prompt:
Chapter: In the Attic

The first night she spent in her attic was a thing Sara never forgot.
During its passing she lived through a wild, unchildlike woe of which
she never spoke to anyone about her.  There was no one who would have
understood.  It was, indeed, well for her that as she lay awake in the
darkness her mind was forcibly distracted, now and then, by the
strangeness of her surroundings.  It was, perhaps, well for her that
she was reminded by her small body of material things. If this had not
been so, the anguish of her young mind might have been too great for a
child to bear.  But, really, while the night was passing she scarcely
knew that she had a body at all or remembered any other thing than one.

"My papa is dead!" she kept whispering to herself.  "My papa is dead!"

It was not until long afterward that she realized that her bed had been
so hard that she turned over and over in it to find a place to rest,
that the darkness seemed more intense than any she had ever known, and
that the wind howled over the roof among the chimneys like something
which wailed aloud.  Then there was something worse. This was certain
scufflings and scratchings and squeakings in the walls and behind the
skirting boards.  She knew what they meant, because Becky had described
them.  They meant rats and mice who were either fighting with each
other or playing together. Once or twice she even heard sharp-toed feet
scurrying across the floor, and she remembered in those after days,
when she recalled things, that when first she heard them she started up
in bed and sat trembling, and when she lay down again covered her head
with the bedclothes.

The change in her life did not come about gradually, but was made all
at once.

"She must begin as she is to go on," Miss Minchin said to Miss Amelia.
"She must be taught at once what she is to expect."

Mariette had left the house the next morning.  The glimpse Sara caught
of her sitting room, as she passed its open door, showed her that
everything had been changed.  Her ornaments and luxuries had been
removed, and a bed had been placed in a corner to transform it into a
new pupil's bedroom.

When she went down to breakfast she saw that her seat at Miss Minchin's
side was occupied by Lavinia, and Miss Minchin spoke to her coldly.

"You will begin your new duties, Sara," she said, "by taking your seat
with the younger children at a smaller table.  You must keep them
quiet, and see that they behave well and do not waste their food. You
ought to have been down earlier.  Lottie has already upset her tea."

That was the beginning, and from day to day the duties given to her
were added to.  She taught the younger children French and heard their
other lessons, and these were the least of her labors. It was found
that she could be made use of in numberless directions. She could be
sent on errands at any time and in all weathers. She could be told to
do things other people neglected.  The cook and the housemaids took
their tone from Miss Minchin, and rather enjoyed ordering about the
"young one" who had been made so much fuss over for so long.  They were
not servants of the best class, and had neither good manners nor good
tempers, and it was frequently convenient to have at hand someone on
whom blame could be laid.

During the first month or two, Sara thought that her willingness to do
things as well as she could, and her silence under reproof, might
soften those who drove her so hard.  In her proud little heart she
wanted them to see that she was trying to earn her living and not
accepting charity.  But the time came when she saw that no one was
softened at all; and the more willing she was to do as she was told,
the more domineering and exacting careless housemaids became, and the
more ready a scolding cook was to blame her.

If she had been older, Miss Minchin would have given her the bigger
girls to teach and saved money by dismissing an instructress; but while
she remained and looked like a child, she could be made more useful as
a sort of little superior errand girl and maid of all work. An ordinary
errand boy would not have been so clever and reliable. Sara could be
trusted with difficult commissions and complicated messages. She could
even go and pay bills, and she combined with this the ability to dust a
room well and to set things in order.

Her own lessons became things of the past.  She was taught nothing, and
only after long and busy days spent in running here and there at
everybody's orders was she grudgingly allowed to go into the deserted
schoolroom, with a pile of old books, and study alone at night.

"If I do not remind myself of the things I have learned, perhaps I may
forget them," she said to herself.  "I am almost a scullery maid, and
if I am a scullery maid who knows nothing, I shall be like poor Becky.
I wonder if I could QUITE forget and begin to drop my H'S and not
remember that Henry the Eighth had six wives."

One of the most curious things in her new existence was her changed
position among the pupils.  Instead of being a sort of small royal
personage among them, she no longer seemed to be one of their number at
all.  She was kept so constantly at work that she scarcely ever had an
opportunity of speaking to any of them, and she could not avoid seeing
that Miss Minchin preferred that she should live a life apart from that
of the occupants of the schoolroom.

"I will not have her forming intimacies and talking to the other
children," that lady said.  "Girls like a grievance, and if she begins
to tell romantic stories about herself, she will become an ill-used
heroine, and parents will be given a wrong impression.  It is better
that she should live a separate life--one suited to her circumstances.
I am giving her a home, and that is more than she has any right to
expect from me."

Sara did not expect much, and was far too proud to try to continue to
be intimate with girls who evidently felt rather awkward and uncertain
about her.  The fact was that Miss Minchin's pupils were a set of dull,
matter-of-fact young people.  They were accustomed to being rich and
comfortable, and as Sara's frocks grew shorter and shabbier and
queerer-looking, and it became an established fact that she wore shoes
with holes in them and was sent out to buy groceries and carry them
through the streets in a basket on her arm when the cook wanted them in
a hurry, they felt rather as if, when they spoke to her, they were
addressing an under servant.

"To think that she was the girl with the diamond mines," Lavinia
commented. "She does look an object.  And she's queerer than ever.  I
never liked her much, but I can't bear that way she has now of looking
at people without speaking--just as if she was finding them out."

"I am," said Sara, promptly, when she heard of this.  "That's what I
look at some people for.  I like to know about them.  I think them over
afterward."

The truth was that she had saved herself annoyance several times by
keeping her eye on Lavinia, who was quite ready to make mischief, and
would have been rather pleased to have made it for the ex-show pupil.

Sara never made any mischief herself, or interfered with anyone.  She
worked like a drudge; she tramped through the wet streets, carrying
parcels and baskets; she labored with the childish inattention of the
little ones' French lessons; as she became shabbier and more
forlorn-looking, she was told that she had better take her meals
downstairs; she was treated as if she was nobody's concern, and her
heart grew proud and sore, but she never told anyone what she felt.

"Soldiers don't complain," she would say between her small, shut teeth,
"I am not going to do it; I will pretend this is part of a war."

But there were hours when her child heart might almost have broken with
loneliness but for three people.

The first, it must be owned, was Becky--just Becky.  Throughout all
that first night spent in the garret, she had felt a vague comfort in
knowing that on the other side of the wall in which the rats scuffled
and squeaked there was another young human creature. And during the
nights that followed the sense of comfort grew. They had little chance
to speak to each other during the day. Each had her own tasks to
perform, and any attempt at conversation would have been regarded as a
tendency to loiter and lose time. "Don't mind me, miss," Becky
whispered during the first morning, "if I don't say nothin' polite.
Some un'd be down on us if I did. I MEANS 'please' an' 'thank you' an'
'beg pardon,' but I dassn't to take time to say it."

But before daybreak she used to slip into Sara's attic and button her
dress and give her such help as she required before she went downstairs
to light the kitchen fire.  And when night came Sara always heard the
humble knock at her door which meant that her handmaid was ready to
help her again if she was needed.  During the first weeks of her grief
Sara felt as if she were too stupefied to talk, so it happened that
some time passed before they saw each other much or exchanged visits.
Becky's heart told her that it was best that people in trouble should
be left alone.

The second of the trio of comforters was Ermengarde, but odd things
happened before Ermengarde found her place.

When Sara's mind seemed to awaken again to the life about her, she
realized that she had forgotten that an Ermengarde lived in the world.
The two had always been friends, but Sara had felt as if she were years
the older.  It could not be contested that Ermengarde was as dull as
she was affectionate.  She clung to Sara in a simple, helpless way; she
brought her lessons to her that she might be helped; she listened to
her every word and besieged her with requests for stories.  But she had
nothing interesting to say herself, and she loathed books of every
description.  She was, in fact, not a person one would remember when
one was caught in the storm of a great trouble, and Sara forgot her.

It had been all the easier to forget her because she had been suddenly
called home for a few weeks.  When she came back she did not see Sara
for a day or two, and when she met her for the first time she
encountered her coming down a corridor with her arms full of garments
which were to be taken downstairs to be mended. Sara herself had
already been taught to mend them.  She looked pale and unlike herself,
and she was attired in the queer, outgrown frock whose shortness showed
so much thin black leg.

Ermengarde was too slow a girl to be equal to such a situation.  She
could not think of anything to say.  She knew what had happened, but,
somehow, she had never imagined Sara could look like this--so odd and
poor and almost like a servant.  It made her quite miserable, and she
could do nothing but break into a short hysterical laugh and
exclaim--aimlessly and as if without any meaning, "Oh, Sara, is that
you?"

"Yes," answered Sara, and suddenly a strange thought passed through her
mind and made her face flush.  She held the pile of garments in her
arms, and her chin rested upon the top of it to keep it steady.
Something in the look of her straight-gazing eyes made Ermengarde lose
her wits still more.  She felt as if Sara had changed into a new kind
of girl, and she had never known her before. Perhaps it was because she
had suddenly grown poor and had to mend things and work like Becky.

"Oh," she stammered.  "How--how are you?"

"I don't know," Sara replied.  "How are you?"

"I'm--I'm quite well," said Ermengarde, overwhelmed with shyness. Then
spasmodically she thought of something to say which seemed more
intimate.  "Are you--are you very unhappy?" she said in a rush.

Then Sara was guilty of an injustice.  Just at that moment her torn
heart swelled within her, and she felt that if anyone was as stupid as
that, one had better get away from her.

"What do you think?" she said.  "Do you think I am very happy?" And she
marched past her without another word.

In course of time she realized that if her wretchedness had not made
her forget things, she would have known that poor, dull Ermengarde was
not to be blamed for her unready, awkward ways.  She was always
awkward, and the more she felt, the more stupid she was given to being.

But the sudden thought which had flashed upon her had made her
over-sensitive.

"She is like the others," she had thought.  "She does not really want
to talk to me.  She knows no one does."

So for several weeks a barrier stood between them.  When they met by
chance Sara looked the other way, and Ermengarde felt too stiff and
embarrassed to speak.  Sometimes they nodded to each other in passing,
but there were times when they did not even exchange a greeting.

"If she would rather not talk to me," Sara thought, "I will keep out of
her way.  Miss Minchin makes that easy enough."

Miss Minchin made it so easy that at last they scarcely saw each other
at all.  At that time it was noticed that Ermengarde was more stupid
than ever, and that she looked listless and unhappy.  She used to sit
in the window-seat, huddled in a heap, and stare out of the window
without speaking.  Once Jessie, who was passing, stopped to look at her
curiously.

