A Little Princess
"Tell her, Sara," Captain Crewe said, smiling.
Sara's green-gray eyes looked very solemn and quite soft as she
answered.
"She is a doll I haven't got yet," she said. "She is a doll papa is
going to buy for me. We are going out together to find her. I have
called her Emily. She is going to be my friend when papa is gone. I
want her to talk to about him."
Miss Minchin's large, fishy smile became very flattering indeed.
"What an original child!" she said. "What a darling little creature!"
"Yes," said Captain Crewe, drawing Sara close. "She is a darling
little creature. Take great care of her for me, Miss Minchin."
Sara stayed with her father at his hotel for several days; in fact, she
remained with him until he sailed away again to India. They went out
and visited many big shops together, and bought a great many things.
They bought, indeed, a great many more things than Sara needed; but
Captain Crewe was a rash, innocent young man and wanted his little girl
to have everything she admired and everything he admired himself, so
between them they collected a wardrobe much too grand for a child of
seven. There were velvet dresses trimmed with costly furs, and lace
dresses, and embroidered ones, and hats with great, soft ostrich
feathers, and ermine coats and muffs, and boxes of tiny gloves and
handkerchiefs and silk stockings in such abundant supplies that the
polite young women behind the counters whispered to each other that the
odd little girl with the big, solemn eyes must be at least some foreign
princess--perhaps the little daughter of an Indian rajah.
And at last they found Emily, but they went to a number of toy shops
and looked at a great many dolls before they discovered her.
"I want her to look as if she wasn't a doll really," Sara said. "I
want her to look as if she LISTENS when I talk to her. The trouble with
dolls, papa"--and she put her head on one side and reflected as she
said it--"the trouble with dolls is that they never seem to HEAR." So
they looked at big ones and little ones--at dolls with black eyes and
dolls with blue--at dolls with brown curls and dolls with golden
braids, dolls dressed and dolls undressed.
"You see," Sara said when they were examining one who had no clothes.
"If, when I find her, she has no frocks, we can take her to a
dressmaker and have her things made to fit. They will fit better if
they are tried on."
After a number of disappointments they decided to walk and look in at
the shop windows and let the cab follow them. They had passed two or
three places without even going in, when, as they were approaching a
shop which was really not a very large one, Sara suddenly started and
clutched her father's arm.
"Oh, papa!" she cried. "There is Emily!"
A flush had risen to her face and there was an expression in her
green-gray eyes as if she had just recognized someone she was intimate
with and fond of.
"She is actually waiting there for us!" she said. "Let us go in to
her."
"Dear me," said Captain Crewe, "I feel as if we ought to have someone
to introduce us."
"You must introduce me and I will introduce you," said Sara. "But I
knew her the minute I saw her--so perhaps she knew me, too."
Perhaps she had known her. She had certainly a very intelligent
expression in her eyes when Sara took her in her arms. She was a large
doll, but not too large to carry about easily; she had naturally
curling golden-brown hair, which hung like a mantle about her, and her
eyes were a deep, clear, gray-blue, with soft, thick eyelashes which
were real eyelashes and not mere painted lines.
"Of course," said Sara, looking into her face as she held her on her
knee, "of course papa, this is Emily."
So Emily was bought and actually taken to a children's outfitter's shop
and measured for a wardrobe as grand as Sara's own. She had lace
frocks, too, and velvet and muslin ones, and hats and coats and
beautiful lace-trimmed underclothes, and gloves and handkerchiefs and
furs.
"I should like her always to look as if she was a child with a good
mother," said Sara. "I'm her mother, though I am going to make a
companion of her."
Captain Crewe would really have enjoyed the shopping tremendously, but
that a sad thought kept tugging at his heart. This all meant that he
was going to be separated from his beloved, quaint little comrade.
He got out of his bed in the middle of that night and went and stood
looking down at Sara, who lay asleep with Emily in her arms. Her black
hair was spread out on the pillow and Emily's golden-brown hair mingled
with it, both of them had lace-ruffled nightgowns, and both had long
eyelashes which lay and curled up on their cheeks. Emily looked so like
a real child that Captain Crewe felt glad she was there. He drew a big
sigh and pulled his mustache with a boyish expression.
"Heigh-ho, little Sara!" he said to himself "I don't believe you know
how much your daddy will miss you."
The next day he took her to Miss Minchin's and left her there. He was
to sail away the next morning. He explained to Miss Minchin that his
solicitors, Messrs. Barrow & Skipworth, had charge of his affairs in
England and would give her any advice she wanted, and that they would
pay the bills she sent in for Sara's expenses. He would write to Sara
twice a week, and she was to be given every pleasure she asked for.
"She is a sensible little thing, and she never wants anything it isn't
safe to give her," he said.
Then he went with Sara into her little sitting room and they bade each
other good-by. Sara sat on his knee and held the lapels of his coat in
her small hands, and looked long and hard at his face.
"Are you learning me by heart, little Sara?" he said, stroking her hair.
