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.
Dont 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 school-room. If you dont 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. Dont 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 cats 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, reddening a little.
Somehow, all at once, Sara understood. She realized that this was the beginning of the change Miss Minchin had spoken of.
Where is my room? she asked, hoping very much that her voice did not shake.
You are to sleep in the attic next to Becky.
Sara knew where it was. Becky had told her about it. She turned, and mounted up two flights of stairs. The last one was narrow, and covered with shabby strips of old carpet. She felt as if she were walking away and leaving far behind her the world in which that other child, who no longer seemed herself, had lived. This child, in her short, tight old frock, climbing the stairs to the attic, was quite a different creature.
When she reached the attic door and opened it, her heart gave a dreary little thump. Then she shut the door and stood against it and looked about her.
Yes, this was another world. The room had a slanting roof and was whitewashed. The whitewash was dingy and had fallen off in places. There was a rusty grate, an old iron bedstead, and a hard bed covered with a faded coverlet. Some pieces of furniture too much worn to be used down-stairs had been sent up. Under the skylight in the roof, which showed nothing but an oblong piece of dull gray sky, there stood an old battered red footstool. Sara went to it and sat down. She seldom cried. She did not cry now. She laid Emily across her knees and put her face down upon her and her arms around her, and sat there, her little black head resting on the black draperies, not saying one word, not making one sound.
And as she sat in this silence there came a low tap at the door such a low, humble one that she did not at first hear it, and, indeed, was not roused until the door was timidly pushed open and a poor tear-smeared face appeared peeping round it. It was Beckys face, and Becky had been crying furtively for hours and rubbing her eyes with her kitchen apron until she looked strange indeed.
Oh, miss, she said under her breath. Might I would you allow me jest to come in?
Sara lifted her head and looked at her. She tried to begin a smile, and somehow she could not. Suddenly and it was all through the loving mournfulness of Beckys streaming eyes her face looked more like a childs not so much too old for her years. She held out her hand and gave a little sob.
Oh, Becky, she said. I told you we were just the same only two little girls just two little girls. You see how true it is. Theres no difference now. Im not a princess any more.
Becky ran to her and caught her hand, and hugged it to her breast, kneeling beside her and sobbing with love and pain.
Yes, miss, you are, she cried, and her words were all broken. Whatsever appens to you whatsever youd be a princess all the same an nothin couldnt make you nothin different.
CHAPTER VIII IN THE ATTIC
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.