“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 OUGHT to say them. THANK you—THANK you—THANK you!
THE LITTLE GIRL IN THE ATTIC.
The next morning she left this on the little table, and in the evening it had been taken away with the other things; so she knew the Magician had received it, and she was happier for the thought. She was reading one of her new books to Becky just before they went to their respective beds, when her attention was attracted by a sound at the skylight. When she looked up from her page she saw that Becky had heard the sound also, as she had turned her head to look and was listening rather nervously.
“Something’s there, miss,” she whispered.
“Yes,” said Sara, slowly. “It sounds—rather like a cat—trying to get in.”
She left her chair and went to the skylight. It was a queer little sound she heard—like a soft scratching. She suddenly remembered something and laughed. She remembered a quaint little intruder who had made his way into the attic once before. She had seen him that very afternoon, sitting disconsolately on a table before a window in the Indian gentleman’s house.
“Suppose,” she whispered in pleased excitement—"just suppose it was the monkey who got away again. Oh, I wish it was!”
She climbed on a chair, very cautiously raised the skylight, and peeped out. It had been snowing all day, and on the snow, quite near her, crouched a tiny, shivering figure, whose small black face wrinkled itself piteously at sight of her.
“It is the monkey,” she cried out. “He has crept out of the Lascar’s attic, and he saw the light.”
Becky ran to her side.
“Are you going to let him in, miss?” she said.
“Yes,” Sara answered joyfully. “It’s too cold for monkeys to be out. They’re delicate. I’ll coax him in.”
She put a hand out delicately, speaking in a coaxing voice—as she spoke to the sparrows and to Melchisedec—as if she were some friendly little animal herself.
“Come along, monkey darling,” she said. “I won’t hurt you.”
He knew she would not hurt him. He knew it before she laid her soft, caressing little paw on him and drew him towards her. He had felt human love in the slim brown hands of Ram Dass, and he felt it in hers. He let her lift him through the skylight, and when he found himself in her arms he cuddled up to her breast and looked up into her face.
“Nice monkey! Nice monkey!” she crooned, kissing his funny head. “Oh, I do love little animal things.”
He was evidently glad to get to the fire, and when she sat down and held him on her knee he looked from her to Becky with mingled interest and appreciation.
“He IS plain-looking, miss, ain’t he?” said Becky.
“He looks like a very ugly baby,” laughed Sara. “I beg your pardon, monkey; but I’m glad you are not a baby. Your mother COULDN’T be proud of you, and no one would dare to say you looked like any of your relations. Oh, I do like you!”
She leaned back in her chair and reflected.
“Perhaps he’s sorry he’s so ugly,” she said, “and it’s always on his mind. I wonder if he HAS a mind. Monkey, my love, have you a mind?”
But the monkey only put up a tiny paw and scratched his head.
“What shall you do with him?” Becky asked.
“I shall let him sleep with me tonight, and then take him back to the Indian gentleman tomorrow. I am sorry to take you back, monkey; but you must go. You ought to be fondest of your own family; and I’m not a REAL relation.”
And when she went to bed she made him a nest at her feet, and he curled up and slept there as if he were a baby and much pleased with his quarters.
17.’It Is the Child!’
The next afternoon three members of the Large Family sat in the Indian gentleman’s library, doing their best to cheer him up. They had been allowed to come in to perform this office because he had specially invited them. He had been living in a state of suspense for some time, and today he was waiting for a certain event very anxiously. This event was the return of Mr. Carmichael from Moscow. His stay there had been prolonged from week to week. On his first arrival there, he had not been able satisfactorily to trace the family he had gone in search of. When he felt at last sure that he had found them and had gone to their house, he had been told that they were absent on a journey. His efforts to reach them had been unavailing, so he had decided to remain in Moscow until their return. Mr. Carrisford sat in his reclining chair, and Janet sat on the floor beside him. He was very fond of Janet. Nora had found a footstool, and Donald was astride the tiger’s head which ornamented the rug made of the animal’s skin. It must be owned that he was riding it rather violently.
“Don’t chirrup so loud, Donald,” Janet said. “When you come to cheer an ill person up you don’t cheer him up at the top of your voice. Perhaps cheering up is too loud, Mr. Carrisford?” turning to the Indian gentleman.
But he only patted her shoulder.
“No, it isn’t,” he answered. “And it keeps me from thinking too much.”
“I’m going to be quiet,” Donald shouted. “We’ll all be as quiet as mice.”
“Mice don’t make a noise like that,” said Janet.
Donald made a bridle of his handkerchief and bounced up and down on the tiger’s head.
“A whole lot of mice might,” he said cheerfully. “A thousand mice might.”
“I don’t believe fifty thousand mice would,” said Janet, severely; “and we have to be as quiet as one mouse.”
Mr. Carrisford laughed and patted her shoulder again.
“Papa won’t be very long now,” she said. “May we talk about the lost little girl?”
“I don’t think I could talk much about anything else just now,” the Indian gentleman answered, knitting his forehead with a tired look.
“We like her so much,” said Nora. “We call her the little un-fairy princess.”
“Why?” the Indian gentleman inquired, because the fancies of the Large Family always made him forget things a little.
It was Janet who answered.
“It is because, though she is not exactly a fairy, she will be so rich when she is found that she will be like a princess in a fairy tale. We called her the fairy princess at first, but it didn’t quite suit.”
“Is it true,” said Nora, “that her papa gave all his money to a friend to put in a mine that had diamonds in it, and then the friend thought he had lost it all and ran away because he felt as if he was a robber?”
“But he wasn’t really, you know,” put in Janet, hastily.
The Indian gentleman took hold of her hand quickly.
“No, he wasn’t really,” he said.
“I am sorry for the friend,” Janet said; “I can’t help it. He didn’t mean to do it, and it would break his heart. I am sure it would break his heart.”
“You are an understanding little woman, Janet,” the Indian gentleman said, and he held he
r hand close.
“Did you tell Mr. Carrisford,” Donald shouted again, “about the little-girl-who-isn’t-a-beggar? Did you tell him she has new nice clothes? P’r’aps she’s been found by somebody when she was lost.”
“There’s a cab!” exclaimed Janet. “It’s stopping before the door. It is papa!”
They all ran to the windows to look out.
“Yes, it’s papa,” Donald proclaimed. “But there is no little girl.”
All three of them incontinently fled from the room and tumbled into the hall. It was in this way they always welcomed their father. They were to be heard jumping up and down, clapping their hands, and being caught up and kissed.
Mr. Carrisford made an effort to rise and sank back again.
“It is no use,” he said. “What a wreck I am!”
Mr. Carmichael’s voice approached the door.
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