A Little Princess | Page 7

she was intimate
with and fond of.
"She is actually waiting there for us!" she said. "Let us go in to her."
"Dear me," said Captain Crewe, "I feel as if we ought to have someone
to introduce us."
"You must introduce me and I will introduce you," said Sara. "But I
knew her the minute I saw her--so perhaps she knew me, too."
Perhaps she had known her. She had certainly a very intelligent
expression in her eyes when Sara took her in her arms. She was a large
doll, but not too large to carry about easily; she had naturally curling
golden-brown hair, which hung like a mantle about her, and her eyes
were a deep, clear, gray-blue, with soft, thick eyelashes which were real
eyelashes and not mere painted lines.
"Of course," said Sara, looking into her face as she held her on her knee,
"of course papa, this is Emily."
So Emily was bought and actually taken to a children's outfitter's shop
and measured for a wardrobe as grand as Sara's own. She had lace
frocks, too, and velvet and muslin ones, and hats and coats and
beautiful lace-trimmed underclothes, and gloves and handkerchiefs and
furs.
"I should like her always to look as if she was a child with a good
mother," said Sara. "I'm her mother, though I am going to make a
companion of her."

Captain Crewe would really have enjoyed the shopping tremendously,
but that a sad thought kept tugging at his heart. This all meant that he
was going to be separated from his beloved, quaint little comrade.
He got out of his bed in the middle of that night and went and stood
looking down at Sara, who lay asleep with Emily in her arms. Her
black hair was spread out on the pillow and Emily's golden-brown hair
mingled with it, both of them had lace-ruffled nightgowns, and both
had long eyelashes which lay and curled up on their cheeks. Emily
looked so like a real child that Captain Crewe felt glad she was there.
He drew a big sigh and pulled his mustache with a boyish expression.
"Heigh-ho, little Sara!" he said to himself "I don't believe you know
how much your daddy will miss you."
The next day he took her to Miss Minchin's and left her there. He was
to sail away the next morning. He explained to Miss Minchin that his
solicitors, Messrs. Barrow & Skipworth, had charge of his affairs in
England and would give her any advice she wanted, and that they
would pay the bills she sent in for Sara's expenses. He would write to
Sara twice a week, and she was to be given every pleasure she asked
for.
"She is a sensible little thing, and she never wants anything it isn't safe
to give her," he said.
Then he went with Sara into her little sitting room and they bade each
other good-by. Sara sat on his knee and held the lapels of his coat in her
small hands, and looked long and hard at his face.
"Are you learning me by heart, little Sara?" he said, stroking her hair.
"No," she answered. "I know you by heart. You are inside my heart."
And they put their arms round each other and kissed as if they would
never let each other go.
When the cab drove away from the door, Sara was sitting on the floor
of her sitting room, with her hands under her chin and her eyes

following it until it had turned the corner of the square. Emily was
sitting by her, and she looked after it, too. When Miss Minchin sent her
sister, Miss Amelia, to see what the child was doing, she found she
could not open the door.
"I have locked it," said a queer, polite little voice from inside. "I want
to be quite by myself, if you please."
Miss Amelia was fat and dumpy, and stood very much in awe of her
sister. She was really the better-natured person of the two, but she
never disobeyed Miss Minchin. She went downstairs again, looking
almost alarmed.
"I never saw such a funny, old-fashioned child, sister," she said. "She
has locked herself in, and she is not making the least particle of noise."
"It is much better than if she kicked and screamed, as some of them
do," Miss Minchin answered. "I expected that a child as much spoiled
as she is would set the whole house in an uproar. If ever a child was
given her own way in everything, she is."
"I've been opening her trunks and putting her things away," said Miss
Amelia. "I never saw anything like them--sable and ermine on her coats,
and real Valenciennes lace on her underclothing. You have seen