves you right more than it does me, for you are a hard

And she was in danger of making so much noise with her hysterical chokes and gurgles that her sister was

obliged to go to her and apply salts and sal volatile to quiet her, instead of pouring forth her indignation at her

And from that time forward, it may be mentioned, the elder Miss Minchin actually began to stand a little in

awe of a sister who, while she looked so foolish, was evidently not quite so foolish as she looked, and might,

That evening, when the pupils were gathered together before the fire in the schoolroom, as was their custom

before going to bed, Ermengarde came in with a letter in her hand and a queer expression on her round face.

It was queer because, while it was an expression of delighted excitement, it was combined with such

"Is it anything to do with the row that has been going on?" said Lavinia, eagerly. "There has been such a row

in Miss Minchin's room, Miss Amelia has had something like hysterics and has had to go to bed."

"I have just had this letter from Sara," she said, holding it out to let them see what a long letter it was.

"Where? Where? Has she been sent away? Does Miss Minchin know? Was the row about that? Why did she

Ermengarde answered them slowly as if she were half plunged out into what, at the moment, seemed the most

"There were diamond mines," she said stoutly; "there were!" Open mouths and open eyes confronted her.

"They were real," she hurried on. "It was all a mistake about them. Something happened for a time, and Mr.

"The Indian gentleman. And Captain Crewe thought so, tooand he died; and Mr. Carrisford had brain fever

and ran away, and he almost died. And he did not know where Sara was. And it turned out that there were

millions and millions of diamonds in the mines; and half of them belong to Sara; and they belonged to her

when she was living in the attic with no one but Melchisedec for a friend, and the cook ordering her about.

And Mr. Carrisford found her this afternoon, and he has got her in his homeand she will never come

backand she will be more a princess than she ever wasa hundred and fifty thousand times more. And I

Even Miss Minchin herself could scarcely have controlled the uproar after this; and though she heard the

noise, she did not try. She was not in the mood to face anything more than she was facing in her room, while

Miss Amelia was weeping in bed. She knew that the news had penetrated the walls in some mysterious

manner, and that every servant and every child would go to bed talking about it.

So until almost midnight the entire seminary, realizing somehow that all rules were laid aside, crowded round

Ermengarde in the schoolroom and heard read and reread the letter containing a story which was quite as

wonderful as any Sara herself had ever invented, and which had the amazing charm of having happened to

Becky, who had heard it also, managed to creep up stairs earlier than usual. She wanted to get away from

people and go and look at the little magic room once more. She did not know what would happen to it. It was

not likely that it would be left to Miss Minchin. It would be taken away, and the attic would be bare and

empty again. Glad as she was for Sara's sake, she went up the last flight of stairs with a lump in her throat and

tears blurring her sight. There would be no fire tonight, and no rosy lamp; no supper, and no princess sitting

She choked down a sob as she pushed the attic door open, and then she broke into a low cry.

The lamp was flushing the room, the fire was blazing, the supper was waiting; and Ram Dass was standing

"Missee sahib remembered," he said. "She told the sahib all. She wished you to know the good fortune which

has befallen her. Behold a letter on the tray. She has written. She did not wish that you should go to sleep

unhappy. The sahib commands you to come to him tomorrow. You are to be the attendant of missee sahib.

And having said this with a beaming face, he made a little salaam and slipped through the skylight with an

agile silentness of movement which showed Becky how easily he had done it before.

Never had such joy reigned in the nursery of the Large Family. Never had they dreamed of such delights as

resulted from an intimate acquaintance with the littlegirlwhowasnotabeggar. The mere fact of her

sufferings and adventures made her a priceless possession. Everybody wanted to be told over and over again

the things which had happened to her. When one was sitting by a warm fire in a big, glowing room, it was

quite delightful to hear how cold it could be in an attic. It must be admitted that the attic was rather delighted

in, and that its coldness and bareness quite sank into insignificance when Melchisedec was remembered, and

one heard about the sparrows and things one could see if one climbed on the table and stuck one's head and

Of course the thing loved best was the story of the banquet and the dream which was true. Sara told it for the

first time the day after she had been found. Several members of the Large Family came to take tea with her,

and as they sat or curled up on the hearthrug she told the story in her own way, and the Indian gentleman

listened and watched her. When she had finished she looked up at him and put her hand on his knee.

