A Little Princess (5 page)

"Miss Amelia," she said in a low voice, "Miss Minchin says I may
try to make her stop—may I?"

Miss Amelia turned and looked at her hopelessly. "Oh, DO you
think you can?" she gasped.

"I don't know whether I CAN", answered Sara, still in her half-
whisper; "but I will try."

Miss Amelia stumbled up from her knees with a heavy sigh, and
Lottie's fat little legs kicked as hard as ever.

"If you will steal out of the room," said Sara, "I will stay
with her."

"Oh, Sara!" almost whimpered Miss Amelia. "We never had such a
dreadful child before. I don't believe we can keep her."

But she crept out of the room, and was very much relieved to
find an excuse for doing it.

Sara stood by the howling furious child for a few moments, and
looked down at her without saying anything. Then she sat down
flat on the floor beside her and waited. Except for Lottie's
angry screams, the room was quite quiet. This was a new state of
affairs for little Miss Legh, who was accustomed, when she
screamed, to hear other people protest and implore and command
and coax by turns. To lie and kick and shriek, and find the only
person near you not seeming to mind in the least, attracted her
attention. She opened her tight-shut streaming eyes to see who
this person was. And it was only another little girl. But it
was the one who owned Emily and all the nice things. And she was
looking at her steadily and as if she was merely thinking.
Having paused for a few seconds to find this out, Lottie thought
she must begin again, but the quiet of the room and of Sara's
odd, interested face made her first howl rather half-hearted.

"I—haven't—any—ma—ma—ma-a!" she announced; but her voice was
not so strong.

Sara looked at her still more steadily, but with a sort of
understanding in her eyes.

"Neither have I," she said.

This was so unexpected that it was astounding. Lottie actually
dropped her legs, gave a wriggle, and lay and stared. A new idea
will stop a crying child when nothing else will. Also it was
true that while Lottie disliked Miss Minchin, who was cross, and
Miss Amelia, who was foolishly indulgent, she rather liked Sara,
little as she knew her. She did not want to give up her
grievance, but her thoughts were distracted from it, so she
wriggled again, and, after a sulky sob, said, "Where is she?"

Sara paused a moment. Because she had been told that her mamma
was in heaven, she had thought a great deal about the matter, and
her thoughts had not been quite like those of other people.

"She went to heaven," she said. "But I am sure she comes out
sometimes to see me—though I don't see her. So does yours.
Perhaps they can both see us now. Perhaps they are both in this
room."

Lottle sat bolt upright, and looked about her. She was a
pretty, little, curly-headed creature, and her round eyes were
like wet forget-me-nots. If her mamma had seen her during the
last half-hour, she might not have thought her the kind of child
who ought to be related to an angel.

Sara went on talking. Perhaps some people might think that what
she said was rather like a fairy story, but it was all so real to
her own imagination that Lottie began to listen in spite of
herself. She had been told that her mamma had wings and a crown,
and she had been shown pictures of ladies in beautiful white
nightgowns, who were said to be angels. But Sara seemed to be
telling a real story about a lovely country where real people
were.

"There are fields and fields of flowers," she said, forgetting
herself, as usual, when she began, and talking rather as if she
were in a dream, "fields and fields of lilies—and when the soft
wind blows over them it wafts the scent of them into the air—and
everybody always breathes it, because the soft wind is always
blowing. And little children run about in the lily fields and
gather armfuls of them, and laugh and make little wreaths. And
the streets are shining. And people are never tired, however far
they walk. They can float anywhere they like. And there are
walls made of pearl and gold all round the city, but they are low
enough for the people to go and lean on them, and look down onto
the earth and smile, and send beautiful messages."

Whatsoever story she had begun to tell, Lottie would, no doubt,
have stopped crying, and been fascinated into listening; but
there was no denying that this story was prettier than most
others. She dragged herself close to Sara, and drank in every
word until the end came—far too soon. When it did come, she was
so sorry that she put up her lip ominously.

"I want to go there," she cried. "I—haven't any mamma in this
school."

Sara saw the danger signal, and came out of her dream. She took
hold of the chubby hand and pulled her close to her side with a
coaxing little laugh.

"I will be your mamma," she said. "We will play that you are my
little girl. And Emily shall be your sister."

