A Little Princess
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 a loud,
sobbing sniff which issued from under the cover.
"What is that!" she exclaimed angrily. The loud, sobbing sniff was
heard again, and she stooped and raised the hanging folds of the table
cover.
"How DARE you!" she cried out. "How dare you! Come out immediately!"
It was poor Becky who crawled out, and her cap was knocked on one side,
and her face was red with repressed crying.
"If you please, 'm--it's me, mum," she explained. "I know I hadn't
ought to. But I was lookin' at the doll, mum--an' I was frightened
when you come in--an' slipped under the table."
"You have been there all the time, listening," said Miss Minchin.
"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, mum--I 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 tears.
"Oh, please, 'm," she said; "I dare say you'll give me warnin', mum--but
I'm so sorry for poor Miss Sara--I'm so sorry!"
"Leave the room!" ordered Miss Minchin.
Becky curtsied again, the tears openly streaming down her cheeks.
"Yes, 'm; I will, 'm," she said, trembling; "but oh, I just wanted to
arst you: Miss Sara--she'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? If--if, oh please, would you let me wait on her after I've done
my pots an' kettles? I'd do 'em that quick--if you'd let me wait on
her now she's poor. Oh," breaking out afresh, "poor little Miss Sara,
mum--that was called a princess."
Somehow, she made Miss Minchin feel more angry than ever. That the
very scullery maid should range herself on the side of this child--whom
she realized more fully than ever that she had never liked--was too
much. She actually stamped her foot.
"No--certainly not," she said. "She will wait on herself, and on other
people, too. Leave the room this instant, or you'll leave your place."
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 world."
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 girl.
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
did--all 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 together in groups, whispering and talking excitedly.
"Tell Sara to come to my room," Miss Minchin had said to her sister.
"And explain to her clearly that I will have no crying or unpleasant
scenes."
"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
SOMETHING--whatever it is."
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 hear? Do you hear--papa is dead? He
is dead in India--thousands of miles away."
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
rose-colored 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 grotesque little figure.
She had put on, without Mariette's help, the cast-aside black-velvet
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 cope--perhaps
because she knew she was doing a heartless and inhuman thing.
"You will have no time for dolls in future," she said. "You will have
to work and improve yourself and make yourself useful."
Sara kept her big, strange eyes fixed on her, and said not a word.
"Everything will be very different now," Miss Minchin went on. "I
suppose Miss Amelia has explained matters to you."
"Yes," answered Sara. "My papa is dead. He left me no money. I am
quite poor."
"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."
For a moment the thin, pale little face twitched, but Sara again said
nothing.
"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 keep you here out of charity."
"I understand," answered Sara, in a low tone; and there was a sound as
if she had gulped down something which rose in her throat. "I
understand."
"That doll," cried Miss Minchin, pointing to the splendid birthday gift
seated near--"that ridiculous doll, with all her nonsensical,
extravagant things--I actually paid the bill for her!"
Sara turned her head toward the chair.
"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 voice, she quite felt as if
her might was being set at naught.
"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 away--your maid will be dismissed. You will wear your
oldest and plainest clothes--your extravagant ones are no longer suited
to your station. You are like Becky--you must work for your living."
To her surprise, a faint gleam of light came into the child's eyes--a
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 children."
"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, you will be sent away. Remember that. Now go."
Sara stood still just a moment, looking at her. In her young soul, she
was thinking deep and strange things. Then she turned to leave the
room.
"Stop!" said Miss Minchin. "Don't you intend to thank me?"
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 un-childishly fierce way.
"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 speak--if
she could speak!"
She meant to go to her room and lie down on the tiger-skin, 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 she felt secretly
ashamed of the thing she had been ordered to do.
"You--you are not to go in there," she said.
"Not go in?" exclaimed Sara, and she fell back a pace.
"That is not your room now," Miss Amelia answered, reddening a little.
Somehow, all at once, Sara understood. She realized that this was the
beginning of the change Miss Minchin had spoken of.
"Where is my room?" she asked, hoping very much that her voice did not
shake.
"You are to sleep in the attic next to Becky."
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 and stood against it and looked
about her.
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