"What are you crying for, Ermengarde?" she asked.

"I'm not crying," answered Ermengarde, in a muffled, unsteady voice.

"You are," said Jessie.  "A great big tear just rolled down the bridge
of your nose and dropped off at the end of it.  And there goes another."

"Well," said Ermengarde, "I'm miserable--and no one need interfere."
And she turned her plump back and took out her handkerchief and boldly
hid her face in it.

That night, when Sara went to her attic, she was later than usual. She
had been kept at work until after the hour at which the pupils went to
bed, and after that she had gone to her lessons in the lonely
schoolroom.  When she reached the top of the stairs, she was surprised
to see a glimmer of light coming from under the attic door.

"Nobody goes there but myself," she thought quickly, "but someone has
lighted a candle."

Someone had, indeed, lighted a candle, and it was not burning in the
kitchen candlestick she was expected to use, but in one of those
belonging to the pupils' bedrooms.  The someone was sitting upon the
battered footstool, and was dressed in her nightgown and wrapped up in
a red shawl.  It was Ermengarde.

"Ermengarde!" cried Sara.  She was so startled that she was almost
frightened.  "You will get into trouble."

Ermengarde stumbled up from her footstool.  She shuffled across the
attic in her bedroom slippers, which were too large for her.  Her eyes
and nose were pink with crying.

"I know I shall--if I'm found out."  she said.  "But I don't care--I
don't care a bit.  Oh, Sara, please tell me.  What is the matter? Why
don't you like me any more?"

Something in her voice made the familiar lump rise in Sara's throat. It
was so affectionate and simple--so like the old Ermengarde who had
asked her to be "best friends."  It sounded as if she had not meant
what she had seemed to mean during these past weeks.

"I do like you," Sara answered.  "I thought--you see, everything is
different now.  I thought you--were different."

Ermengarde opened her wet eyes wide.

"Why, it was you who were different!" she cried.  "You didn't want to
talk to me.  I didn't know what to do.  It was you who were different
after I came back."

Sara thought a moment.  She saw she had made a mistake.

"I AM different," she explained, "though not in the way you think. Miss
Minchin does not want me to talk to the girls.  Most of them don't want
to talk to me.  I thought--perhaps--you didn't.  So I tried to keep out
of your way."

"Oh, Sara," Ermengarde almost wailed in her reproachful dismay.  And
then after one more look they rushed into each other's arms.  It must
be confessed that Sara's small black head lay for some minutes on the
shoulder covered by the red shawl.  When Ermengarde had seemed to
desert her, she had felt horribly lonely.

Afterward they sat down upon the floor together, Sara clasping her
knees with her arms, and Ermengarde rolled up in her shawl.  Ermengarde
looked at the odd, big-eyed little face adoringly.

"I couldn't bear it any more," she said.  "I dare say you could live
without me, Sara; but I couldn't live without you.  I was nearly DEAD.
So tonight, when I was crying under the bedclothes, I thought all at
once of creeping up here and just begging you to let us be friends
again."

"You are nicer than I am," said Sara.  "I was too proud to try and make
friends.  You see, now that trials have come, they have shown that I am
NOT a nice child.  I was afraid they would.  Perhaps"--wrinkling her
forehead wisely--"that is what they were sent for."

"I don't see any good in them," said Ermengarde stoutly.

"Neither do I--to speak the truth," admitted Sara, frankly.  "But I
suppose there MIGHT be good in things, even if we don't see it. There
MIGHT"--doubtfully--"be good in Miss Minchin."

Ermengarde looked round the attic with a rather fearsome curiosity.

"Sara," she said, "do you think you can bear living here?"

Sara looked round also.

"If I pretend it's quite different, I can," she answered; "or if I
pretend it is a place in a story."

She spoke slowly.  Her imagination was beginning to work for her. It
had not worked for her at all since her troubles had come upon her. She
had felt as if it had been stunned.

"Other people have lived in worse places.  Think of the Count of Monte
Cristo in the dungeons of the Chateau d'If.  And think of the people in
the Bastille!"

"The Bastille," half whispered Ermengarde, watching her and beginning
to be fascinated.  She remembered stories of the French Revolution
which Sara had been able to fix in her mind by her dramatic relation of
them.  No one but Sara could have done it.

A well-known glow came into Sara's eyes.

"Yes," she said, hugging her knees, "that will be a good place to
pretend about.  I am a prisoner in the Bastille.  I have been here for
years and years--and years; and everybody has forgotten about me. Miss
Minchin is the jailer--and Becky"--a sudden light adding itself to the
glow in her eyes--"Becky is the prisoner in the next cell."

She turned to Ermengarde, looking quite like the old Sara.

"I shall pretend that," she said; "and it will be a great comfort."

Ermengarde was at once enraptured and awed.

"And will you tell me all about it?" she said.  "May I creep up here at
night, whenever it is safe, and hear the things you have made up in the
day?  It will seem as if we were more 'best friends' than ever."

"Yes," answered Sara, nodding.  "Adversity tries people, and mine has
tried you and proved how nice you are."

Melchisedec

The third person in the trio was Lottie.  She was a small thing and did
not know what adversity meant, and was much bewildered by the
alteration she saw in her young adopted mother. She had heard it
rumored that strange things had happened to Sara, but she could not
understand why she looked different--why she wore an old black frock
and came into the schoolroom only to teach instead of to sit in her
place of honor and learn lessons herself. There had been much
whispering among the little ones when it had been discovered that Sara
no longer lived in the rooms in which Emily had so long sat in state.
Lottie's chief difficulty was that Sara said so little when one asked
her questions.  At seven mysteries must be made very clear if one is to
understand them.

"Are you very poor now, Sara?" she had asked confidentially the first
morning her friend took charge of the small French class.  "Are you as
poor as a beggar?"  She thrust a fat hand into the slim one and opened
round, tearful eyes.  "I don't want you to be as poor as a beggar."

She looked as if she was going to cry.  And Sara hurriedly consoled her.

"Beggars have nowhere to live," she said courageously.  "I have a place
to live in."

"Where do you live?" persisted Lottie.  "The new girl sleeps in your
room, and it isn't pretty any more."

"I live in another room," said Sara.

"Is it a nice one?" inquired Lottie.  "I want to go and see it."

"You must not talk," said Sara.  "Miss Minchin is looking at us.  She
will be angry with me for letting you whisper."

She had found out already that she was to be held accountable for
everything which was objected to.  If the children were not attentive,
if they talked, if they were restless, it was she who would be reproved.

But Lottie was a determined little person.  If Sara would not tell her
where she lived, she would find out in some other way.  She talked to
her small companions and hung about the elder girls and listened when
they were gossiping; and acting upon certain information they had
unconsciously let drop, she started late one afternoon on a voyage of
discovery, climbing stairs she had never known the existence of, until
she reached the attic floor. There she found two doors near each other,
and opening one, she saw her beloved Sara standing upon an old table
and looking out of a window.

"Sara!" she cried, aghast.  "Mamma Sara!"  She was aghast because the
attic was so bare and ugly and seemed so far away from all the world.
Her short legs had seemed to have been mounting hundreds of stairs.

Sara turned round at the sound of her voice.  It was her turn to be
aghast.  What would happen now?  If Lottie began to cry and any one
chanced to hear, they were both lost.  She jumped down from her table
and ran to the child.

"Don't cry and make a noise," she implored.  "I shall be scolded if you
do, and I have been scolded all day.  It's--it's not such a bad room,
Lottie."

"Isn't it?" gasped Lottie, and as she looked round it she bit her lip.
She was a spoiled child yet, but she was fond enough of her adopted
parent to make an effort to control herself for her sake. Then,
somehow, it was quite possible that any place in which Sara lived might
turn out to be nice.  "Why isn't it, Sara?" she almost whispered.

Sara hugged her close and tried to laugh.  There was a sort of comfort
in the warmth of the plump, childish body.  She had had a hard day and
had been staring out of the windows with hot eyes.

"You can see all sorts of things you can't see downstairs," she said.

"What sort of things?" demanded Lottie, with that curiosity Sara could
always awaken even in bigger girls.

"Chimneys--quite close to us--with smoke curling up in wreaths and
clouds and going up into the sky--and sparrows hopping about and
talking to each other just as if they were people--and other attic
windows where heads may pop out any minute and you can wonder who they
belong to.  And it all feels as high up--as if it was another world."

"Oh, let me see it!" cried Lottie.  "Lift me up!"

Sara lifted her up, and they stood on the old table together and leaned
on the edge of the flat window in the roof, and looked out.

Anyone who has not done this does not know what a different world they
saw.  The slates spread out on either side of them and slanted down
into the rain gutter-pipes. The sparrows, being at home there,
twittered and hopped about quite without fear.  Two of them perched on
the chimney top nearest and quarrelled with each other fiercely until
one pecked the other and drove him away.  The garret window next to
theirs was shut because the house next door was empty.

"I wish someone lived there," Sara said.  "It is so close that if there
was a little girl in the attic, we could talk to each other through the
windows and climb over to see each other, if we were not afraid of
falling."

The sky seemed so much nearer than when one saw it from the street,
that Lottie was enchanted.  From the attic window, among the chimney
pots, the things which were happening in the world below seemed almost
unreal.  One scarcely believed in the existence of Miss Minchin and
Miss Amelia and the schoolroom, and the roll of wheels in the square
seemed a sound belonging to another existence.

"Oh, Sara!" cried Lottie, cuddling in her guarding arm. "I like this
attic--I like it!  It is nicer than downstairs!"

"Look at that sparrow," whispered Sara.  "I wish I had some crumbs to
throw to him."

"I have some!" came in a little shriek from Lottie.  "I have part of a
bun in my pocket; I bought it with my penny yesterday, and I saved a
bit."

When they threw out a few crumbs the sparrow jumped and flew away to an
adjacent chimney top.  He was evidently not accustomed to intimates in
attics, and unexpected crumbs startled him. But when Lottie remained
quite still and Sara chirped very softly--almost as if she were a
sparrow herself--he saw that the thing which had alarmed him
represented hospitality, after all.  He put his head on one side, and
from his perch on the chimney looked down at the crumbs with twinkling
eyes.  Lottie could scarcely keep still.

"Will he come?  Will he come?" she whispered.

"His eyes look as if he would," Sara whispered back.  "He is thinking
and thinking whether he dare.  Yes, he will!  Yes, he is coming!"

He flew down and hopped toward the crumbs, but stopped a few inches
away from them, putting his head on one side again, as if reflecting on
the chances that Sara and Lottie might turn out to be big cats and jump
on him.  At last his heart told him they were really nicer than they
looked, and he hopped nearer and nearer, darted at the biggest crumb
with a lightning peck, seized it, and carried it away to the other side
of his chimney.