Lottie's dimples all began to show themselves.

"Shall she?" she said.

"Yes," answered Sara, jumping to her feet. "Let us go and tell
her. And then I will wash your face and brush your hair."

To which Lottie agreed quite cheerfully, and trotted out of the
room and upstairs with her, without seeming even to remember that
the whole of the last hour's tragedy had been caused by the fact
that she had refused to be washed and brushed for lunch and Miss
Minchin had been called in to use her majestic authority.

And from that time Sara was an adopted mother.

Of course the greatest power Sara possessed and the one which
gained her even more followers than her luxuries and the fact
that she was "the show pupil," the power that Lavinia and certain
other girls were most envious of, and at the same time most
fascinated by in spite of themselves, was her power of telling
stories and of making everything she talked about seem like a
story, whether it was one or not.

Anyone who has been at school with a teller of stories knows
what the wonder means—how he or she is followed about and
besought in a whisper to relate romances; how groups gather round
and hang on the outskirts of the favored party in the hope of
being allowed to join in and listen. Sara not only could tell
stories, but she adored telling them. When she sat or stood in
the midst of a circle and began to invent wonderful things, her
green eyes grew big and shining, her cheeks flushed, and, without
knowing that she was doing it, she began to act and made what she
told lovely or alarming by the raising or dropping of her voice,
the bend and sway of her slim body, and the dramatic movement of
her hands. She forgot that she was talking to listening
children; she saw and lived with the fairy folk, or the kings and
queens and beautiful ladies, whose adventures she was narrating.
Sometimes when she had finished her story, she was quite out of
breath with excitement, and would lay her hand on her thin,
little, quick-rising chest, and half laugh as if at herself.

"When I am telling it," she would say, "it doesn't seem as if it
was only made up. It seems more real than you are—more real
than the schoolroom. I feel as if I were all the people in the
story—one after the other. It is queer."

She had been at Miss Minchin's school about two years when, one
foggy winter's afternoon, as she was getting out of her
carriage, comfortably wrapped up in her warmest velvets and furs
and looking very much grander than she knew, she caught sight, as
she crossed the pavement, of a dingy little figure standing on
the area steps, and stretching its neck so that its wide-open
eyes might peer at her through the railings. Something in the
eagerness and timidity of the smudgy face made her look at it,
and when she looked she smiled because it was her way to smile at
people.

But the owner of the smudgy face and the wide-open eyes
evidently was afraid that she ought not to have been caught
looking at pupils of importance. She dodged out of sight like a
jack-in-the-box and scurried back into the kitchen, disappearing
so suddenly that if she had not been such a poor little forlorn
thing, Sara would have laughed in spite of herself. That very
evening, as Sara was sitting in the midst of a group of listeners
in a corner of the schoolroom telling one of her stories, the
very same figure timidly entered the room, carrying a coal box
much too heavy for her, and knelt down upon the hearth rug to
replenish the fire and sweep up the ashes.

She was cleaner than she had been when she peeped through the
area railings, but she looked just as frightened. She was
evidently afraid to look at the children or seem to be
listening. She put on pieces of coal cautiously with her fingers
so that she might make no disturbing noise, and she swept about
the fire irons very softly. But Sara saw in two minutes that she
was deeply interested in what was going on, and that she was
doing her work slowly in the hope of catching a word here and
there. And realizing this, she raised her voice and spoke more
clearly.

"The Mermaids swam softly about in the crystal-green water, and
dragged after them a fishing-net woven of deep-sea pearls," she
said. "The Princess sat on the white rock and watched them."

It was a wonderful story about a princess who was loved by a
Prince Merman, and went to live with him in shining caves under
the sea.

The small drudge before the grate swept the hearth once and then
swept it again. Having done it twice, she did it three times;
and, as she was doing it the third time, the sound of the story
so lured her to listen that she fell under the spell and actually
forgot that she had no right to listen at all, and also forgot
everything else. She sat down upon her heels as she knelt on the
hearth rug, and the brush hung idly in her fingers. The voice of
the storyteller went on and drew her with it into winding grottos
under the sea, glowing with soft, clear blue light, and paved
with pure golden sands. Strange sea flowers and grasses waved
about her, and far away faint singing and music echoed.

