A Little Princess
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 with as much
agility as the monkey himself had displayed.
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
she--the drudge whom the cook had said insulting things to an hour
ago--had 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 it over.
Then a thought came back to her which made the color rise in her cheek
and a spark light itself in her eyes. She straightened her thin little
body and lifted her head.
"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 stronger than they were, even when they cut her head off."
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
the 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 old thing, and don't know any better."
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 rude and malicious by the rudeness and malice of those about her.
"A princess must be polite," she said to herself.
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, cook?' She
drops 'em about the kitchen as if they was nothing."
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 exercise-books 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
neat-herd. How frightened she must have been when she found out what
she had done. If Miss Minchin should find out that she--Sara, whose
toes were almost sticking out of her boots--was a princess--a 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 ears--exactly 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.
"What are you laughing at, you bold, impudent child?" Miss Minchin
exclaimed.
It took Sara a few seconds to control herself sufficiently to remember
that she was a princess. Her cheeks were red and smarting from the
blows she had received.
"I was thinking," she answered.
"Beg my pardon immediately," said Miss Minchin.
Sara hesitated a second before she replied.
"I will beg your pardon for laughing, if it was rude," she said then;
"but I won't beg your pardon for thinking."
"What were you thinking?" demanded Miss Minchin.
"How dare you think? What were you thinking?"
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 ears were scarlet
and her eyes were as bright as stars.
"I was thinking," she answered grandly and politely, "that you did not
know what you were doing."
"That I did not know what I was doing?" Miss Minchin fairly gasped.
"Yes," said Sara, "and I was thinking what would happen if I were a
princess and you boxed my ears--what 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 some real power hidden behind this candid daring.
"What?" she exclaimed. "Found out what?"
"That I really was a princess," said Sara, "and could do
anything--anything 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 lessons, young ladies!"
Sara made a little bow.
"Excuse me for laughing if it was impolite," she said, and walked out
of the room, leaving Miss Minchin struggling with her rage, and the
girls whispering over their books.
"Did you see her? Did you see how queer she looked?" Jessie broke
out. "I shouldn't be at all surprised if she did turn out to be
something. Suppose she should!"
12
The Other Side of the Wall
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 when I see the doctor call
twice a day."
"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 surfeit of lampreys?'"
Sara laughed.
"People you never speak to can't ask you questions like that," she
said; "and I'm sure the Indian gentleman wouldn't even if he was quite
intimate with you. I am fond of him."
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 kitchen--where, of course, the servants, through some mysterious
means, knew everything--there 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 had been restored to
him. His trouble and peril had been connected with mines.
"And mines with diamonds in 'em!" said the cook. "No savin's of mine
never goes into no mines--particular diamond ones"--with a side glance
at Sara. "We all know somethin' of THEM."
"He felt as my papa felt," Sara thought. "He was ill as my papa was;
but he did not die."