"Now he KNOWS", said Sara.  "And he will come back for the others."

He did come back, and even brought a friend, and the friend went away
and brought a relative, and among them they made a hearty meal over
which they twittered and chattered and exclaimed, stopping every now
and then to put their heads on one side and examine Lottie and Sara.
Lottie was so delighted that she quite forgot her first shocked
impression of the attic.  In fact, when she was lifted down from the
table and returned to earthly things, as it were, Sara was able to
point out to her many beauties in the room which she herself would not
have suspected the existence of.

"It is so little and so high above everything," she said, "that it is
almost like a nest in a tree.  The slanting ceiling is so funny.  See,
you can scarcely stand up at this end of the room; and when the morning
begins to come I can lie in bed and look right up into the sky through
that flat window in the roof. It is like a square patch of light.  If
the sun is going to shine, little pink clouds float about, and I feel
as if I could touch them. And if it rains, the drops patter and patter
as if they were saying something nice.  Then if there are stars, you
can lie and try to count how many go into the patch.  It takes such a
lot.  And just look at that tiny, rusty grate in the corner.  If it was
polished and there was a fire in it, just think how nice it would be.
You see, it's really a beautiful little room."

She was walking round the small place, holding Lottie's hand and making
gestures which described all the beauties she was making herself see.
She quite made Lottie see them, too.  Lottie could always believe in
the things Sara made pictures of.

"You see," she said, "there could be a thick, soft blue Indian rug on
the floor; and in that corner there could be a soft little sofa, with
cushions to curl up on; and just over it could be a shelf full of books
so that one could reach them easily; and there could be a fur rug
before the fire, and hangings on the wall to cover up the whitewash,
and pictures.  They would have to be little ones, but they could be
beautiful; and there could be a lamp with a deep rose-colored shade;
and a table in the middle, with things to have tea with; and a little
fat copper kettle singing on the hob; and the bed could be quite
different.  It could be made soft and covered with a lovely silk
coverlet.  It could be beautiful. And perhaps we could coax the
sparrows until we made such friends with them that they would come and
peck at the window and ask to be let in."

"Oh, Sara!" cried Lottie.  "I should like to live here!"

When Sara had persuaded her to go downstairs again, and, after setting
her on her way, had come back to her attic, she stood in the middle of
it and looked about her.  The enchantment of her imaginings for Lottie
had died away.  The bed was hard and covered with its dingy quilt.  The
whitewashed wall showed its broken patches, the floor was cold and
bare, the grate was broken and rusty, and the battered footstool,
tilted sideways on its injured leg, the only seat in the room.  She sat
down on it for a few minutes and let her head drop in her hands.  The
mere fact that Lottie had come and gone away again made things seem a
little worse--just as perhaps prisoners feel a little more desolate
after visitors come and go, leaving them behind.

"It's a lonely place," she said.  "Sometimes it's the loneliest place
in the world."

She was sitting in this way when her attention was attracted by a
slight sound near her.  She lifted her head to see where it came from,
and if she had been a nervous child she would have left her seat on the
battered footstool in a great hurry.  A large rat was sitting up on his
hind quarters and sniffing the air in an interested manner. Some of
Lottie's crumbs had dropped upon the floor and their scent had drawn
him out of his hole.

He looked so queer and so like a gray-whiskered dwarf or gnome that
Sara was rather fascinated.  He looked at her with his bright eyes, as
if he were asking a question.  He was evidently so doubtful that one of
the child's queer thoughts came into her mind.

"I dare say it is rather hard to be a rat," she mused. "Nobody likes
you.  People jump and run away and scream out, 'Oh, a horrid rat!'  I
shouldn't like people to scream and jump and say, 'Oh, a horrid Sara!'
the moment they saw me.  And set traps for me, and pretend they were
dinner.  It's so different to be a sparrow. But nobody asked this rat
if he wanted to be a rat when he was made. Nobody said, 'Wouldn't you
rather be a sparrow?'"

She had sat so quietly that the rat had begun to take courage.  He was
very much afraid of her, but perhaps he had a heart like the sparrow
and it told him that she was not a thing which pounced. He was very
hungry.  He had a wife and a large family in the wall, and they had had
frightfully bad luck for several days.  He had left the children crying
bitterly, and felt he would risk a good deal for a few crumbs, so he
cautiously dropped upon his feet.

"Come on," said Sara; "I'm not a trap.  You can have them, poor thing!
Prisoners in the Bastille used to make friends with rats.  Suppose I
make friends with you."

How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is
certain that they do understand.  Perhaps there is a language which is
not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps
there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without
even making a sound, to another soul.  But whatsoever was the reason,
the rat knew from that moment that he was safe--even though he was a
rat.  He knew that this young human being sitting on the red footstool
would not jump up and terrify him with wild, sharp noises or throw
heavy objects at him which, if they did not fall and crush him, would
send him limping in his scurry back to his hole. He was really a very
nice rat, and did not mean the least harm. When he had stood on his
hind legs and sniffed the air, with his bright eyes fixed on Sara, he
had hoped that she would understand this, and would not begin by hating
him as an enemy.  When the mysterious thing which speaks without saying
any words told him that she would not, he went softly toward the crumbs
and began to eat them. As he did it he glanced every now and then at
Sara, just as the sparrows had done, and his expression was so very
apologetic that it touched her heart.

She sat and watched him without making any movement.  One crumb was
very much larger than the others--in fact, it could scarcely be called
a crumb.  It was evident that he wanted that piece very much, but it
lay quite near the footstool and he was still rather timid.

"I believe he wants it to carry to his family in the wall," Sara
thought.  "If I do not stir at all, perhaps he will come and get it."

She scarcely allowed herself to breathe, she was so deeply interested.
The rat shuffled a little nearer and ate a few more crumbs, then he
stopped and sniffed delicately, giving a side glance at the occupant of
the footstool; then he darted at the piece of bun with something very
like the sudden boldness of the sparrow, and the instant he had
possession of it fled back to the wall, slipped down a crack in the
skirting board, and was gone.

"I knew he wanted it for his children," said Sara.  "I do believe I
could make friends with him."

A week or so afterward, on one of the rare nights when Ermengarde found
it safe to steal up to the attic, when she tapped on the door with the
tips of her fingers Sara did not come to her for two or three minutes.
There was, indeed, such a silence in the room at first that Ermengarde
wondered if she could have fallen asleep.  Then, to her surprise, she
heard her utter a little, low laugh and speak coaxingly to someone.

"There!"  Ermengarde heard her say.  "Take it and go home, Melchisedec!
Go home to your wife!"

Almost immediately Sara opened the door, and when she did so she found
Ermengarde standing with alarmed eyes upon the threshold.

"Who--who ARE you talking to, Sara?" she gasped out.

Sara drew her in cautiously, but she looked as if something pleased and
amused her.

"You must promise not to be frightened--not to scream the least bit, or
I can't tell you," she answered.

Ermengarde felt almost inclined to scream on the spot, but managed to
control herself.  She looked all round the attic and saw no one. And
yet Sara had certainly been speaking TO someone.  She thought of ghosts.

"Is it--something that will frighten me?" she asked timorously.

"Some people are afraid of them," said Sara.  "I was at first--but I am
not now."

"Was it--a ghost?" quaked Ermengarde.

"No," said Sara, laughing.  "It was my rat."

Ermengarde made one bound, and landed in the middle of the little dingy
bed.  She tucked her feet under her nightgown and the red shawl. She
did not scream, but she gasped with fright.

"Oh!  Oh!" she cried under her breath.  "A rat!  A rat!"

"I was afraid you would be frightened," said Sara.  "But you needn't
be.  I am making him tame.  He actually knows me and comes out when I
call him.  Are you too frightened to want to see him?"

The truth was that, as the days had gone on and, with the aid of scraps
brought up from the kitchen, her curious friendship had developed, she
had gradually forgotten that the timid creature she was becoming
familiar with was a mere rat.

At first Ermengarde was too much alarmed to do anything but huddle in a
heap upon the bed and tuck up her feet, but the sight of Sara's
composed little countenance and the story of Melchisedec's first
appearance began at last to rouse her curiosity, and she leaned forward
over the edge of the bed and watched Sara go and kneel down by the hole
in the skirting board.

"He--he won't run out quickly and jump on the bed, will he?" she said.

"No," answered Sara.  "He's as polite as we are.  He is just like a
person.  Now watch!"

She began to make a low, whistling sound--so low and coaxing that it
could only have been heard in entire stillness. She did it several
times, looking entirely absorbed in it. Ermengarde thought she looked
as if she were working a spell. And at last, evidently in response to
it, a gray-whiskered, bright-eyed head peeped out of the hole.  Sara
had some crumbs in her hand. She dropped them, and Melchisedec came
quietly forth and ate them. A piece of larger size than the rest he
took and carried in the most businesslike manner back to his home.

"You see," said Sara, "that is for his wife and children. He is very
nice.  He only eats the little bits.  After he goes back I can always
hear his family squeaking for joy. There are three kinds of squeaks.
One kind is the children's, and one is Mrs. Melchisedec's, and one is
Melchisedec's own."

Ermengarde began to laugh.

"Oh, Sara!" she said.  "You ARE queer--but you are nice."

"I know I am queer," admitted Sara, cheerfully; "and I TRY to be nice."
She rubbed her forehead with her little brown paw, and a puzzled,
tender look came into her face.  "Papa always laughed at me," she said;
"but I liked it.  He thought I was queer, but he liked me to make up
things.  I--I can't help making up things.  If I didn't, I don't
believe I could live."  She paused and glanced around the attic. "I'm
sure I couldn't live here," she added in a low voice.

Ermengarde was interested, as she always was.  "When you talk about
things," she said, "they seem as if they grew real. You talk about
Melchisedec as if he was a person."

"He IS a person," said Sara.  "He gets hungry and frightened, just as
we do; and he is married and has children.  How do we know he doesn't
think things, just as we do?  His eyes look as if he was a person.
That was why I gave him a name."

She sat down on the floor in her favorite attitude, holding her knees.

"Besides," she said, "he is a Bastille rat sent to be my friend.  I can
always get a bit of bread the cook has thrown away, and it is quite
enough to support him."

"Is it the Bastille yet?" asked Ermengarde, eagerly.  "Do you always
pretend it is the Bastille?"

"Nearly always," answered Sara.  "Sometimes I try to pretend it is
another kind of place; but the Bastille is generally
easiest--particularly when it is cold."

Just at that moment Ermengarde almost jumped off the bed, she was so
startled by a sound she heard.  It was like two distinct knocks on the
wall.

