A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett (general ebook reader .txt) 📖

she said in a rush.

Then Sara was guilty of an injustice. Just at that moment her torn heart swelled within her, and she felt that if anyone was as stupid as that, one had better get away from her.

“What do you think?” she said. “Do you think I am very happy?” And she marched past her without another word.

In course of time she realized that if her wretchedness had not made her forget things, she would have known that poor, dull Ermengarde was not to be blamed for her unready, awkward ways. She was always awkward, and the more she felt, the more stupid she was given to being.

But the sudden thought which had flashed upon her had made her over-sensitive.

“She is like the others,” she had thought. “She does not really want to talk to me. She knows no one does.”

So for several weeks a barrier stood between them. When they met by chance Sara looked the other way, and Ermengarde felt too stiff and embarrassed to speak. Sometimes they nodded to each other in passing, but there were times when they did not even exchange a greeting.

“If she would rather not talk to me,” Sara thought, “I will keep out of her way. Miss Minchin makes that easy enough.”

Miss Minchin made it so easy that at last they scarcely saw each other at all. At that time it was noticed that Ermengarde was more stupid than ever, and that she looked listless and unhappy. She used to sit in the window-seat, huddled in a heap, and stare out of the window without speaking. Once Jessie, who was passing, stopped to look at her curiously.

“What are you crying for, Ermengarde?” she asked.

“I’m not crying,” answered Ermengarde, in a muffled, unsteady voice.

“You are,” said Jessie. “A great big tear just rolled down the bridge of your nose and dropped off at the end of it. And there goes another.”

“Well,” said Ermengarde, “I’m miserable—and no one need interfere.” And she turned her plump back and took out her handkerchief and boldly hid her face in it.

That night, when Sara went to her attic, she was later than usual. She had been kept at work until after the hour at which the pupils went to bed, and after that she had gone to her lessons in the lonely schoolroom. When she reached the top of the stairs, she was surprised to see a glimmer of light coming from under the attic door.

“Nobody goes there but myself,” she thought quickly, “but someone has lighted a candle.”

Someone had, indeed, lighted a candle, and it was not burning in the kitchen candlestick she was expected to use, but in one of those belonging to the pupils’ bedrooms. The someone was sitting upon the battered footstool, and was dressed in her nightgown and wrapped up in a red shawl. It was Ermengarde.

“Ermengarde!” cried Sara. She was so startled that she was almost frightened. “You will get into trouble.”

Ermengarde stumbled up from her footstool. She shuffled across the attic in her bedroom slippers, which were too large for her. Her eyes and nose were pink with crying.

“I know I shall—if I’m found out.” she said. “But I don’t care—I don’t care a bit. Oh, Sara, please tell me. What is the matter? Why don’t you like me any more?”

Something in her voice made the familiar lump rise in Sara’s throat. It was so affectionate and simple—so like the old Ermengarde who had asked her to be “best friends.” It sounded as if she had not meant what she had seemed to mean during these past weeks.

“I do like you,” Sara answered. “I thought—you see, everything is different now. I thought you—were different.

Ermengarde opened her wet eyes wide.

“Why, it was you who were different!” she cried. “You didn’t want to talk to me. I didn’t know what to do. It was you who were different after I came back.”

Sara thought a moment. She saw she had made a mistake.

“I AM different,” she explained, “though not in the way you think. Miss Minchin does not want me to talk to the girls. Most of them don’t want to talk to me. I thought—perhaps—you didn’t. So I tried to keep out of your way.”

“Oh, Sara,” Ermengarde almost wailed in her reproachful dismay. And then after one more look they rushed into each other’s arms. It must be confessed that Sara’s small black head lay for some minutes on the shoulder covered by the red shawl. When Ermengarde had seemed to desert her, she had felt horribly lonely.

Afterward they sat down upon the floor together, Sara clasping her knees with her arms, and Ermengarde rolled up in her shawl. Ermengarde looked at the odd, big-eyed little face adoringly.

“I couldn’t bear it any more,” she said. “I dare say you could live without me, Sara; but I couldn’t live without you. I was nearly DEAD. So tonight, when I was crying under the bedclothes, I thought all at once of creeping up here and just begging you to let us be friends again.”

“You are nicer than I am,” said Sara. “I was too proud to try and make friends. You see, now that trials have come, they have shown that I am NOT a nice child. I was afraid they would. Perhaps”—wrinkling her forehead wisely—“that is what they were sent for.”

“I don’t see any good in them,” said Ermengarde stoutly.

“Neither do I—to speak the truth,” admitted Sara, frankly. “But I suppose there MIGHT be good in things, even if we don’t see it. There MIGHT”—DOUBTFULLY—“Be good in Miss Minchin.”

Ermengarde looked round the attic with a rather fearsome curiosity.

