A Little Princess (4 page)

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

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

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

"WE couldn't do it," said Sara, seriously. "You see, it's a
kind of magic."

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

"Have you a—a pain?" Ermengarde ventured.

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

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

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

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

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

"She's going to cry out loud," thought Ermengarde, fearfully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What IS she crying for?" she almost yelled.

"Oh—oh—oh!" Sara heard; "I haven't got any mam—ma-a!"

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

"Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!" Lottle howled tempestuously. "Haven't-
-got—any—mam—ma-a!"

"She ought to be whipped," Miss Minchin proclaimed. "You SHALL
be whipped, you naughty child!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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