"What is that?" she exclaimed.

Sara got up from the floor and answered quite dramatically:

"It is the prisoner in the next cell."

"Becky!" cried Ermengarde, enraptured.

"Yes," said Sara.  "Listen; the two knocks meant, 'Prisoner, are you
there?'"

She knocked three times on the wall herself, as if in answer.

"That means, 'Yes, I am here, and all is well.'"

Four knocks came from Becky's side of the wall.

"That means," explained Sara, "'Then, fellow-sufferer, we will sleep in
peace.  Good night.'"

Ermengarde quite beamed with delight.

"Oh, Sara!" she whispered joyfully.  "It is like a story!"

"It IS a story," said Sara.  "EVERYTHING'S a story.  You are a story--I
am a story.  Miss Minchin is a story."

And she sat down again and talked until Ermengarde forgot that she was
a sort of escaped prisoner herself, and had to be reminded by Sara that
she could not remain in the Bastille all night, but must steal
noiselessly downstairs again and creep back into her deserted bed.

The Indian Gentleman

But it was a perilous thing for Ermengarde and Lottie to make
pilgrimages to the attic.  They could never be quite sure when Sara
would be there, and they could scarcely ever be certain that Miss
Amelia would not make a tour of inspection through the bedrooms after
the pupils were supposed to be asleep.  So their visits were rare ones,
and Sara lived a strange and lonely life.  It was a lonelier life when
she was downstairs than when she was in her attic.  She had no one to
talk to; and when she was sent out on errands and walked through the
streets, a forlorn little figure carrying a basket or a parcel, trying
to hold her hat on when the wind was blowing, and feeling the water
soak through her shoes when it was raining, she felt as if the crowds
hurrying past her made her loneliness greater. When she had been the
Princess Sara, driving through the streets in her brougham, or walking,
attended by Mariette, the sight of her bright, eager little face and
picturesque coats and hats had often caused people to look after her.
A happy, beautifully cared for little girl naturally attracts
attention.  Shabby, poorly dressed children are not rare enough and
pretty enough to make people turn around to look at them and smile.  No
one looked at Sara in these days, and no one seemed to see her as she
hurried along the crowded pavements. She had begun to grow very fast,
and, as she was dressed only in such clothes as the plainer remnants of
her wardrobe would supply, she knew she looked very queer, indeed.  All
her valuable garments had been disposed of, and such as had been left
for her use she was expected to wear so long as she could put them on
at all. Sometimes, when she passed a shop window with a mirror in it,
she almost laughed outright on catching a glimpse of herself, and
sometimes her face went red and she bit her lip and turned away.

In the evening, when she passed houses whose windows were lighted up,
she used to look into the warm rooms and amuse herself by imagining
things about the people she saw sitting before the fires or about the
tables.  It always interested her to catch glimpses of rooms before the
shutters were closed.  There were several families in the square in
which Miss Minchin lived, with which she had become quite familiar in a
way of her own.  The one she liked best she called the Large Family.
She called it the Large Family not because the members of it were
big--for, indeed, most of them were little--but because there were so
many of them.  There were eight children in the Large Family, and a
stout, rosy mother, and a stout, rosy father, and a stout, rosy
grandmother, and any number of servants. The eight children were always
either being taken out to walk or to ride in perambulators by
comfortable nurses, or they were going to drive with their mamma, or
they were flying to the door in the evening to meet their papa and kiss
him and dance around him and drag off his overcoat and look in the
pockets for packages, or they were crowding about the nursery windows
and looking out and pushing each other and laughing--in fact, they were
always doing something enjoyable and suited to the tastes of a large
family.  Sara was quite fond of them, and had given them names out of
books--quite romantic names.  She called them the Montmorencys when she
did not call them the Large Family.  The fat, fair baby with the lace
cap was Ethelberta Beauchamp Montmorency; the next baby was Violet
Cholmondeley Montmorency; the little boy who could just stagger and who
had such round legs was Sydney Cecil Vivian Montmorency; and then came
Lilian Evangeline Maud Marion, Rosalind Gladys, Guy Clarence, Veronica
Eustacia, and Claude Harold Hector.

One evening a very funny thing happened--though, perhaps, in one sense
it was not a funny thing at all.

Several of the Montmorencys were evidently going to a children's party,
and just as Sara was about to pass the door they were crossing the
pavement to get into the carriage which was waiting for them. Veronica
Eustacia and Rosalind Gladys, in white-lace frocks and lovely sashes,
had just got in, and Guy Clarence, aged five, was following them.  He
was such a pretty fellow and had such rosy cheeks and blue eyes, and
such a darling little round head covered with curls, that Sara forgot
her basket and shabby cloak altogether--in fact, forgot everything but
that she wanted to look at him for a moment. So she paused and looked.

It was Christmas time, and the Large Family had been hearing many
stories about children who were poor and had no mammas and papas to
fill their stockings and take them to the pantomime--children who were,
in fact, cold and thinly clad and hungry.  In the stories, kind
people--sometimes little boys and girls with tender hearts--invariably
saw the poor children and gave them money or rich gifts, or took them
home to beautiful dinners.  Guy Clarence had been affected to tears
that very afternoon by the reading of such a story, and he had burned
with a desire to find such a poor child and give her a certain sixpence
he possessed, and thus provide for her for life. An entire sixpence, he
was sure, would mean affluence for evermore. As he crossed the strip of
red carpet laid across the pavement from the door to the carriage, he
had this very sixpence in the pocket of his very short man-o-war
trousers; And just as Rosalind Gladys got into the vehicle and jumped
on the seat in order to feel the cushions spring under her, he saw Sara
standing on the wet pavement in her shabby frock and hat, with her old
basket on her arm, looking at him hungrily.

He thought that her eyes looked hungry because she had perhaps had
nothing to eat for a long time.  He did not know that they looked so
because she was hungry for the warm, merry life his home held and his
rosy face spoke of, and that she had a hungry wish to snatch him in her
arms and kiss him.  He only knew that she had big eyes and a thin face
and thin legs and a common basket and poor clothes. So he put his hand
in his pocket and found his sixpence and walked up to her benignly.

"Here, poor little girl," he said.  "Here is a sixpence. I will give it
to you."

Sara started, and all at once realized that she looked exactly like
poor children she had seen, in her better days, waiting on the pavement
to watch her as she got out of her brougham. And she had given them
pennies many a time.  Her face went red and then it went pale, and for
a second she felt as if she could not take the dear little sixpence.

"Oh, no!" she said.  "Oh, no, thank you; I mustn't take it, indeed!"

Her voice was so unlike an ordinary street child's voice and her manner
was so like the manner of a well-bred little person that Veronica
Eustacia (whose real name was Janet) and Rosalind Gladys (who was
really called Nora) leaned forward to listen.

But Guy Clarence was not to be thwarted in his benevolence. He thrust
the sixpence into her hand.

"Yes, you must take it, poor little girl!" he insisted stoutly.  "You
can buy things to eat with it.  It is a whole sixpence!"

There was something so honest and kind in his face, and he looked so
likely to be heartbrokenly disappointed if she did not take it, that
Sara knew she must not refuse him.  To be as proud as that would be a
cruel thing.  So she actually put her pride in her pocket, though it
must be admitted her cheeks burned.

"Thank you," she said.  "You are a kind, kind little darling thing."
And as he scrambled joyfully into the carriage she went away, trying to
smile, though she caught her breath quickly and her eyes were shining
through a mist.  She had known that she looked odd and shabby, but
until now she had not known that she might be taken for a beggar.

As the Large Family's carriage drove away, the children inside it were
talking with interested excitement.

"Oh, Donald," (this was Guy Clarence's name), Janet exclaimed
alarmedly, "why did you offer that little girl your sixpence?  I'm sure
she is not a beggar!"

"She didn't speak like a beggar!" cried Nora.  "And her face didn't
really look like a beggar's face!"

"Besides, she didn't beg," said Janet.  "I was so afraid she might be
angry with you.  You know, it makes people angry to be taken for
beggars when they are not beggars."

"She wasn't angry," said Donald, a trifle dismayed, but still firm.
"She laughed a little, and she said I was a kind, kind little darling
thing.  And I was!"--stoutly.  "It was my whole sixpence."

Janet and Nora exchanged glances.

"A beggar girl would never have said that," decided Janet. "She would
have said, 'Thank yer kindly, little gentleman--thank yer, sir;' and
perhaps she would have bobbed a curtsy."

Sara knew nothing about the fact, but from that time the Large Family
was as profoundly interested in her as she was in it.  Faces used to
appear at the nursery windows when she passed, and many discussions
concerning her were held round the fire.

"She is a kind of servant at the seminary," Janet said.  "I don't
believe she belongs to anybody.  I believe she is an orphan. But she is
not a beggar, however shabby she looks."

And afterward she was called by all of them,
"The-little-girl-who-is-not-a-beggar," which was, of course, rather a
long name, and sounded very funny sometimes when the youngest ones said
it in a hurry.

Sara managed to bore a hole in the sixpence and hung it on an old bit
of narrow ribbon round her neck.  Her affection for the Large Family
increased--as, indeed, her affection for everything she could love
increased.  She grew fonder and fonder of Becky, and she used to look
forward to the two mornings a week when she went into the schoolroom to
give the little ones their French lesson. Her small pupils loved her,
and strove with each other for the privilege of standing close to her
and insinuating their small hands into hers. It fed her hungry heart to
feel them nestling up to her.  She made such friends with the sparrows
that when she stood upon the table, put her head and shoulders out of
the attic window, and chirped, she heard almost immediately a flutter
of wings and answering twitters, and a little flock of dingy town birds
appeared and alighted on the slates to talk to her and make much of the
crumbs she scattered. With Melchisedec she had become so intimate that
he actually brought Mrs. Melchisedec with him sometimes, and now and
then one or two of his children.  She used to talk to him, and,
somehow, he looked quite as if he understood.

There had grown in her mind rather a strange feeling about Emily, who
always sat and looked on at everything.  It arose in one of her moments
of great desolateness.  She would have liked to believe or pretend to
believe that Emily understood and sympathized with her. She did not
like to own to herself that her only companion could feel and hear
nothing.  She used to put her in a chair sometimes and sit opposite to
her on the old red footstool, and stare and pretend about her until her
own eyes would grow large with something which was almost like
fear--particularly at night when everything was so still, when the only
sound in the attic was the occasional sudden scurry and squeak of
Melchisedec's family in the wall. One of her "pretends" was that Emily
was a kind of good witch who could protect her.  Sometimes, after she
had stared at her until she was wrought up to the highest pitch of
fancifulness, she would ask her questions and find herself ALMOST
feeling as if she would presently answer.  But she never did.

