A Little Princess
But Miss Minchin would be cross if she found out. I'll just wait a few
minutes."
She took a seat on the edge of the table, and sat swinging her slim,
rose-colored legs, and wondering what it would be best to do. Miss
Amelia might come in at any moment, and if she did, Becky would be sure
to be scolded.
"But she is so tired," she thought. "She is so tired!"
A piece of flaming coal ended her perplexity for her that very moment.
It broke off from a large lump and fell on to the fender. Becky
started, and opened her eyes with a frightened gasp. She did not know
she had fallen asleep. She had only sat down for one moment and felt
the beautiful glow--and here she found herself staring in wild alarm at
the wonderful pupil, who sat perched quite near her, like a
rose-colored fairy, with interested eyes.
She sprang up and clutched at her cap. She felt it dangling over her
ear, and tried wildly to put it straight. Oh, she had got herself into
trouble now with a vengeance! To have impudently fallen asleep on such
a young lady's chair! She would be turned out of doors without wages.
She made a sound like a big breathless sob.
"Oh, miss! Oh, miss!" she stuttered. "I arst yer pardon, miss! Oh, I
do, miss!"
Sara jumped down, and came quite close to her.
"Don't be frightened," she said, quite as if she had been speaking to a
little girl like herself. "It doesn't matter the least bit."
"I didn't go to do it, miss," protested Becky. "It was the warm
fire--an' me bein' so tired. It--it WASN'T impertience!"
Sara broke into a friendly little laugh, and put her hand on her
shoulder.
"You were tired," she said; "you could not help it. You are not really
awake yet."
How poor Becky stared at her! In fact, she had never heard such a
nice, friendly sound in anyone's voice before. She was used to being
ordered about and scolded, and having her ears boxed. And this one--in
her rose-colored dancing afternoon splendor--was looking at her as if
she were not a culprit at all--as if she had a right to be tired--even
to fall asleep! The touch of the soft, slim little paw on her shoulder
was the most amazing thing she had ever known.
"Ain't--ain't yer angry, miss?" she gasped. "Ain't yer goin' to tell
the missus?"
"No," cried out Sara. "Of course I'm not."
The woeful fright in the coal-smutted face made her suddenly so sorry
that she could scarcely bear it. One of her queer thoughts rushed into
her mind. She put her hand against Becky's cheek.
"Why," she said, "we are just the same--I am only a little girl like
you. It's just an accident that I am not you, and you are not me!"
Becky did not understand in the least. Her mind could not grasp such
amazing thoughts, and "an accident" meant to her a calamity in which
some one was run over or fell off a ladder and was carried to "the
'orspital."
"A' accident, miss," she fluttered respectfully. "Is it?"
"Yes," Sara answered, and she looked at her dreamily for a moment. But
the next she spoke in a different tone. She realized that Becky did
not know what she meant.
"Have you done your work?" she asked. "Dare you stay here a few
minutes?"
Becky lost her breath again.
"Here, miss? Me?"
Sara ran to the door, opened it, and looked out and listened.
"No one is anywhere about," she explained. "If your bedrooms are
finished, perhaps you might stay a tiny while. I thought--perhaps--you
might like a piece of cake."
The next ten minutes seemed to Becky like a sort of delirium. Sara
opened a cupboard, and gave her a thick slice of cake. She seemed to
rejoice when it was devoured in hungry bites. She talked and asked
questions, and laughed until Becky's fears actually began to calm
themselves, and she once or twice gathered boldness enough to ask a
question or so herself, daring as she felt it to be.
"Is that--" she ventured, looking longingly at the rose-colored frock.
And she asked it almost in a whisper. "Is that there your best?"
"It is one of my dancing-frocks," answered Sara. "I like it, don't
you?"
For a few seconds Becky was almost speechless with admiration. Then
she said in an awed voice, "Onct I see a princess. I was standin' in
the street with the crowd outside Covin' Garden, watchin' the swells go
inter the operer. An' there was one everyone stared at most. They ses
to each other, 'That's the princess.' She was a growed-up young lady,
but she was pink all over--gownd an' cloak, an' flowers an' all. I
called her to mind the minnit I see you, sittin' there on the table,
miss. You looked like her."
"I've often thought," said Sara, in her reflecting voice, "that I
should like to be a princess; I wonder what it feels like. I believe I
will begin pretending I am one."
Becky stared at her admiringly, and, as before, did not understand her
in the least. She watched her with a sort of adoration. Very soon Sara
left her reflections and turned to her with a new question.
"Becky," she said, "weren't you listening to that story?"
"Yes, miss," confessed Becky, a little alarmed again. "I knowed I
hadn't orter, but it was that beautiful I--I couldn't help it."
"I liked you to listen to it," said Sara. "If you tell stories, you
like nothing so much as to tell them to people who want to listen. I
don't know why it is. Would you like to hear the rest?"
Becky lost her breath again.
"Me hear it?" she cried. "Like as if I was a pupil, miss! All about
the Prince--and the little white Mer-babies swimming about
laughing--with stars in their hair?"
Sara nodded.
