Sara Crewe | Page 7

Emily's stare seemed so
vacant, her sawdust legs and arms so limp and inexpressive, that Sara
lost all control over herself.
"I shall die presently!" she said at first.
Emily 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
to-day, and they have done nothing but scold me from morning until
night. And because I could not find that last thing they 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 wax 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.
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 upon 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 still
calm, even dignified.
Sara hid her face on her arms and sobbed. Some rats in the wall began
to fight and bite each other, and squeak and scramble. But, as I have
already intimated, Sara was not in the habit of crying. After a while she
stopped, and when she stopped she looked at Emily, who seemed to be
gazing at her around the side of one ankle, and actually with a kind of
glassy-eyed sympathy. Sara bent and picked her up. Remorse overtook
her.
"You can't help being a doll," she said, with a resigned sigh, "any more
than those girls downstairs can help not having any sense. We are not
all alike. Perhaps you do your sawdust best."
None of Miss Minchin's young ladies were very remarkable for being
brilliant; they were select, but some of them were very dull, and some
of them were fond of applying themselves to their lessons. Sara, who
snatched her lessons at all sorts of untimely hours from tattered and
discarded books, and who had a hungry craving for everything readable,
was often severe upon them in her small mind. They had books they
never read; she had no books at all. If she had always had something to
read, she would not have been so lonely. She liked romances and
history and poetry; she would read anything. There was a sentimental
housemaid in the establishment who bought the weekly penny papers,
and subscribed to a circulating library, from which she got greasy
volumes containing stories of marquises and dukes who invariably fell
in love with orange-girls and gypsies and servant-maids, and made
them the proud brides of coronets; and Sara often did parts of this
maid's work so that she might earn the privilege of reading these
romantic histories. There was also a fat, dull pupil, whose name was
Ermengarde St. John, who was one of her resources. Ermengarde had
an intellectual father, who, in his despairing desire to encourage his

daughter, constantly sent her valuable and interesting books, which
were a continual source of grief to her. Sara had once actually found
her crying over a big package of them.
"What is the matter with you?" she asked her, perhaps rather
disdainfully.
And it is just possible she would not have spoken to her, if she had not
seen the books. The sight of books always gave Sara a hungry feeling,
and she could not help drawing near to them if only to read their titles.
"What is the matter with you?" she asked.
"My papa has sent me some more books," answered Ermengarde
woefully, "and he expects me to read them."
"Don't you like reading?" said Sara.
"I hate it!" replied Miss Ermengarde St. John. "And he will ask me
questions when he sees me: he will want to know how much I
remember; how would you like to have to read all those?"
"I'd like it better than anything else in the world," said Sara.
Ermengarde wiped her eyes to look at such a prodigy.
"Oh, gracious!" she exclaimed.
Sara returned the look with interest. A sudden plan formed itself in her
sharp mind.
"Look here!" she said. "If you'll lend me those books, I'll read them and
tell you everything that's in them afterward, and I'll tell it to you so that
you will remember it. I know I can. The A B C children always
remember what I tell them."
"Oh, goodness!" said Ermengarde. "Do you think