"That is my part," she said. "Now won't you tell your part of it, Uncle Tom?" He had asked her to call him

So he told them how, when he sat alone, ill and dull and irritable, Ram Dass had tried to distract him by

describing the passers by, and there was one child who passed oftener than any one else; he had begun to be

interested in herpartly perhaps because he was thinking a great deal of a little girl, and partly because Ram

Dass had been able to relate the incident of his visit to the attic in chase of the monkey. He had described its

cheerless look, and the bearing of the child, who seemed as if she was not of the class of those who were

treated as drudges and servants. Bit by bit, Ram Dass had made discoveries concerning the wretchedness of

her life. He had found out how easy a matter it was to climb across the few yards of roof to the skylight, and

"Sahib," he had said one day, "I could cross the slates and make the child a fire when she is out on some

errand. When she returned, wet and cold, to find it blazing, she would think a magician had done it."

The idea had been so fanciful that Mr. Carrisford's sad face had lighted with a smile, and Ram Dass had been

so filled with rapture that he had enlarged upon it and explained to his master how simple it would be to

accomplish numbers of other things. He had shown a childlike pleasure and invention, and the preparations

for the carrying out of the plan had filled many a day with interest which would otherwise have dragged

wearily. On the night of the frustrated banquet Ram Dass had kept watch, all his packages being in readiness

in the attic which was his own; and the person who was to help him had waited with him, as interested as

himself in the odd adventure. Ram Dass had been lying flat upon the slates, looking in at the skylight, when

the banquet had come to its disastrous conclusion; he had been sure of the profoundness of Sara's wearied

sleep; and then, with a dark lantern, he had crept into the room, while his companion remained outside and

handed the things to him. When Sara had stirred ever so faintly, Ram Dass had closed the lanternslide and

lain flat upon the floor. These and many other exciting things the children found out by asking a thousand

There never were such friends as these two became. Somehow, they seemed to suit each other in a wonderful

way. The Indian gentleman had never had a companion he liked quite as much as he liked Sara. In a month's

time he was, as Mr. Carmichael had prophesied he would be, a new man. He was always amused and

interested, and he began to find an actual pleasure in the possession of the wealth he had imagined that he

loathed the burden of. There were so many charming things to plan for Sara. There was a little joke between

them that he was a magician, and it was one of his pleasures to invent things to surprise her. She found

beautiful new flowers growing in her room, whimsical little gifts tucked under pillows, and once, as they sat

together in the evening, they heard the scratch of a heavy paw on the door, and when Sara went to find out

what it was, there stood a great doga splendid Russian boarhoundwith a grand silver and gold collar

There was nothing the Indian gentleman loved more than the recollection of the little princess in rags and

tatters. The afternoons in which the Large Family, or Ermengarde and Lottie, gathered to rejoice together

were very delightful. But the hours when Sara and the Indian gentleman sat alone and read or talked had a

special charm of their own. During their passing many interesting things occurred.

One evening, Mr. Carrisford, looking up from his book, noticed that his companion had not stirred for some

"I was supposing," she said; "I was remembering that hungry day, and a child I saw."

"But there were a great many hungry days," said the Indian gentleman, with rather a sad tone in his voice.

Then she told him the story of the bun shop, and the fourpence she picked up out of the sloppy mud, and the

child who was hungrier than herself. She told it quite simply, and in as few words as possible; but somehow

the Indian gentleman found it necessary to shade his eyes with his hand and look down at the carpet.

