The Classic Children's Literature Collection: 39 Classic Novels

by Various Authors

  “He found her under my care,” she protested. “I have done everything for her. But for me she should have starved in the streets.”

  Here the Indian gentleman lost his temper.

  “As to starving in the streets,” he said, “she might have starved more comfortably there than in your attic.”

  “Captain Crewe left her in my charge,” Miss Minchin argued. “She must return to it until she is of age. She can be a parlor boarder again. She must finish her education. The law will interfere in my behalf.”

  “Come, come, Miss Minchin,” Mr. Carmichael interposed, “the law will do nothing of the sort. If Sara herself wishes to return to you, I dare say Mr. Carrisford might not refuse to allow it. But that rests with Sara.”

  “Then,” said Miss Minchin, “I appeal to Sara. I have not spoiled you, perhaps,” she said awkwardly to the little girl; “but you know that your papa was pleased with your progress. And—ahem—I have always been fond of you.”

  Sara’s green-gray eyes fixed themselves on her with the quiet, clear look Miss Minchin particularly disliked.

  “Have YOU, Miss Minchin?” she said. “I did not know that.”

  Miss Minchin reddened and drew herself up.

  “You ought to have known it,” said she; “but children, unfortunately, never know what is best for them. Amelia and I always said you were the cleverest child in the school. Will you not do your duty to your poor papa and come home with me?”

  Sara took a step toward her and stood still. She was thinking of the day when she had been told that she belonged to nobody, and was in danger of being turned into the street; she was thinking of the cold, hungry hours she had spent alone with Emily and Melchisedec in the attic. She looked Miss Minchin steadily in the face.

  “You know why I will not go home with you, Miss Minchin,” she said; “you know quite well.”

  A hot flush showed itself on Miss Minchin’s hard, angry face.

  “You will never see your companions again,” she began. “I will see that Ermengarde and Lottie are kept away—”

  Mr. Carmichael stopped her with polite firmness.

  “Excuse me,” he said; “she will see anyone she wishes to see. The parents of Miss Crewe’s fellow-pupils are not likely to refuse her invitations to visit her at her guardian’s house. Mr. Carrisford will attend to that.”

  It must be confessed that even Miss Minchin flinched. This was worse than the eccentric bachelor uncle who might have a peppery temper and be easily offended at the treatment of his niece. A woman of sordid mind could easily believe that most people would not refuse to allow their children to remain friends with a little heiress of diamond mines. And if Mr. Carrisford chose to tell certain of her patrons how unhappy Sara Crewe had been made, many unpleasant things might happen.

  “You have not undertaken an easy charge,” she said to the Indian gentleman, as she turned to leave the room; “you will discover that very soon. The child is neither truthful nor grateful. I suppose"—to Sara—"that you feel now that you are a princess again.”

  Sara looked down and flushed a little, because she thought her pet fancy might not be easy for strangers—even nice ones—to understand at first.

  “I—TRIED not to be anything else,” she answered in a low voice—"even when I was coldest and hungriest—I tried not to be.”

  “Now it will not be necessary to try,” said Miss Minchin, acidly, as Ram Dass salaamed her out of the room.

  She returned home and, going to her sitting room, sent at once for Miss Amelia. She sat closeted with her all the rest of the afternoon, and it must be admitted that poor Miss Amelia passed through more than one bad quarter of an hour. She shed a good many tears, and mopped her eyes a good deal. One of her unfortunate remarks almost caused her sister to snap her head entirely off, but it resulted in an unusual manner.

  “I’m not as clever as you, sister,” she said, “and I am always afraid to say things to you for fear of making you angry. Perhaps if I were not so timid it would be better for the school and for both of us. I must say I’ve often thought it would have been better if you had been less severe on Sara Crewe, and had seen that she was decently dressed and more comfortable. I KNOW she was worked too hard for a child of her age, and I know she was only half fed—”

  “How dare you say such a thing!” exclaimed Miss Minchin.

  “I don’t know how I dare,” Miss Amelia answered, with a kind of reckless courage; “but now I’ve begun I may as well finish, whatever happens to me. The child was a clever child and a good child—and she would have paid you for any kindness you had shown her. But you didn’t show her any. The fact was, she was too clever for you, and you always disliked her for that reason. She used to see through us both—”

  “Amelia!” gasped her infuriated elder, looking as if she would box her ears and knock her cap off, as she had often done to Becky.

  But Miss Amelia’s disappointment had made her hysterical enough not to care what occurred next.

  “She did! She did!” she cried. “She saw through us both. She saw that you were a hard-hearted, worldly woman, and that I was a weak fool, and that we were both of us vulgar and mean enough to grovel on our knees for her money, and behave ill to her because it was taken from her—though she behaved herself like a little princess even when she was a beggar. She did—she did—like a little princess!” And her hysterics got the better of the poor woman, and she began to laugh and cry both at once, and rock herself backward and forward.

  “And now you’ve lost her,” she cried wildly; “and some other school will get her and her money; and if she were like any other child she’d tell how she’s been treated, and all our pupils would be taken away and we should be ruined. And it serves us right; but it serves you right more than it does me, for you are a hard woman, Maria Minchin, you’re a hard, selfish, worldly woman!”