“Sara,” she said, “do you think you can bear living here?”

Sara looked round also.

“If I pretend it’s quite different, I can,” she answered; “or if I pretend it is a place in a story.”

She spoke slowly. Her imagination was beginning to work for her. It had not worked for her at all since her troubles had come upon her. She had felt as if it had been stunned.

“Other people have lived in worse places. Think of the Count of Monte Cristo in the dungeons of the Chateau d’If. And think of the people in the Bastille!”

“The Bastille,” half whispered Ermengarde, watching her and beginning to be fascinated. She remembered stories of the French Revolution which Sara had been able to fix in her mind by her dramatic relation of them. No one but Sara could have done it.

A well-known glow came into Sara’s eyes.

“Yes,” she said, hugging her knees, “that will be a good place to pretend about. I am a prisoner in the Bastille. I have been here for years and years—and years; and everybody has forgotten about me. Miss Minchin is the jailer—and Becky”—a sudden light adding itself to the glow in her eyes—“Becky is the prisoner in the next cell.”

She turned to Ermengarde, looking quite like the old Sara.

“I shall pretend that,” she said; “and it will be a great comfort.”

Ermengarde was at once enraptured and awed.

“And will you tell me all about it?” she said. “May I creep up here at night, whenever it is safe, and hear the things you have made up in the day? It will seem as if we were more `best friends’ than ever.”

“Yes,” answered Sara, nodding. “Adversity tries people, and mine has tried you and proved how nice you are.”

9

Melchisedec

 

The third person in the trio was Lottie. She was a small thing and did not know what adversity meant, and was much bewildered by the alteration she saw in her young adopted mother. She had heard it rumored that strange things had happened to Sara, but she could not understand why she looked different—why she wore an old black frock and came into the schoolroom only to teach instead of to sit in her place of honor and learn lessons herself. There had been much whispering among the little ones when it had been discovered that Sara no longer lived in the rooms in which Emily had so long sat in state. Lottie’s chief difficulty was that Sara said so little when one asked her questions. At seven mysteries must be made very clear if one is to understand them.

“Are you very poor now, Sara?” she had asked confidentially the first morning her friend took charge of the small French class. “Are you as poor as a beggar?” She thrust a fat hand into the slim one and opened round, tearful eyes. “I don’t want you to be as poor as a beggar.”

She looked as if she was going to cry. And Sara hurriedly consoled her.

“Beggars have nowhere to live,” she said courageously. “I have a place to live in.”

“Where do you live?” persisted Lottle. “The new girl sleeps in your room, and it isn’t pretty any more.”

“I live in another room,” said Sara.

“Is it a nice one?” inquired Lottie. “I want to go and see it.”

“You must not talk,” said Sara. “Miss Minchin is looking at us. She will be angry with me for letting you whisper.”

She had found out already that she was to be held accountable for everything which was objected to. If the children were not attentive, if they talked, if they were restless, it was she who would be reproved.

But Lottie was a determined little person. If Sara would not tell her where she lived, she would find out in some other way. She talked to her small companions and hung about the elder girls and listened when they were gossiping; and acting upon certain information they had unconsciously let drop, she started late one afternoon on a voyage of discovery, climbing stairs she had never known the existence of, until she reached the attic floor. There she found two doors near each other, and opening one, she saw her beloved Sara standing upon an old table and looking out of a window.

“Sara!” she cried, aghast. “Mamma Sara!” She was aghast because the attic was so bare and ugly and seemed so far away from all the world. Her short legs had seemed to have been mounting hundreds of stairs.

Sara turned round at the sound of her voice. It was her turn to be aghast. What would happen now? If Lottie began to cry and any one chanced to hear, they were both lost. She jumped down from her table and ran to the child.

“Don’t cry and make a noise,” she implored. “I shall be scolded if you do, and I have been scolded all day. It’s—it’s not such a bad room, Lottie.”

“Isn’t it?” gasped Lottie, and as she looked round it she bit her lip. She was a spoiled child yet, but she was fond enough of her adopted parent to make an effort to control herself for her sake. Then, somehow, it was quite possible that any place in which Sara lived might turn out to be nice. “Why isn’t it, Sara?” she almost whispered.

Sara hugged her close and tried to laugh. There was a sort of comfort in the warmth of the plump, childish body. She had had a hard day and had been staring out of the windows with hot eyes.

“You can see all sorts of things you can’t see downstairs,” she said.

“What sort of things?” demanded Lottie, with that curiosity Sara could always awaken even in bigger girls.

“Chimneys—quite close to us—with smoke curling up in wreaths and clouds and going up into the sky—and sparrows hopping about and talking to each other just as if they were people—and other attic windows where heads may pop out any minute and you can wonder who they belong to. And it all