Sara Crewe | Page 9

neglected
little thing as that, who could read and read and remember and tell you
things so that they did not tire you all out! A child who could speak
French, and who had learned German, no one knew how! One could
not help staring at her and feeling interested, particularly one to whom
the simplest lesson was a trouble and a woe.
"Do you like me?" said Ermengarde, finally, at the end of her scrutiny.
Sara hesitated one second, then she answered:
"I like you because you are not ill-natured--I like you for letting me
read your books--I like you because you don't make spiteful fun of me
for what I can't help. It's not your fault that--"
She pulled herself up quickly. She had been going to say, "that you are
stupid."
"That what?" asked Ermengarde.
"That you can't learn things quickly. If you can't, you can't. If I can,

why, I can--that's all." She paused a minute, looking at the plump face
before her, and then, rather slowly, one of her wise, old-fashioned
thoughts came to her.
"Perhaps," she said, "to be able to learn things quickly isn't everything.
To be kind is worth a good deal to other people. If Miss Minchin knew
everything on earth, which she doesn't, and if she was like what she is
now, she'd still be a detestable thing, and everybody would hate her.
Lots of clever people have done harm and been wicked. Look at
Robespierre--"
She stopped again and examined her companion's countenance.
"Do you remember about him?" she demanded. "I believe you've
forgotten."
"Well, I don't remember all of it," admitted Ermengarde.
"Well," said Sara, with courage and determination, "I'll tell it to you
over again."
And she plunged once more into the gory records of the French
Revolution, and told such stories of it, and made such vivid pictures of
its horrors, that Miss St. John was afraid to go to bed afterward, and hid
her head under the blankets when she did go, and shivered until she fell
asleep. But afterward she preserved lively recollections of the character
of Robespierre, and did not even forget Marie Antoinette and the
Princess de Lamballe.
"You know they put her head on a pike and danced around it," Sara had
said; "and she had beautiful blonde hair; and when I think of her, I
never see her head on her body, but always on a pike, with those
furious people dancing and howling."
Yes, it was true; to this imaginative child everything was a story; and
the more books she read, the more imaginative she became. One of her
chief entertainments was to sit in her garret, or walk about it, and
"suppose" things. On a cold night, when she had not had enough to eat,

she would draw the red footstool up before the empty grate, and say in
the most intense voice:
"Suppose there was a grate, wide steel grate here, and a great glowing
fire--a glowing fire-- with beds of red-hot coal and lots of little dancing,
flickering flames. Suppose there was a soft, deep rug, and this was a
comfortable chair, all cushions and crimson velvet; and suppose I had a
crimson velvet frock on, and a deep lace collar, like a child in a picture;
and suppose all the rest of the room was furnished in lovely colors, and
there were book-shelves full of books, which changed by magic as soon
as you had read them; and suppose there was a little table here, with a
snow-white cover on it, and little silver dishes, and in one there was hot,
hot soup, and in another a roast chicken, and in another some
raspberry-jam tarts with crisscross on them, and in another some grapes;
and suppose Emily could speak, and we could sit and eat our supper,
and then talk and read; and then suppose there was a soft, warm bed in
the corner, and when we were tired we could go to sleep, and sleep as
long as we liked."
Sometimes, after she had supposed things like these for half an hour,
she would feel almost warm, and would creep into bed with Emily and
fall asleep with a smile on her face.
"What large, downy pillows!" she would whisper. "What white sheets
and fleecy blankets!" And she almost forgot that her real pillows had
scarcely any feathers in them at all, and smelled musty, and that her
blankets and coverlid were thin and full of holes.
At another time she would "suppose" she was a princess, and then she
would go about the house with an expression on her face which was a
source of great secret annoyance to Miss Minchin, because it seemed as
if the child scarcely heard the spiteful, insulting things said