  And she was in danger of making so much noise with her hysterical chokes and gurgles that her sister was obliged to go to her and apply salts and sal volatile to quiet her, instead of pouring forth her indignation at her audacity.

  And from that time forward, it may be mentioned, the elder Miss Minchin actually began to stand a little in awe of a sister who, while she looked so foolish, was evidently not quite so foolish as she looked, and might, consequently, break out and speak truths people did not want to hear.

  That evening, when the pupils were gathered together before the fire in the schoolroom, as was their custom before going to bed, Ermengarde came in with a letter in her hand and a queer expression on her round face. It was queer because, while it was an expression of delighted excitement, it was combined with such amazement as seemed to belong to a kind of shock just received.

  “What IS the matter?” cried two or three voices at once.

  “Is it anything to do with the row that has been going on?” said Lavinia, eagerly. “There has been such a row in Miss Minchin’s room, Miss Amelia has had something like hysterics and has had to go to bed.”

  Ermengarde answered them slowly as if she were half stunned.

  “I have just had this letter from Sara,” she said, holding it out to let them see what a long letter it was.

  “From Sara!” Every voice joined in that exclamation.

  “Where is she?” almost shrieked Jessie.

  “Next door,” said Ermengarde, “with the Indian gentleman.”

  “Where? Where? Has she been sent away? Does Miss Minchin know? Was the row about that? Why did she write? Tell us! Tell us!”

  There was a perfect babel, and Lottie began to cry plaintively.

  Ermengarde answered them slowly as if she were half plunged out into what, at the moment, seemed the most important and self-explaining thing.

  “There WERE diamond mines,” she said stoutly; “there WERE!” Open mouths and open eyes confronted her.

  “They were real
,” she hurried on. “It was all a mistake about them. Something happened for a time, and Mr. Carrisford thought they were ruined—”

  “Who is Mr. Carrisford?” shouted Jessie.

  “The Indian gentleman. And Captain Crewe thought so, too—and he died; and Mr. Carrisford had brain fever and ran away, and HE almost died. And he did not know where Sara was. And it turned out that there were millions and millions of diamonds in the mines; and half of them belong to Sara; and they belonged to her when she was living in the attic with no one but Melchisedec for a friend, and the cook ordering her about. And Mr. Carrisford found her this afternoon, and he has got her in his home—and she will never come back—and she will be more a princess than she ever was—a hundred and fifty thousand times more. And I am going to see her tomorrow afternoon. There!”

  Even Miss Minchin herself could scarcely have controlled the uproar after this; and though she heard the noise, she did not try. She was not in the mood to face anything more than she was facing in her room, while Miss Amelia was weeping in bed. She knew that the news had penetrated the walls in some mysterious manner, and that every servant and every child would go to bed talking about it.

  So until almost midnight the entire seminary, realizing somehow that all rules were laid aside, crowded round Ermengarde in the schoolroom and heard read and re-read the letter containing a story which was quite as wonderful as any Sara herself had ever invented, and which had the amazing charm of having happened to Sara herself and the mystic Indian gentleman in the very next house.

  Becky, who had heard it also, managed to creep up stairs earlier than usual. She wanted to get away from people and go and look at the little magic room once more. She did not know what would happen to it. It was not likely that it would be left to Miss Minchin. It would be taken away, and the attic would be bare and empty again. Glad as she was for Sara’s sake, she went up the last flight of stairs with a lump in her throat and tears blurring her sight. There would be no fire tonight, and no rosy lamp; no supper, and no princess sitting in the glow reading or telling stories—no princess!

  She choked down a sob as she pushed the attic door open, and then she broke into a low cry.

  The lamp was flushing the room, the fire was blazing, the supper was waiting; and Ram Dass was standing smiling into her startled face.

  “Missee sahib remembered,” he said. “She told the sahib all. She wished you to know the good fortune which has befallen her. Behold a letter on the tray. She has written. She did not wish that you should go to sleep unhappy. The sahib commands you to come to him tomorrow. You are to be the attendant of missee sahib. Tonight I take these things back over the roof.”

  And having said this with a beaming face, he made a little salaam and slipped through the skylight with an agile silentness of movement which showed Becky how easily he had done it before.

  19.Anne

  Never had such joy reigned in the nursery of the Large Family. Never had they dreamed of such delights as resulted from an intimate acquaintance with the little-girl-who-was-not-a-beggar. The mere fact of her sufferings and adventures made her a priceless possession. Everybody wanted to be told over and over again the things which had happened to her. When one was sitting by a warm fire in a big, glowing room, it was quite delightful to hear how cold it could be in an attic. It must be admitted that the attic was rather delighted in, and that its coldness and bareness quite sank into insignificance when Melchisedec was remembered, and one heard about the sparrows and things one could see if one climbed on the table and stuck one’s head and shoulders out of the skylight.

  Of course the thing loved best was the story of the banquet and the dream which was true. Sara told it for the first time the day after she had been found. Several members of the Large Family came to take tea with her, and as they sat or curled up on the hearth-rug she told the story in her own way, and the Indian gentleman listened and watched her. When she had finished she looked up at him and put her hand on his knee.