"And I was supposing a kind of plan," she said, when she had finished. "I was thinking I should like to do

"What was it?" said Mr. Carrisford, in a low tone. "You may do anything you like to do, princess." "I was

wondering," rather hesitated Sara"you know, you say I have so much moneyI was wondering if I could

go to see the bunwoman, and tell her that if, when hungry childrenparticularly on those dreadful

dayscome and sit on the steps, or look in at the window, she would just call them in and give them

"Thank you," said Sara. "You see, I know what it is to be hungry, and it is very hard when one cannot even

"Yes, yes, my dear," said the Indian gentleman. "Yes, yes, it must be. Try to forget it. Come and sit on this

"Yes," said Sara, smiling; "and I can give buns and bread to the populace." And she went and sat on the stool,

and the Indian gentleman (he used to like her to call him that, too, sometimes) drew her small dark head

The next morning, Miss Minchin, in looking out of her window, saw the things she perhaps least enjoyed

seeing. The Indian gentleman's carriage, with its tall horses, drew up before the door of the next house, and

its owner and a little figure, warm with soft, rich furs, descended the steps to get into it. The little figure was a

familiar one, and reminded Miss Minchin of days in the past. It was followed by another as familiarthe

sight of which she found very irritating. It was Becky, who, in the character of delighted attendant, always

accompanied her young mistress to her carriage, carrying wraps and belongings. Already Becky had a pink,

A little later the carriage drew up before the door of the baker's shop, and its occupants got out, oddly

enough, just as the bunwoman was putting a tray of smokinghot buns into the window.

When Sara entered the shop the woman turned and looked at her, and, leaving the buns, came and stood

behind the counter. For a moment she looked at Sara very hard indeed, and then her goodnatured face

"And you gave five of 'em to a beggar child," the woman broke in on her. "I've always remembered it. I

couldn't make it out at first." She turned round to the Indian gentleman and spoke her next words to him. "I

beg your pardon, sir, but there's not many young people that notices a hungry face in that way; and I've

thought of it many a time. Excuse the liberty, miss,"to Sara"but you look rosier andwell, better than

"I am better, thank you," said Sara. "AndI am much happierand I have come to ask you to do something

"Me, miss!" exclaimed the bunwoman, smiling cheerfully. "Why, bless you! Yes, miss. What can I do?"

And then Sara, leaning on the counter, made her little proposal concerning the dreadful days and the hungry

"Why, bless me!" she said again when she had heard it all; it'll be a pleasure to me to do it. I am a

workingwoman myself and cannot afford to do much on my own account, and there's sights of trouble on

every side; but, if you'll excuse me, I'm bound to say I've given away many a bit of bread since that wet

afternoon, just along o' thinking of youan' how wet an' cold you was, an' how hungry you looked; an' yet

The Indian gentleman smiled involuntarily at this, and Sara smiled a little, too, remembering what she had

"She was starving," said the woman. "Many's the time she's told me of it sincehow she sat there in the wet,

"Yes, I do," answered the woman, smiling more goodnaturedly than ever. "Why, she's in that there back

room, miss, an' has been for a month; an' a decent, wellmeanin' girl she's goin' to turn out, an' such a help to

me in the shop an' in the kitchen as you'd scarce believe, knowin' how she's lived."

She stepped to the door of the little back parlor and spoke; and the next minute a girl came out and followed

her behind the counter. And actually it was the beggarchild, clean and neatly clothed, and looking as if she

had not been hungry for a long time. She looked shy, but she had a nice face, now that she was no longer a

savage, and the wild look had gone from her eyes. She knew Sara in an instant, and stood and looked at her as

"You see," said the woman, "I told her to come when she was hungry, and when she'd come I'd give her odd

jobs to do; an' I found she was willing, and somehow I got to like her; and the end of it was, I've given her a

place an' a home, and she helps me, an' behaves well, an' is as thankful as a girl can be. Her name's Anne. She

The children stood and looked at each other for a few minutes; and then Sara took her hand out of her muff

and held it out across the counter, and Anne took it, and they looked straight into each other's eyes.

"I am so glad," Sara said. "And I have just thought of something. Perhaps Mrs. Brown will let you be the one

to give the buns and bread to the children. Perhaps you would like to do it because you know what it is to be

And, somehow, Sara felt as if she understood her, though she said so little, and only stood still and looked

and looked after her as she went out of the shop with the Indian gentleman, and they got into the carriage and