A Little Princess Read Free

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