  “That is my part,” she said. “Now won’t you tell your part of it, Uncle Tom?” He had asked her to call him always “Uncle Tom.” “I don’t know your part yet, and it must be beautiful.”

  So he told them how, when he sat alone, ill and dull and irritable, Ram Dass had tried to distract him by describing the passers by, and there was one child who passed oftener than any one else; he had begun to be interested in her—partly perhaps because he was thinking a great deal of a little girl, and partly because Ram Dass had been able to relate the incident of his visit to the attic in chase of the monkey. He had described its cheerless look, and the bearing of the child, who seemed as if she was not of the class of those who were treated as drudges and servants. Bit by bit, Ram Dass had made discoveries concerning the wretchedness of her life. He had found out how easy a matter it was to climb across the few yards of roof to the skylight, and this fact had been the beginning of all that followed.

  “Sahib,” he had said one day, “I could cross the slates and make the child a fire when she is out on some errand. When she returned, wet and cold, to find it blazing, she would think a magician had done it.”

  The idea had been so fanciful that Mr. Carrisford’s sad face had lighted with a smile, and Ram Dass had been so filled with rapture that he had enlarged upon it and explained to his master how simple it would be to accomplish numbers of other things. He had shown a childlike pleasure and invention, and the preparations for the carrying out of the plan had filled many a day with interest which would otherwise have dragged wearily. On the night of the frustrated banquet Ram Dass had kept watch, all his packages being in readiness in the attic which was his own; and the person who was to help him had waited with him, as interested as himself in the odd adventure. Ram Dass had been lying flat upon the slates, looking in at the skylight, when the banquet had come to its disastrous conclusion; he had been sure of the profoundness of Sara’s wearied sleep; and then, with a dark lantern, he had crept into the room, while his companion remained outside and handed the things to him. When Sara had stirred ever so faintly, Ram Dass had closed the lantern-slide and lain flat upon the floor. These and many other exciting things the children found out by asking a thousand questions.

  “I am so glad,” Sara said. “I am so GLAD it was you who were my friend!”

  There never were such friends as these two became. Somehow, they seemed to suit each other in a wonderful way. The Indian gentleman had never had a companion he liked quite as much as he liked Sara. In a month’s time he was, as Mr. Carmichael had prophesied he would be, a new man. He was always amused and interested, and he began to find an actual pleasure in the possession of the wealth he had imagined that he loathed the burden of. There were so many charming things to plan for Sara. There was a little joke between them that he was a magician, and it was one of his pleasures to invent things to surprise her. She found beautiful new flowers growing in her room, whimsical little gifts tucked under pillows, and once, as they sat together in the evening, they heard the scratch of a heavy paw on the door, and when Sara went to find out what it was, there stood a great dog—a splendid Russian boarhound—with a grand silver and gold collar bearing an inscription. “I am Boris,” it read; “I serve the Princess Sara.”

  There was nothing the Indian gentleman loved more than the recollection of the little princess in rags and tatters. The afternoons in which the Large Family, or Ermengarde and Lottie, gathered to rejoice together were very delightful. But the hours when Sara and the Indian gentleman sat alone and read or talked had a special charm of their own. During their passing many interesting things occurred.

  One evening, Mr. Carrisford, looking up from his book, noticed that his companion had not stirred for some time, but sat gazing into the fire.

  “What are you ‘supposing,’ Sara?” he asked.

  Sara looked up, with a bright color on her cheek.

  “I WAS supposing,” she said; “I was r
emembering that hungry day, and a child I saw.”

  “But there were a great many hungry days,” said the Indian gentleman, with rather a sad tone in his voice. “Which hungry day was it?”

  “I forgot you didn’t know,” said Sara. “It was the day the dream came true.”

  Then she told him the story of the bun shop, and the fourpence she picked up out of the sloppy mud, and the child who was hungrier than herself. She told it quite simply, and in as few words as possible; but somehow the Indian gentleman found it necessary to shade his eyes with his hand and look down at the carpet.

  “And I was supposing a kind of plan,” she said, when she had finished. “I was thinking I should like to do something.”

  “What was it?” said Mr. Carrisford, in a low tone. “You may do anything you like to do, princess.”

  “I was wondering,” rather hesitated Sara—"you know, you say I have so much money—I was wondering if I could go to see the bun-woman, and tell her that if, when hungry children—particularly on those dreadful days—come and sit on the steps, or look in at the window, she would just call them in and give them something to eat, she might send the bills to me. Could I do that?”

  “You shall do it tomorrow morning,” said the Indian gentleman.

  “Thank you,” said Sara. “You see, I know what it is to be hungry, and it is very hard when one cannot even PRETEND it away.”

  “Yes, yes, my dear,” said the Indian gentleman. “Yes, yes, it must be. Try to forget it. Come and sit on this footstool near my knee, and only remember you are a princess.”

  “Yes,” said Sara, smiling; “and I can give buns and bread to the populace.” And she went and sat on the stool, and the Indian gentleman (he used to like her to call him that, too, sometimes) drew her small dark head down on his knee and stroked her hair.