did—all traces of the feast were gone, and Miss Minchin had resumed her usual dress. The pupils had been ordered to lay aside their party frocks; and this having been done, they had returned to the schoolroom and huddled together in groups, whispering and talking excitedly.
“Tell Sara to come to my room,” Miss Minchin had said to her sister. “And explain to her clearly that I will have no crying or unpleasant scenes.”
“Sister,” replied Miss Amelia, “she is the strangest child I ever saw. She has actually made no fuss at all. You remember she made none when Captain Crewe went back to India. When I told her what had happened, she just stood quite still and looked at me without making a sound. Her eyes seemed to get bigger and bigger, and she went quite pale. When I had finished, she still stood staring for a few seconds, and then her chin began to shake, and she turned round and ran out of the room and upstairs. Several of the other children began to cry, but she did not seem to hear them or to be alive to anything but just what I was saying. It made me feel quite queer not to be answered; and when you tell anything sudden and strange, you expect people will say SOMETHING—whatever it is.”
Nobody but Sara herself ever knew what had happened in her room after she had run upstairs and locked her door. In fact, she herself scarcely remembered anything but that she walked up and down, saying over and over again to herself in a voice which did not seem her own, “My papa is dead! My papa is dead!”
Once she stopped before Emily, who sat watching her from her chair, and cried out wildly, “Emily! Do you hear? Do you hear—papa is dead? He is dead in India—thousands of miles away.”
When she came into Miss Minchin’s sitting room in answer to her summons, her face was white and her eyes had dark rings around them. Her mouth was set as if she did not wish it to reveal what she had suffered and was suffering. She did not look in the least like the rose-colored butterfly child who had flown about from one of her treasures to the other in the decorated schoolroom. She looked instead a strange, desolate, almost grotesque little figure.
She had put on, without Mariette’s help, the cast-aside black-velvet frock. It was too short and tight, and her slender legs looked long and thin, showing themselves from beneath the brief skirt. As she had not found a piece of black ribbon, her short, thick, black hair tumbled loosely about her face and contrasted strongly with its pallor. She held Emily tightly in one arm, and Emily was swathed in a piece of black material.
“Put down your doll,” said Miss Minchin. “What do you mean by bringing her here?”
“No,” Sara answered. “I will not put her down. She is all I have. My papa gave her to me.”
She had always made Miss Minchin feel secretly uncomfortable, and she did so now. She did not speak with rudeness so much as with a cold steadiness with which Miss Minchin felt it difficult to cope—perhaps because she knew she was doing a heartless and inhuman thing.
“You will have no time for dolls in future,” she said. “You will have to work and improve yourself and make yourself useful.”
Sara kept her big, strange eyes fixed on her, and said not a word.
“Everything will be very different now,” Miss Minchin went on. “I suppose Miss Amelia has explained matters to you.”
“Yes,” answered Sara. “My papa is dead. He left me no money. I am quite poor.”
“You are a beggar,” said Miss Minchin, her temper rising at the recollection of what all this meant. “It appears that you have no relations and no home, and no one to take care of you.”
For a moment the thin, pale little face twitched, but Sara again said nothing.
“What are you staring at?” demanded Miss Minchin, sharply. “Are you so stupid that you cannot understand? I tell you that you are quite alone in the world, and have no one to do anything for you, unless I choose to keep you here out of charity.”
“I understand,” answered Sara, in a low tone; and there was a sound as if she had gulped down something which rose in her throat. “I understand.”
“That doll,” cried Miss Minchin, pointing to the splendid birthday gift seated near—“that ridiculous doll, with all her nonsensical, extravagant things—I actually paid the bill for her!”
Sara turned her head toward the chair.
“The Last Doll,” she said. “The Last Doll.” And her little mournful voice had an odd sound.
“The Last Doll, indeed!” said Miss Minchin. “And she is mine, not yours. Everything you own is mine.”
“Please take it away from me, then,” said Sara. “I do not want it.”
If she had cried and sobbed and seemed frightened, Miss Minchin might almost have had more patience with her. She was a woman who liked to domineer and feel her power, and as she looked at Sara’s pale little steadfast face and heard her proud little voice, she quite felt as if her might was being set at naught.
“Don’t put on grand airs,” she said. “The time for that sort of thing is past. You are not a princess any longer. Your carriage and your pony will be sent away—your maid will be dismissed. You will wear your oldest and plainest clothes—your extravagant ones are no longer suited to your station. You are like Becky—you must work for your living.”
To her surprise, a faint gleam of light came into the child’s eyes—a shade of relief.
“Can I work?” she said. “If I can work it will not matter so much. What can I do?”
“You can do anything you are told,” was the answer. “You are a sharp child, and pick up things readily. If you make yourself useful I may let you stay here. You speak French well, and you can help with the younger children.”
“May I?” exclaimed Sara. “Oh, please let me! I know I can teach them. I like them, and they like me.”
“Don’t talk nonsense about people liking you,” said Miss Minchin. “You will have to do more than teach the little ones. You will run errands and help in the kitchen as well as in the schoolroom. If you don’t please me, you will be sent away. Remember that. Now go.”
Sara stood still just a moment, looking at her. In her young soul, she was thinking deep and strange things. Then she turned to leave the room.
“Stop!” said Miss Minchin. “Don’t you intend to thank me?”
Sara paused, and all the deep, strange thoughts surged up in her breast.
“What for?” she said.
“For my kindness to you,” replied Miss Minchin. “For my kindness in giving you a home.”
Sara made two or three steps toward her. Her thin little chest heaved up and down, and she spoke in a strange unchildishly fierce way.
“You are not kind,” she said. “You are NOT kind, and it is NOT a home.” And she had turned and run out of the room before Miss Minchin could stop her or do anything but stare after her with stony anger.
She went up the stairs slowly, but panting for breath and she held Emily tightly against her side.
“I wish she could talk,” she said to herself. “If she could speak—if she could speak!”
She meant to go to her room and lie down on the tiger-skin, with her cheek upon the great cat’s head, and look into the fire and think and think and think. But just before she reached the landing Miss Amelia came out of the door and closed it behind her, and stood before it, looking nervous and awkward. The truth was that she felt secretly ashamed of the thing she had been ordered to do.
“You—you are not to go in there,” she said.
“Not go in?” exclaimed Sara, and she fell back a pace.
“That is not your room now,” Miss Amelia answered,