"As to answering, though," said Sara, trying to console herself, "I
don't answer very often.  I never answer when I can help it.  When
people are insulting you, there is nothing so good for them as not to
say a word--just to look at them and THINK. Miss Minchin turns pale
with rage when I do it, Miss Amelia looks frightened, and so do the
girls.  When you will not fly into a passion people know you are
stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your
rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wish they
hadn't said afterward.  There's nothing so strong as rage, except what
makes you hold it in--that's stronger. It's a good thing not to answer
your enemies.  I scarcely ever do. Perhaps Emily is more like me than I
am like myself.  Perhaps she would rather not answer her friends, even.
She keeps it all in her heart."

But though she tried to satisfy herself with these arguments, she did
not find it easy.  When, after a long, hard day, in which she had been
sent here and there, sometimes on long errands through wind and cold
and rain, she came in wet and hungry, and was sent out again because
nobody chose to remember that she was only a child, and that her slim
legs might be tired and her small body might be chilled; when she had
been given only harsh words and cold, slighting looks for thanks; when
the cook had been vulgar and insolent; when Miss Minchin had been in
her worst mood, and when she had seen the girls sneering among
themselves at her shabbiness--then she was not always able to comfort
her sore, proud, desolate heart with fancies when Emily merely sat
upright in her old chair and stared.

One of these nights, when she came up to the attic cold and hungry,
with a tempest raging in her young breast, Emily's stare seemed so
vacant, her sawdust legs and arms so inexpressive, that Sara lost all
control over herself.  There was nobody but Emily--no one in the world.
And there she sat.

"I shall die presently," she said at first.

Emily simply stared.

"I can't bear this," said the poor child, trembling.  "I know I shall
die.  I'm cold; I'm wet; I'm starving to death.  I've walked a thousand
miles today, and they have done nothing but scold me from morning until
night.  And because I could not find that last thing the cook sent me
for, they would not give me any supper.  Some men laughed at me because
my old shoes made me slip down in the mud. I'm covered with mud now.
And they laughed.  Do you hear?"

She looked at the staring glass eyes and complacent face, and suddenly
a sort of heartbroken rage seized her.  She lifted her little savage
hand and knocked Emily off the chair, bursting into a passion of
sobbing--Sara who never cried.

"You are nothing but a DOLL!" she cried.  "Nothing but a
doll--doll--doll!  You care for nothing.  You are stuffed with sawdust.
You never had a heart.  Nothing could ever make you feel. You are a
DOLL!" Emily lay on the floor, with her legs ignominiously doubled up
over her head, and a new flat place on the end of her nose; but she was
calm, even dignified.  Sara hid her face in her arms. The rats in the
wall began to fight and bite each other and squeak and scramble.
Melchisedec was chastising some of his family.

Sara's sobs gradually quieted themselves.  It was so unlike her to
break down that she was surprised at herself.  After a while she raised
her face and looked at Emily, who seemed to be gazing at her round the
side of one angle, and, somehow, by this time actually with a kind of
glassy-eyed sympathy.  Sara bent and picked her up. Remorse overtook
her.  She even smiled at herself a very little smile.

"You can't help being a doll," she said with a resigned sigh, "any more
than Lavinia and Jessie can help not having any sense.  We are not all
made alike.  Perhaps you do your sawdust best." And she kissed her and
shook her clothes straight, and put her back upon her chair.

She had wished very much that some one would take the empty house next
door.  She wished it because of the attic window which was so near
hers.  It seemed as if it would be so nice to see it propped open
someday and a head and shoulders rising out of the square aperture.

"If it looked a nice head," she thought, "I might begin by saying,
'Good morning,' and all sorts of things might happen.  But, of course,
it's not really likely that anyone but under servants would sleep
there."

One morning, on turning the corner of the square after a visit to the
grocer's, the butcher's, and the baker's, she saw, to her great
delight, that during her rather prolonged absence, a van full of
furniture had stopped before the next house, the front doors were
thrown open, and men in shirt sleeves were going in and out carrying
heavy packages and pieces of furniture.

"It's taken!" she said.  "It really IS taken!  Oh, I do hope a nice
head will look out of the attic window!"

She would almost have liked to join the group of loiterers who had
stopped on the pavement to watch the things carried in. She had an idea
that if she could see some of the furniture she could guess something
about the people it belonged to.

"Miss Minchin's tables and chairs are just like her," she thought; "I
remember thinking that the first minute I saw her, even though I was so
little.  I told papa afterward, and he laughed and said it was true. I
am sure the Large Family have fat, comfortable armchairs and sofas, and
I can see that their red-flowery wallpaper is exactly like them. It's
warm and cheerful and kind-looking and happy."

She was sent out for parsley to the greengrocer's later in the day, and
when she came up the area steps her heart gave quite a quick beat of
recognition.  Several pieces of furniture had been set out of the van
upon the pavement.  There was a beautiful table of elaborately wrought
teakwood, and some chairs, and a screen covered with rich Oriental
embroidery.  The sight of them gave her a weird, homesick feeling.  She
had seen things so like them in India. One of the things Miss Minchin
had taken from her was a carved teakwood desk her father had sent her.

"They are beautiful things," she said; "they look as if they ought to
belong to a nice person.  All the things look rather grand. I suppose
it is a rich family."

The vans of furniture came and were unloaded and gave place to others
all the day.  Several times it so happened that Sara had an opportunity
of seeing things carried in.  It became plain that she had been right
in guessing that the newcomers were people of large means. All the
furniture was rich and beautiful, and a great deal of it was Oriental.
Wonderful rugs and draperies and ornaments were taken from the vans,
many pictures, and books enough for a library. Among other things there
was a superb god Buddha in a splendid shrine.

"Someone in the family MUST have been in India," Sara thought.  "They
have got used to Indian things and like them.  I AM glad.  I shall feel
as if they were friends, even if a head never looks out of the attic
window."

When she was taking in the evening's milk for the cook (there was
really no odd job she was not called upon to do), she saw something
occur which made the situation more interesting than ever.  The
handsome, rosy man who was the father of the Large Family walked across
the square in the most matter-of-fact manner, and ran up the steps of
the next-door house.  He ran up them as if he felt quite at home and
expected to run up and down them many a time in the future. He stayed
inside quite a long time, and several times came out and gave
directions to the workmen, as if he had a right to do so. It was quite
certain that he was in some intimate way connected with the newcomers
and was acting for them.

"If the new people have children," Sara speculated, "the Large Family
children will be sure to come and play with them, and they MIGHT come
up into the attic just for fun."

At night, after her work was done, Becky came in to see her fellow
prisoner and bring her news.

"It's a' Nindian gentleman that's comin' to live next door, miss," she
said.  "I don't know whether he's a black gentleman or not, but he's a
Nindian one.  He's very rich, an' he's ill, an' the gentleman of the
Large Family is his lawyer.  He's had a lot of trouble, an' it's made
him ill an' low in his mind.  He worships idols, miss. He's an 'eathen
an' bows down to wood an' stone.  I seen a' idol bein' carried in for
him to worship.  Somebody had oughter send him a trac'. You can get a
trac' for a penny."

Sara laughed a little.

"I don't believe he worships that idol," she said; "some people like to
keep them to look at because they are interesting. My papa had a
beautiful one, and he did not worship it."

But Becky was rather inclined to prefer to believe that the new
neighbor was "an 'eathen."  It sounded so much more romantic than that
he should merely be the ordinary kind of gentleman who went to church
with a prayer book.  She sat and talked long that night of what he
would be like, of what his wife would be like if he had one, and of
what his children would be like if they had children. Sara saw that
privately she could not help hoping very much that they would all be
black, and would wear turbans, and, above all, that--like their
parent--they would all be "'eathens."

"I never lived next door to no 'eathens, miss," she said; "I should
like to see what sort o' ways they'd have."

It was several weeks before her curiosity was satisfied, and then it
was revealed that the new occupant had neither wife nor children. He
was a solitary man with no family at all, and it was evident that he
was shattered in health and unhappy in mind.

A carriage drove up one day and stopped before the house. When the
footman dismounted from the box and opened the door the gentleman who
was the father of the Large Family got out first.  After him there
descended a nurse in uniform, then came down the steps two
men-servants. They came to assist their master, who, when he was helped
out of the carriage, proved to be a man with a haggard, distressed
face, and a skeleton body wrapped in furs.  He was carried up the
steps, and the head of the Large Family went with him, looking very
anxious.  Shortly afterward a doctor's carriage arrived, and the doctor
went in--plainly to take care of him.

"There is such a yellow gentleman next door, Sara," Lottie whispered at
the French class afterward.  "Do you think he is a Chinee? The
geography says the Chinee men are yellow."

"No, he is not Chinese," Sara whispered back; "he is very ill.  Go on
with your exercise, Lottie.  'Non, monsieur.  Je n'ai pas le canif de
mon oncle.'"

That was the beginning of the story of the Indian gentleman.

Ram Dass

There were fine sunsets even in the square, sometimes.  One could only
see parts of them, however, between the chimneys and over the roofs.
From the kitchen windows one could not see them at all, and could only
guess that they were going on because the bricks looked warm and the
air rosy or yellow for a while, or perhaps one saw a blazing glow
strike a particular pane of glass somewhere. There was, however, one
place from which one could see all the splendor of them: the piles of
red or gold clouds in the west; or the purple ones edged with dazzling
brightness; or the little fleecy, floating ones, tinged with rose-color
and looking like flights of pink doves scurrying across the blue in a
great hurry if there was a wind. The place where one could see all
this, and seem at the same time to breathe a purer air, was, of course,
the attic window. When the square suddenly seemed to begin to glow in
an enchanted way and look wonderful in spite of its sooty trees and
railings, Sara knew something was going on in the sky; and when it was
at all possible to leave the kitchen without being missed or called
back, she invariably stole away and crept up the flights of stairs,
and, climbing on the old table, got her head and body as far out of the
window as possible.  When she had accomplished this, she always drew a
long breath and looked all round her.  It used to seem as if she had
all the sky and the world to herself.  No one else ever looked out of
the other attics.  Generally the skylights were closed; but even if
they were propped open to admit air, no one seemed to come near them.
And there Sara would stand, sometimes turning her face upward to the
blue which seemed so friendly and near--just like a lovely vaulted
ceiling--sometimes watching the west and all the wonderful things that
happened there: the clouds melting or drifting or waiting softly to be
changed pink or crimson or snow-white or purple or pale dove-gray.
Sometimes they made islands or great mountains enclosing lakes of deep
turquoise-blue, or liquid amber, or chrysoprase-green; sometimes dark
headlands jutted into strange, lost seas; sometimes slender strips of
wonderful lands joined other wonderful lands together.  There were
places where it seemed that one could run or climb or stand and wait to
see what next was coming--until, perhaps, as it all melted, one could
float away.  At least it seemed so to Sara, and nothing had ever been
quite so beautiful to her as the things she saw as she stood on the
table--her body half out of the skylight--the sparrows twittering with
sunset softness on the slates.  The sparrows always seemed to her to
twitter with a sort of subdued softness just when these marvels were
going on.