"No," she answered. "I know you by heart. You are inside my heart."
And they put their arms round each other and kissed as if they would
never let each other go.
When the cab drove away from the door, Sara was sitting on the floor of
her sitting room, with her hands under her chin and her eyes following
it until it had turned the corner of the square. Emily was sitting by
her, and she looked after it, too. When Miss Minchin sent her sister,
Miss Amelia, to see what the child was doing, she found she could not
open the door.
"I have locked it," said a queer, polite little voice from inside. "I
want to be quite by myself, if you please."
Miss Amelia was fat and dumpy, and stood very much in awe of her
sister. She was really the better-natured person of the two, but she
never disobeyed Miss Minchin. She went downstairs again, looking
almost alarmed.
"I never saw such a funny, old-fashioned child, sister," she said. "She
has locked herself in, and she is not making the least particle of
noise."
"It is much better than if she kicked and screamed, as some of them
do," Miss Minchin answered. "I expected that a child as much spoiled
as she is would set the whole house in an uproar. If ever a child was
given her own way in everything, she is."
"I've been opening her trunks and putting her things away," said Miss
Amelia. "I never saw anything like them--sable and ermine on her
coats, and real Valenciennes lace on her underclothing. You have seen
some of her clothes. What DO you think of them?"
"I think they are perfectly ridiculous," replied Miss Minchin, sharply;
"but they will look very well at the head of the line when we take the
schoolchildren to church on Sunday. She has been provided for as if she
were a little princess."
And upstairs in the locked room Sara and Emily sat on the floor and
stared at the corner round which the cab had disappeared, while Captain
Crewe looked backward, waving and kissing his hand as if he could not
bear to stop.
2
A French Lesson
When Sara entered the schoolroom the next morning everybody looked at
her with wide, interested eyes. By that time every pupil--from Lavinia
Herbert, who was nearly thirteen and felt quite grown up, to Lottie
Legh, who was only just four and the baby of the school--had heard a
great deal about her. They knew very certainly that she was Miss
Minchin's show pupil and was considered a credit to the establishment.
One or two of them had even caught a glimpse of her French maid,
Mariette, who had arrived the evening before. Lavinia had managed to
pass Sara's room when the door was open, and had seen Mariette opening
a box which had arrived late from some shop.
"It was full of petticoats with lace frills on them--frills and
frills," she whispered to her friend Jessie as she bent over her
geography. "I saw her shaking them out. I heard Miss Minchin say to
Miss Amelia that her clothes were so grand that they were ridiculous
for a child. My mamma says that children should be dressed simply. She
has got one of those petticoats on now. I saw it when she sat down."
"She has silk stockings on!" whispered Jessie, bending over her
geography also. "And what little feet! I never saw such little feet."
"Oh," sniffed Lavinia, spitefully, "that is the way her slippers are
made. My mamma says that even big feet can be made to look small if
you have a clever shoemaker. I don't think she is pretty at all. Her
eyes are such a queer color."
"She isn't pretty as other pretty people are," said Jessie, stealing a
glance across the room; "but she makes you want to look at her again.
She has tremendously long eyelashes, but her eyes are almost green."
Sara was sitting quietly in her seat, waiting to be told what to do.
She had been placed near Miss Minchin's desk. She was not abashed at
all by the many pairs of eyes watching her. She was interested and
looked back quietly at the children who looked at her. She wondered
what they were thinking of, and if they liked Miss Minchin, and if they
cared for their lessons, and if any of them had a papa at all like her
own. She had had a long talk with Emily about her papa that morning.
"He is on the sea now, Emily," she had said. "We must be very great
friends to each other and tell each other things. Emily, look at me.
You have the nicest eyes I ever saw--but I wish you could speak."
She was a child full of imaginings and whimsical thoughts, and one of
her fancies was that there would be a great deal of comfort in even
pretending that Emily was alive and really heard and understood. After
Mariette had dressed her in her dark-blue schoolroom frock and tied her
hair with a dark-blue ribbon, she went to Emily, who sat in a chair of
her own, and gave her a book.
"You can read that while I am downstairs," she said; and, seeing
Mariette looking at her curiously, she spoke to her with a serious
little face.
"What I believe about dolls," she said, "is that they can do things
they will not let us know about. Perhaps, really, Emily can read and
talk and walk, but she will only do it when people are out of the room.
That is her secret. You see, if people knew that dolls could do
things, they would make them work. So, perhaps, they have promised
each other to keep it a secret. If you stay in the room, Emily will
just sit there and stare; but if you go out, she will begin to read,
perhaps, or go and look out of the window. Then if she heard either of
us coming, she would just run back and jump into her chair and pretend
she had been there all the time."
"Comme elle est drole!" Mariette said to herself, and when she went
downstairs she told the head housemaid about it. But she had already
begun to like this odd little girl who had such an intelligent small
face and such perfect manners. She had taken care of children before
who were not so polite. Sara was a very fine little person, and had a
gentle, appreciative way of saying, "If you please, Mariette," "Thank