"You haven't time to hear it now, I'm afraid," she said; "but if you
will tell me just what time you come to do my rooms, I will try to be
here and tell you a bit of it every day until it is finished. It's a
lovely long one--and I'm always putting new bits to it."
"Then," breathed Becky, devoutly, "I wouldn't mind HOW heavy the coal
boxes was--or WHAT the cook done to me, if--if I might have that to
think of."
"You may," said Sara. "I'll tell it ALL to you."
When Becky went downstairs, she was not the same Becky who had
staggered up, loaded down by the weight of the coal scuttle. She had an
extra piece of cake in her pocket, and she had been fed and warmed, but
not only by cake and fire. Something else had warmed and fed her, and
the something else was Sara.
When she was gone Sara sat on her favorite perch on the end of her
table. Her feet were on a chair, her elbows on her knees, and her chin
in her hands.
"If I WAS a princess--a REAL princess," she murmured, "I could scatter
largess to the populace. But even if I am only a pretend princess, I
can invent little things to do for people. Things like this. She was
just as happy as if it was largess. I'll pretend that to do things
people like is scattering largess. I've scattered largess."
6
The Diamond Mines
Not very long after this a very exciting thing happened. Not only Sara,
but the entire school, found it exciting, and made it the chief subject
of conversation for weeks after it occurred. In one of his letters
Captain Crewe told a most interesting story. A friend who had been at
school with him when he was a boy had unexpectedly come to see him in
India. He was the owner of a large tract of land upon which diamonds
had been found, and he was engaged in developing the mines. If all
went as was confidently expected, he would become possessed of such
wealth as it made one dizzy to think of; and because he was fond of the
friend of his school days, he had given him an opportunity to share in
this enormous fortune by becoming a partner in his scheme. This, at
least, was what Sara gathered from his letters. It is true that any
other business scheme, however magnificent, would have had but small
attraction for her or for the schoolroom; but "diamond mines" sounded
so like the Arabian Nights that no one could be indifferent. Sara
thought them enchanting, and painted pictures, for Ermengarde and
Lottie, of labyrinthine passages in the bowels of the earth, where
sparkling stones studded the walls and roofs and ceilings, and strange,
dark men dug them out with heavy picks. Ermengarde delighted in the
story, and Lottie insisted on its being retold to her every evening.
Lavinia was very spiteful about it, and told Jessie that she didn't
believe such things as diamond mines existed.
"My mamma has a diamond ring which cost forty pounds," she said. "And
it is not a big one, either. If there were mines full of diamonds,
people would be so rich it would be ridiculous."
"Perhaps Sara will be so rich that she will be ridiculous," giggled
Jessie.
"She's ridiculous without being rich," Lavinia sniffed.
"I believe you hate her," said Jessie.
"No, I don't," snapped Lavinia. "But I don't believe in mines full of
diamonds."
"Well, people have to get them from somewhere," said Jessie.
"Lavinia," with a new giggle, "what do you think Gertrude says?"
"I don't know, I'm sure; and I don't care if it's something more about
that everlasting Sara."
"Well, it is. One of her 'pretends' is that she is a princess. She
plays it all the time--even in school. She says it makes her learn her
lessons better. She wants Ermengarde to be one, too, but Ermengarde
says she is too fat."
"She IS too fat," said Lavinia. "And Sara is too thin."
Naturally, Jessie giggled again.
"She says it has nothing to do with what you look like, or what you
have. It has only to do with what you THINK of, and what you DO."
"I suppose she thinks she could be a princess if she was a beggar,"
said Lavinia. "Let us begin to call her Your Royal Highness."
Lessons for the day were over, and they were sitting before the
schoolroom fire, enjoying the time they liked best. It was the time
when Miss Minchin and Miss Amelia were taking their tea in the sitting
room sacred to themselves. At this hour a great deal of talking was
done, and a great many secrets changed hands, particularly if the
younger pupils behaved themselves well, and did not squabble or run
about noisily, which it must be confessed they usually did. When they
made an uproar the older girls usually interfered with scolding and
shakes. They were expected to keep order, and there was danger that if
they did not, Miss Minchin or Miss Amelia would appear and put an end
to festivities. Even as Lavinia spoke the door opened and Sara entered
with Lottie, whose habit was to trot everywhere after her like a little
dog.
"There she is, with that horrid child!" exclaimed Lavinia in a whisper.
"If she's so fond of her, why doesn't she keep her in her own room? She
will begin howling about something in five minutes."
It happened that Lottie had been seized with a sudden desire to play in
the schoolroom, and had begged her adopted parent to come with her. She
joined a group of little ones who were playing in a corner. Sara curled
herself up in the window-seat, opened a book, and began to read. It
was a book about the French Revolution, and she was soon lost in a
harrowing picture of the prisoners in the Bastille--men who had spent
so many years in dungeons that when they were dragged out by those who
rescued them, their long, gray hair and beards almost hid their faces,
and they had forgotten that an outside world existed at all, and were
like beings in a dream.
She was so far away from the schoolroom that it was not agreeable to be
dragged back suddenly by a howl from Lottie. Never did she find
anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when
she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are
fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at
such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one
not easy to manage.