There was such a sunset as this a few days after the Indian gentleman
was brought to his new home; and, as it fortunately happened that the
afternoon's work was done in the kitchen and nobody had ordered her to
go anywhere or perform any task, Sara found it easier than usual to
slip away and go upstairs.

She mounted her table and stood looking out.  It was a wonderful
moment.  There were floods of molten gold covering the west, as if a
glorious tide was sweeping over the world. A deep, rich yellow light
filled the air; the birds flying across the tops of the houses showed
quite black against it.

"It's a Splendid one," said Sara, softly, to herself.  "It makes me
feel almost afraid--as if something strange was just going to happen.
The Splendid ones always make me feel like that."

She suddenly turned her head because she heard a sound a few yards away
from her.  It was an odd sound like a queer little squeaky chattering.
It came from the window of the next attic.  Someone had come to look at
the sunset as she had.  There was a head and a part of a body emerging
from the skylight, but it was not the head or body of a little girl or
a housemaid; it was the picturesque white-swathed form and dark-faced,
gleaming-eyed, white-turbaned head of a native Indian man-servant--"a
Lascar," Sara said to herself quickly--and the sound she had heard came
from a small monkey he held in his arms as if he were fond of it, and
which was snuggling and chattering against his breast.

As Sara looked toward him he looked toward her.  The first thing she
thought was that his dark face looked sorrowful and homesick. She felt
absolutely sure he had come up to look at the sun, because he had seen
it so seldom in England that he longed for a sight of it. She looked at
him interestedly for a second, and then smiled across the slates.  She
had learned to know how comforting a smile, even from a stranger, may
be.

Hers was evidently a pleasure to him.  His whole expression altered,
and he showed such gleaming white teeth as he smiled back that it was
as if a light had been illuminated in his dusky face. The friendly look
in Sara's eyes was always very effective when people felt tired or dull.

It was perhaps in making his salute to her that he loosened his hold on
the monkey.  He was an impish monkey and always ready for adventure,
and it is probable that the sight of a little girl excited him. He
suddenly broke loose, jumped on to the slates, ran across them
chattering, and actually leaped on to Sara's shoulder, and from there
down into her attic room.  It made her laugh and delighted her; but she
knew he must be restored to his master--if the Lascar was his
master--and she wondered how this was to be done.  Would he let her
catch him, or would he be naughty and refuse to be caught, and perhaps
get away and run off over the roofs and be lost? That would not do at
all.  Perhaps he belonged to the Indian gentleman, and the poor man was
fond of him.

She turned to the Lascar, feeling glad that she remembered still some
of the Hindustani she had learned when she lived with her father. She
could make the man understand.  She spoke to him in the language he
knew.

"Will he let me catch him?" she asked.

She thought she had never seen more surprise and delight than the dark
face expressed when she spoke in the familiar tongue. The truth was
that the poor fellow felt as if his gods had intervened, and the kind
little voice came from heaven itself.  At once Sara saw that he had
been accustomed to European children.  He poured forth a flood of
respectful thanks.  He was the servant of Missee Sahib. The monkey was
a good monkey and would not bite; but, unfortunately, he was difficult
to catch.  He would flee from one spot to another, like the lightning.
He was disobedient, though not evil. Ram Dass knew him as if he were
his child, and Ram Dass he would sometimes obey, but not always.  If
Missee Sahib would permit Ram Dass, he himself could cross the roof to
her room, enter the windows, and regain the unworthy little animal.
But he was evidently afraid Sara might think he was taking a great
liberty and perhaps would not let him come.

But Sara gave him leave at once.

"Can you get across?" she inquired.

"In a moment," he answered her.

"Then come," she said; "he is flying from side to side of the room as
if he was frightened."

Ram Dass slipped through his attic window and crossed to hers as
steadily and lightly as if he had walked on roofs all his life.  He
slipped through the skylight and dropped upon his feet without a sound.
Then he turned to Sara and salaamed again.  The monkey saw him and
uttered a little scream.  Ram Dass hastily took the precaution of
shutting the skylight, and then went in chase of him. It was not a very
long chase.  The monkey prolonged it a few minutes evidently for the
mere fun of it, but presently he sprang chattering on to Ram Dass's
shoulder and sat there chattering and clinging to his neck with a weird
little skinny arm.

Ram Dass thanked Sara profoundly.  She had seen that his quick native
eyes had taken in at a glance all the bare shabbiness of the room, but
he spoke to her as if he were speaking to the little daughter of a
rajah, and pretended that he observed nothing.  He did not presume to
remain more than a few moments after he had caught the monkey, and
those moments were given to further deep and grateful obeisance to her
in return for her indulgence.  This little evil one, he said, stroking
the monkey, was, in truth, not so evil as he seemed, and his master,
who was ill, was sometimes amused by him.  He would have been made sad
if his favorite had run away and been lost. Then he salaamed once more
and got through the skylight and across the slates again with as much
agility as the monkey himself had displayed.

When he had gone Sara stood in the middle of her attic and thought of
many things his face and his manner had brought back to her.  The sight
of his native costume and the profound reverence of his manner stirred
all her past memories.  It seemed a strange thing to remember that
she--the drudge whom the cook had said insulting things to an hour
ago--had only a few years ago been surrounded by people who all treated
her as Ram Dass had treated her; who salaamed when she went by, whose
foreheads almost touched the ground when she spoke to them, who were
her servants and her slaves.  It was like a sort of dream. It was all
over, and it could never come back.  It certainly seemed that there was
no way in which any change could take place. She knew what Miss Minchin
intended that her future should be. So long as she was too young to be
used as a regular teacher, she would be used as an errand girl and
servant and yet expected to remember what she had learned and in some
mysterious way to learn more.  The greater number of her evenings she
was supposed to spend at study, and at various indefinite intervals she
was examined and knew she would have been severely admonished if she
had not advanced as was expected of her.  The truth, indeed, was that
Miss Minchin knew that she was too anxious to learn to require
teachers. Give her books, and she would devour them and end by knowing
them by heart.  She might be trusted to be equal to teaching a good
deal in the course of a few years.  This was what would happen: when
she was older she would be expected to drudge in the schoolroom as she
drudged now in various parts of the house; they would be obliged to
give her more respectable clothes, but they would be sure to be plain
and ugly and to make her look somehow like a servant. That was all
there seemed to be to look forward to, and Sara stood quite still for
several minutes and thought it over.

Then a thought came back to her which made the color rise in her cheek
and a spark light itself in her eyes.  She straightened her thin little
body and lifted her head.

"Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing.  If I am a
princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be
easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a
great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows
it.  There was Marie Antoinette when she was in prison and her throne
was gone and she had only a black gown on, and her hair was white, and
they insulted her and called her Widow Capet. She was a great deal more
like a queen then than when she was so gay and everything was so grand.
I like her best then.  Those howling mobs of people did not frighten
her.  She was stronger than they were, even when they cut her head off."

This was not a new thought, but quite an old one, by this time.  It had
consoled her through many a bitter day, and she had gone about the
house with an expression in her face which Miss Minchin could not
understand and which was a source of great annoyance to her, as it
seemed as if the child were mentally living a life which held her above
the rest of the world.  It was as if she scarcely heard the rude and
acid things said to her; or, if she heard them, did not care for them
at all.  Sometimes, when she was in the midst of some harsh,
domineering speech, Miss Minchin would find the still, unchildish eyes
fixed upon her with something like a proud smile in them.  At such
times she did not know that Sara was saying to herself:

"You don't know that you are saying these things to a princess, and
that if I chose I could wave my hand and order you to execution. I only
spare you because I am a princess, and you are a poor, stupid, unkind,
vulgar old thing, and don't know any better."

This used to interest and amuse her more than anything else; and queer
and fanciful as it was, she found comfort in it and it was a good thing
for her.  While the thought held possession of her, she could not be
made rude and malicious by the rudeness and malice of those about her.

"A princess must be polite," she said to herself.

And so when the servants, taking their tone from their mistress, were
insolent and ordered her about, she would hold her head erect and reply
to them with a quaint civility which often made them stare at her.

"She's got more airs and graces than if she come from Buckingham
Palace, that young one," said the cook, chuckling a little sometimes.
"I lose my temper with her often enough, but I will say she never
forgets her manners.  'If you please, cook'; 'Will you be so kind,
cook?'  'I beg your pardon, cook'; 'May I trouble you, cook?'  She
drops 'em about the kitchen as if they was nothing."

The morning after the interview with Ram Dass and his monkey, Sara was
in the schoolroom with her small pupils.  Having finished giving them
their lessons, she was putting the French exercise-books together and
thinking, as she did it, of the various things royal personages in
disguise were called upon to do:  Alfred the Great, for instance,
burning the cakes and getting his ears boxed by the wife of the
neat-herd. How frightened she must have been when she found out what
she had done. If Miss Minchin should find out that she--Sara, whose
toes were almost sticking out of her boots--was a princess--a real one!
The look in her eyes was exactly the look which Miss Minchin most
disliked. She would not have it; she was quite near her and was so
enraged that she actually flew at her and boxed her ears--exactly as
the neat-herd's wife had boxed King Alfred's. It made Sara start. She
wakened from her dream at the shock, and, catching her breath, stood
still a second.  Then, not knowing she was going to do it, she broke
into a little laugh.

"What are you laughing at, you bold, impudent child?" Miss Minchin
exclaimed.

It took Sara a few seconds to control herself sufficiently to remember
that she was a princess.  Her cheeks were red and smarting from the
blows she had received.

"I was thinking," she answered.

"Beg my pardon immediately," said Miss Minchin.

Sara hesitated a second before she replied.

"I will beg your pardon for laughing, if it was rude," she said then;
"but I won't beg your pardon for thinking."

"What were you thinking?" demanded Miss Minchin.
"How dare you think?  What were you thinking?"

Jessie tittered, and she and Lavinia nudged each other in unison. All
the girls looked up from their books to listen.  Really, it always
interested them a little when Miss Minchin attacked Sara.  Sara always
said something queer, and never seemed the least bit frightened. She
was not in the least frightened now, though her boxed ears were scarlet
and her eyes were as bright as stars.

