The Complete Works of Frances Hodgson Burnett. Frances Hodgson Burnett

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СКАЧАТЬ “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 СКАЧАТЬ