A Little Princess
or bags of gold--and 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.
"Oh, laws!" she gasped. "Oh, laws, miss!"
"You see," said Sara.
On this night Becky sat on a cushion upon the hearth rug and had a cup
and saucer of her own.
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 supplied with unheard-of comfort.
"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. It makes it more
beautiful."
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.
"If you only knew!" she was saying to herself. "If you only knew!"
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 much too big for her face.
"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 crow."
"Starved!" exclaimed Miss Minchin, angrily. "There was no reason why
she should look starved. She always had plenty to eat!"
"Of--of 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, with haughty vagueness.
"What--sort of thing?" Miss Amelia ventured.
"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 by--by the changes she has had to submit to. But, upon my word,
she seems as little subdued as if--as 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 what you would do if you found out
that she was--"
"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
bed-covering, 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 right-hand attic."
Sara herself was sent to open the door and take them in. She laid the
two largest parcels on the hall table, and was looking at the address,
when Miss Minchin came down the stairs and saw her.
"Take the things to the young lady to whom they belong," she said
severely. "Don't stand there staring at them.
"They belong to me," answered Sara, quietly.
"To you?" exclaimed Miss Minchin. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know where they come from," said Sara, "but they are addressed
to me. I sleep in the right-hand attic. Becky has the other one."
Miss Minchin came to her side and looked at the parcels with an excited
expression.
"What is in them?" she demanded.
"I don't know," replied Sara.
"Open them," she ordered.
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 clothing--clothing 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 words: "To be worn every day. Will be replaced by others
when necessary."
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 background--perhaps 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 odd--particularly 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 hot-tempered 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 lessons in the
schoolroom. You need not go out on any more errands today."
About half an hour afterward, when the schoolroom door opened and Sara
walked in, the entire seminary was struck dumb.
"My word!" ejaculated Jessie, jogging Lavinia's elbow. "Look at the
Princess Sara!"
Everybody was looking, and when Lavinia looked she turned quite red.
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 face, was tied
back with a ribbon.
"Perhaps someone has left her a fortune," Jessie whispered. "I always
thought something would happen to her. She's so queer."
"Perhaps the diamond mines have suddenly appeared again," said Lavinia,
scathingly. "Don't please her by staring at her in that way, you silly
thing."
"Sara," broke in Miss Minchin's deep voice, "come and sit here."
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 fire seriously for a long time.
"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. But this time she was not, and she shook her head.
"No," she answered. "I am wondering what I ought to do."
Becky stared--still respectfully. She was filled with something
approaching reverence for everything Sara did and said.
"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 him--and how
happy he has made me. Anyone who is kind wants to know when people
have been made happy. They care for that more than for being thanked.
I wish--I do wish--"
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
writing-case fitted with paper and envelopes and pens and ink.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "why did I not think of that before?"
She rose and went to the corner and brought the case back to the fire.
"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."
So she wrote a note. This is what she said:
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 me--so heavenly kind--and making
everything like a fairy story. I am so grateful to you, and I am so
happy--and so is Becky. Becky feels just as thankful as I do--it 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 now--oh, just think what you have
done for us! Please let me say just these words. It seems as if I