"I was thinking," she answered grandly and politely, "that you did not
know what you were doing."

"That I did not know what I was doing?"  Miss Minchin fairly gasped.

"Yes," said Sara, "and I was thinking what would happen if I were a
princess and you boxed my ears--what I should do to you. And I was
thinking that if I were one, you would never dare to do it, whatever I
said or did.  And I was thinking how surprised and frightened you would
be if you suddenly found out--"

She had the imagined future so clearly before her eyes that she spoke
in a manner which had an effect even upon Miss Minchin. It almost
seemed for the moment to her narrow, unimaginative mind that there must
be some real power hidden behind this candid daring.

"What?" she exclaimed.  "Found out what?"

"That I really was a princess," said Sara, "and could do
anything--anything I liked."

Every pair of eyes in the room widened to its full limit.  Lavinia
leaned forward on her seat to look.

"Go to your room," cried Miss Minchin, breathlessly, "this instant!
Leave the schoolroom!  Attend to your lessons, young ladies!"

Sara made a little bow.

"Excuse me for laughing if it was impolite," she said, and walked out
of the room, leaving Miss Minchin struggling with her rage, and the
girls whispering over their books.

"Did you see her?  Did you see how queer she looked?"  Jessie broke
out. "I shouldn't be at all surprised if she did turn out to be
something. Suppose she should!"

The Other Side of the Wall

When one lives in a row of houses, it is interesting to think of the
things which are being done and said on the other side of the wall of
the very rooms one is living in.  Sara was fond of amusing herself by
trying to imagine the things hidden by the wall which divided the
Select Seminary from the Indian gentleman's house. She knew that the
schoolroom was next to the Indian gentleman's study, and she hoped that
the wall was thick so that the noise made sometimes after lesson hours
would not disturb him.

"I am growing quite fond of him," she said to Ermengarde; "I should not
like him to be disturbed.  I have adopted him for a friend. You can do
that with people you never speak to at all.  You can just watch them,
and think about them and be sorry for them, until they seem almost like
relations.  I'm quite anxious sometimes when I see the doctor call
twice a day."

"I have very few relations," said Ermengarde, reflectively, "and I'm
very glad of it.  I don't like those I have.  My two aunts are always
saying, 'Dear me, Ermengarde!  You are very fat.  You shouldn't eat
sweets,' and my uncle is always asking me things like, 'When did Edward
the Third ascend the throne?' and, 'Who died of a surfeit of lampreys?'"

Sara laughed.

"People you never speak to can't ask you questions like that," she
said; "and I'm sure the Indian gentleman wouldn't even if he was quite
intimate with you.  I am fond of him."

She had become fond of the Large Family because they looked happy; but
she had become fond of the Indian gentleman because he looked unhappy.
He had evidently not fully recovered from some very severe illness.  In
the kitchen--where, of course, the servants, through some mysterious
means, knew everything--there was much discussion of his case.  He was
not an Indian gentleman really, but an Englishman who had lived in
India.  He had met with great misfortunes which had for a time so
imperilled his whole fortune that he had thought himself ruined and
disgraced forever. The shock had been so great that he had almost died
of brain fever; and ever since he had been shattered in health, though
his fortunes had changed and all his possessions had been restored to
him. His trouble and peril had been connected with mines.

"And mines with diamonds in 'em!" said the cook.  "No savin's of mine
never goes into no mines--particular diamond ones"--with a side glance
at Sara.  "We all know somethin' of THEM."

"He felt as my papa felt," Sara thought.  "He was ill as my papa was;
but he did not die."

So her heart was more drawn to him than before.  When she was sent out
at night she used sometimes to feel quite glad, because there was
always a chance that the curtains of the house next door might not yet
be closed and she could look into the warm room and see her adopted
friend.  When no one was about she used sometimes to stop, and, holding
to the iron railings, wish him good night as if he could hear her.

"Perhaps you can FEEL if you can't hear," was her fancy.  "Perhaps kind
thoughts reach people somehow, even through windows and doors and
walls.  Perhaps you feel a little warm and comforted, and don't know
why, when I am standing here in the cold and hoping you will get well
and happy again.  I am so sorry for you," she would whisper in an
intense little voice.  "I wish you had a 'Little Missus' who could pet
you as I used to pet papa when he had a headache. I should like to be
your 'Little Missus' myself, poor dear! Good night--good night.  God
bless you!"

She would go away, feeling quite comforted and a little warmer herself.
Her sympathy was so strong that it seemed as if it MUST reach him
somehow as he sat alone in his armchair by the fire, nearly always in a
great dressing gown, and nearly always with his forehead resting in his
hand as he gazed hopelessly into the fire. He looked to Sara like a man
who had a trouble on his mind still, not merely like one whose troubles
lay all in the past.

"He always seems as if he were thinking of something that hurts him
NOW," she said to herself, "but he has got his money back and he will
get over his brain fever in time, so he ought not to look like that.  I
wonder if there is something else."

If there was something else--something even servants did not hear
of--she could not help believing that the father of the Large Family
knew it--the gentleman she called Mr. Montmorency.  Mr. Montmorency
went to see him often, and Mrs. Montmorency and all the little
Montmorencys went, too, though less often.  He seemed particularly fond
of the two elder little girls--the Janet and Nora who had been so
alarmed when their small brother Donald had given Sara his sixpence. He
had, in fact, a very tender place in his heart for all children, and
particularly for little girls.  Janet and Nora were as fond of him as
he was of them, and looked forward with the greatest pleasure to the
afternoons when they were allowed to cross the square and make their
well-behaved little visits to him. They were extremely decorous little
visits because he was an invalid.

"He is a poor thing," said Janet, "and he says we cheer him up.  We try
to cheer him up very quietly."

Janet was the head of the family, and kept the rest of it in order. It
was she who decided when it was discreet to ask the Indian gentleman to
tell stories about India, and it was she who saw when he was tired and
it was the time to steal quietly away and tell Ram Dass to go to him.
They were very fond of Ram Dass.  He could have told any number of
stories if he had been able to speak anything but Hindustani.  The
Indian gentleman's real name was Mr. Carrisford, and Janet told Mr.
Carrisford about the encounter with the
little-girl-who-was-not-a-beggar.  He was very much interested, and all
the more so when he heard from Ram Dass of the adventure of the monkey
on the roof.  Ram Dass made for him a very clear picture of the attic
and its desolateness--of the bare floor and broken plaster, the rusty,
empty grate, and the hard, narrow bed.

"Carmichael," he said to the father of the Large Family, after he had
heard this description, "I wonder how many of the attics in this square
are like that one, and how many wretched little servant girls sleep on
such beds, while I toss on my down pillows, loaded and harassed by
wealth that is, most of it--not mine."

"My dear fellow," Mr. Carmichael answered cheerily, "the sooner you
cease tormenting yourself the better it will be for you. If you
possessed all the wealth of all the Indies, you could not set right all
the discomforts in the world, and if you began to refurnish all the
attics in this square, there would still remain all the attics in all
the other squares and streets to put in order. And there you are!"

Mr. Carrisford sat and bit his nails as he looked into the glowing bed
of coals in the grate.

"Do you suppose," he said slowly, after a pause--"do you think it is
possible that the other child--the child I never cease thinking of, I
believe--could be--could POSSIBLY be reduced to any such condition as
the poor little soul next door?"

Mr. Carmichael looked at him uneasily.  He knew that the worst thing
the man could do for himself, for his reason and his health, was to
begin to think in the particular way of this particular subject.

"If the child at Madame Pascal's school in Paris was the one you are in
search of," he answered soothingly, "she would seem to be in the hands
of people who can afford to take care of her. They adopted her because
she had been the favorite companion of their little daughter who died.
They had no other children, and Madame Pascal said that they were
extremely well-to-do Russians."

"And the wretched woman actually did not know where they had taken
her!" exclaimed Mr. Carrisford.

Mr. Carmichael shrugged his shoulders.

"She was a shrewd, worldly Frenchwoman, and was evidently only too glad
to get the child so comfortably off her hands when the father's death
left her totally unprovided for.  Women of her type do not trouble
themselves about the futures of children who might prove burdens. The
adopted parents apparently disappeared and left no trace."

"But you say 'IF the child was the one I am in search of. You say 'if.'
We are not sure.  There was a difference in the name."

"Madame Pascal pronounced it as if it were Carew instead of Crewe--but
that might be merely a matter of pronunciation.  The circumstances were
curiously similar.  An English officer in India had placed his
motherless little girl at the school.  He had died suddenly after
losing his fortune."  Mr. Carmichael paused a moment, as if a new
thought had occurred to him.  "Are you SURE the child was left at a
school in Paris?  Are you sure it was Paris?"

"My dear fellow," broke forth Carrisford, with restless bitterness, "I
am SURE of nothing.  I never saw either the child or her mother. Ralph
Crewe and I loved each other as boys, but we had not met since our
school days, until we met in India.  I was absorbed in the magnificent
promise of the mines.  He became absorbed, too. The whole thing was so
huge and glittering that we half lost our heads.  When we met we
scarcely spoke of anything else. I only knew that the child had been
sent to school somewhere. I do not even remember, now, HOW I knew it."

He was beginning to be excited.  He always became excited when his
still weakened brain was stirred by memories of the catastrophes of the
past.

Mr. Carmichael watched him anxiously.  It was necessary to ask some
questions, but they must be put quietly and with caution.

"But you had reason to think the school WAS in Paris?"

"Yes," was the answer, "because her mother was a Frenchwoman, and I had
heard that she wished her child to be educated in Paris.  It seemed
only likely that she would be there."

"Yes," Mr. Carmichael said, "it seems more than probable."

The Indian gentleman leaned forward and struck the table with a long,
wasted hand.

"Carmichael," he said, "I MUST find her.  If she is alive, she is
somewhere.  If she is friendless and penniless, it is through my fault.
How is a man to get back his nerve with a thing like that on his mind?
This sudden change of luck at the mines has made realities of all our
most fantastic dreams, and poor Crewe's child may be begging in the
street!"

"No, no," said Carmichael.  "Try to be calm.  Console yourself with the
fact that when she is found you have a fortune to hand over to her."

"Why was I not man enough to stand my ground when things looked black?"
Carrisford groaned in petulant misery.  "I believe I should have stood
my ground if I had not been responsible for other people's money as
well as my own.  Poor Crewe had put into the scheme every penny that he
owned.  He trusted me--he LOVED me.  And he died thinking I had ruined
him--I--Tom Carrisford, who played cricket at Eton with him.  What a
villain he must have thought me!"