The hearth brush fell from the work-roughened hand, and Lavinia
Herbert looked round.

"That girl has been listening," she said.

The culprit snatched up her brush, and scrambled to her feet.
She caught at the coal box and simply scuttled out of the room
like a frightened rabbit.

Sara felt rather hot-tempered.

"I knew she was listening," she said. "Why shouldn't she?"

Lavinia tossed her head with great elegance.

"Well," she remarked, "I do not know whether your mamma would
like you to tell stories to servant girls, but I know MY mamma
wouldn't like ME to do it."

"My mamma!" said Sara, looking odd. "I don't believe she would
mind in the least. She knows that stories belong to everybody."

"I thought," retorted Lavinia, in severe recollection, "that your
mamma was dead. How can she know things?"

"Do you think she DOESN'T know things?" said Sara, in her stern
little voice. Sometimes she had a rather stern little voice.

"Sara's mamma knows everything," piped in Lottie. "So does my
mamma—'cept Sara is my mamma at Miss Minchin's—my other one
knows everything. The streets are shining, and there are fields
and fields of lilies, and everybody gathers them. Sara tells me
when she puts me to bed."

"You wicked thing," said Lavinia, turning on Sara; "making fairy
stories about heaven."

"There are much more splendid stories in Revelation," returned
Sara. "Just look and see! How do you know mine are fairy
stories? But I can tell you"—with a fine bit of unheavenly
temper—"you will never find out whether they are or not if
you're not kinder to people than you are now. Come along,
Lottie." And she marched out of the room, rather hoping that she
might see the little servant again somewhere, but she found no
trace of her when she got into the hall.

"Who is that little girl who makes the fires?" she asked
Mariette that night.

Mariette broke forth into a flow of description.

Ah, indeed, Mademoiselle Sara might well ask. She was a forlorn
little thing who had just taken the place of scullery maid—
though, as to being scullery maid, she was everything else
besides. She blacked boots and grates, and carried heavy coal-
scuttles up and down stairs, and scrubbed floors and cleaned
windows, and was ordered about by everybody. She was fourteen
years old, but was so stunted in growth that she looked about
twelve. In truth, Mariette was sorry for her. She was so timid
that if one chanced to speak to her it appeared as if her poor,
frightened eyes would jump out of her head.

"What is her name?" asked Sara, who had sat by the table, with
her chin on her hands, as she listened absorbedly to the recital.

Her name was Becky. Mariette heard everyone below-stairs
calling, "Becky, do this," and "Becky, do that," every five
minutes in the day.

Sara sat and looked into the fire, reflecting on Becky for some
time after Mariette left her. She made up a story of which
Becky was the ill-used heroine. She thought she looked as if she
had never had quite enough to eat. Her very eyes were hungry.
She hoped she should see her again, but though she caught sight
of her carrying things up or down stairs on several occasions,
she always seemed in such a hurry and so afraid of being seen
that it was impossible to speak to her.

But a few weeks later, on another foggy afternoon, when she
entered her sitting room she found herself confronting a rather
pathetic picture. In her own special and pet easy-chair before
the bright fire, Becky—with a coal smudge on her nose and
several on her apron, with her poor little cap hanging half off
her head, and an empty coal box on the floor near her—sat fast
asleep, tired out beyond even the endurance of her hard-working
young body. She had been sent up to put the bedrooms in order
for the evening. There were a great many of them, and she had
been running about all day. Sara's rooms she had saved until the
last. They were not like the other rooms, which were plain and
bare. Ordinary pupils were expected to be satisfied with mere
necessaries. Sara's comfortable sitting room seemed a bower of
luxury to the scullery maid, though it was, in fact, merely a
nice, bright little room. But there were pictures and books in
it, and curious things from India; there was a sofa and the low,
soft chair; Emily sat in a chair of her own, with the air of a
presiding goddess, and there was always a glowing fire and a
polished grate. Becky saved it until the end of her afternoon's
work, because it rested her to go into it, and she always hoped
to snatch a few minutes to sit down in the soft chair and look
about her, and think about the wonderful good fortune of the
child who owned such surroundings and who went out on the cold
days in beautiful hats and coats one tried to catch a glimpse of
through the area railing.