"Don't reproach yourself so bitterly."

"I don't reproach myself because the speculation threatened to fail--I
reproach myself for losing my courage.  I ran away like a swindler and
a thief, because I could not face my best friend and tell him I had
ruined him and his child."

The good-hearted father of the Large Family put his hand on his
shoulder comfortingly.

"You ran away because your brain had given way under the strain of
mental torture," he said.  "You were half delirious already.  If you
had not been you would have stayed and fought it out. You were in a
hospital, strapped down in bed, raving with brain fever, two days after
you left the place.  Remember that."

Carrisford dropped his forehead in his hands.

"Good God!  Yes," he said.  "I was driven mad with dread and horror. I
had not slept for weeks.  The night I staggered out of my house all the
air seemed full of hideous things mocking and mouthing at me."

"That is explanation enough in itself," said Mr. Carmichael.  "How
could a man on the verge of brain fever judge sanely!"

Carrisford shook his drooping head.

"And when I returned to consciousness poor Crewe was dead--and buried.
And I seemed to remember nothing.  I did not remember the child for
months and months.  Even when I began to recall her existence
everything seemed in a sort of haze."

He stopped a moment and rubbed his forehead.  "It sometimes seems so
now when I try to remember.  Surely I must sometime have heard Crewe
speak of the school she was sent to.  Don't you think so?"

"He might not have spoken of it definitely.  You never seem even to
have heard her real name."

"He used to call her by an odd pet name he had invented. He called her
his 'Little Missus.'  But the wretched mines drove everything else out
of our heads.  We talked of nothing else. If he spoke of the school, I
forgot--I forgot.  And now I shall never remember."

"Come, come," said Carmichael.  "We shall find her yet.  We will
continue to search for Madame Pascal's good-natured Russians.  She
seemed to have a vague idea that they lived in Moscow. We will take
that as a clue.  I will go to Moscow."

"If I were able to travel, I would go with you," said Carrisford; "but
I can only sit here wrapped in furs and stare at the fire. And when I
look into it I seem to see Crewe's gay young face gazing back at me.
He looks as if he were asking me a question. Sometimes I dream of him
at night, and he always stands before me and asks the same question in
words.  Can you guess what he says, Carmichael?"

Mr. Carmichael answered him in a rather low voice.

"Not exactly," he said.

"He always says, 'Tom, old man--Tom--where is the Little Missus?'" He
caught at Carmichael's hand and clung to it.  "I must be able to answer
him--I must!" he said.  "Help me to find her.  Help me."

On the other side of the wall Sara was sitting in her garret talking to
Melchisedec, who had come out for his evening meal.

"It has been hard to be a princess today, Melchisedec," she said. "It
has been harder than usual.  It gets harder as the weather grows colder
and the streets get more sloppy.  When Lavinia laughed at my muddy
skirt as I passed her in the hall, I thought of something to say all in
a flash--and I only just stopped myself in time. You can't sneer back
at people like that--if you are a princess. But you have to bite your
tongue to hold yourself in.  I bit mine. It was a cold afternoon,
Melchisedec.  And it's a cold night."

Quite suddenly she put her black head down in her arms, as she often
did when she was alone.

"Oh, papa," she whispered, "what a long time it seems since I was your
'Little Missus'!"

This was what happened that day on both sides of the wall.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Sara's new life begins right away. She spends her first sleepless night in the attic trying to process the news of her father's death and listening to the scurrying of rats and mice. The next day, she is told to sit with the small children at breakfast and keep them quiet. The other servants enjoy ordering her around, and while at first she thinks that her good attitude and helpfulness might make them like her more, they continue to treat her badly. Though she is required to help teach French to other students, she only gets to learn at night, in deserted classrooms. She becomes increasingly isolated from her schoolmates, partly because they feel awkward around her and partly because she has so little time to interact with them, largely by Ms. Minchin's design: the headmistress does not want Sara to talk to them about her life and inspire sympathy. She is comforted, though, by three people. The first is Becky. They don't get to talk much when they're working, but Sara feels better knowing that Becky is nearby, and Becky helps Sara get ready before her long days of work. Ermengarde, too, remains by Sara's side. At first, Sara basically forgets Ermengarde, who is dull and quiet enough to be forgettable. One day, Ermengarde runs into Sara and asks whether she is "very unhappy," and Sara, feeling insulted, gives a curt answer and storms off. Ermengarde becomes quietly miserable, and, one night, Sara discovers that Ermengarde has snuck into her attic room and is waiting for Sara's return. The girls reconcile after each one realizes that she interpreted her friend's awkwardness and sadness as hostility. Making up with Ermengarde allows Sara's temporarily stunned imagination to start working again, so that when Ermengarde asks how Sara can bear living in the attic, Sara resolves to pretend that she is a prisoner in the Bastille. Sara also claims that her trials have made her judgmental of Ermengarde, proving she is not good at heart, while Ermengarde's pain has shown her truly brave and generous nature. Sara's final source of comfort is Lottie. Lottie, worried about her adopted mother, wants to know where Sara lives now that she has abandoned her room. Sara avoids telling her, but Lottie finds the room anyway after overhearing some useful gossip about Sara. She sneaks into the room, shocking Sara, and is upset by its drabness and bareness. Sara comforts her by describing how exciting it is to live in an attic, since she can see chimneys and birds, and since it feels like a separate world. The two girls look out of the window together, and to Lottie the view feels almost magical. Sara notes an attic window directly across from her, and tells Lottie that she wishes another girl lived in that attic, since they would be able to talk to one another through their windows. The girls feed crumbs to a few sparrows, and Sara vividly describes to Lottie how beautiful the room would be if it was well-decorated. This soothes Lottie, but when she departs, Sara feels even more desolate than before. However, she catches sight of a rat in her room and feels pity for it, realizing that rats are objects of disgust. The rat, for his part, is afraid of Sara: Burnett informs the reader that he has a hungry family living behind the room's walls. Eventually, though, he is convinced of her kindness. Burnett speculates that all creatures, even rats, are able to understand and empathize with one another beyond language, so that the rat knows how trustworthy Sara is. Soon after, Ermengarde drops by and is surprised to see Sara feeding the rat crumbs and affectionately calling it "Melchisedec." Sara convinces Ermengarde that the rat can be trusted, and explains to her friend the elaborate system of communication she and Becky have created by knocking on their adjacent wall to send messages. Ermengarde is struck by how much Sara's life resembles stories she has heard, to which Sara responds that "everything's a story." While Sara once earned stares and positive attention every time she went out, now, when she leaves school to run errands, she looks so shabby that people barely notice her. However, she likes watching other children, especially those belonging to a family that lives near the school. She dubs them "the large family," because they have so many children, and privately gives each child an aristocratic-sounding imaginary name. One member of this family, a small boy Sara calls "Guy Clarence," is emotionally affected by stories he hears about a wealthy child giving poor children food, gifts, or money to help them. He has a sixpence piece and longs to give it to a less fortunate child, especially since it is Christmas time, and the disparities between rich and poor are on display even more than usual. One day he sees Sara and insists on giving her his sixpence. She refuses, at first, and the boy's sisters are struck by the fact that she talks like a wealthy child. Eventually, seeing that the boy wants to share his money, Sara swallows her pride and takes the sixpence. Afterward, this family becomes intrigued by Sara. One day, Sara feels so lonely and desperate that she loses her temper at her beloved doll, Emily, and knocks her to the floor. She apologizes to the doll afterward, noting that it is not in Emily's control that she is only a doll, but she is shaken by her own loss of control. Shortly after, she is excited to see a moving van at the house next door. She hopes that someone will appear in the attic window of the house for her to talk to. She does not know who will be moving in, but feels heartened when she sees the person's furniture, which reminds her of the decor she used to see in India. Becky soon reports that the house's new owner is an Indian man, and that he "worships idols," though Sara is doubtful of this second claim. When the man moves in, it is clear that he has brought no family with him and that he is very rich, but very ill. Not long after, Sara is watching a beautiful sunset through her window when she sees a face appear in the attic window of the house next door. She believes that the face belongs to a "Lascar," an Indian manservant. The man is holding a monkey, who slips between the windows into Sara's room, making her laugh. Sara greets the man in "Hindustani" , and he is evidently relieved and excited to hear his own language so far from home. He replies, telling her that his name is Ram Dass, that the monkey will not harm her, and that he can come fetch it himself if Sara will allow him to cross the space between their windows and enter her room. She consents, and Ram Dass, entering her room, treats her politely in spite of her barren surroundings and tattered clothes. She realizes how much has changed from her days in India, when she was treated with respect bordering on reverence, but resolves to maintain her princess-like self-control. Indeed, one day when she is helping younger students with French, she laughs out loud thinking about how she would avenge herself on her oppressors if she was a real princess. Miss Minchin demands to know why she is laughing, prompting Sara, in front of her classmates, to calmly announce that Miss Minchin does not "know what doing." The students in the room are shocked and amused by the fight, while Miss Minchin is made momentarily powerless by Sara's bravery. Meanwhile, Sara feels increasingly affectionately towards the man next door--Ram Dass's employer--though they have never spoken. Like Sara's father, he is English by birth but has spent his recent years in India. Also, like Sara's father, he is suffering from a mixture of illness and financial troubles stemming from dealing with diamond mines, which Sara learns from overhearing other servants' gossip. Sara imagines that, even though the man next door cannot speak to her, he can somehow feel her well-wishes and sympathy. Meanwhile, two girls from the "Large Family," named Janet and Nora, make regular visits to the lonely man, who has a soft spot for children. Janet tells the man, whose name is Mr. Carrisford, about her encounter with Sara, and Ram Dass shares the story of his monkey climbing through Sara's window. Altogether, these tales intrigue Mr. Carrisford, and, troubled, he mentions his concern for Sara and other poor children to Mr. Carmichael, the father of the "Large Family." The reader witnesses a surprising conversation between Carmichael and Carrisford, in which it becomes clear that Carmichael is desperately looking for the lost daughter of his old friend, the late Ralph Crewe--that is, he is looking for Sara. He believes her to be in school in Paris, since her mother was French. He has a large fortune to bequeath her, and is wracked with guilt over being unable to find her, since he knows she may be suffering. Though Crewe and Carrisford were close friends and business partners, Carrisford can barely remember anything about Sara, including her name and the name of her school, since he was suffering from "brain fever" at the time of Crewe's death and since Crewe only referred to his daughter by the pet name "Little Missus." Sara, meanwhile, is on her side of the wall, lamenting her orphanhood and routine humiliation to Melchisedec and completely unaware that she is being sought after.