Ermengarde did not know why a lump came into her throat and her eyes felt as if tears were in them.
Lavinia and Jessie are best friends, she said rather huskily. I wish we could be best friends. Would you have me for yours? Youre clever, and Im the stupidest child in the school, but I oh, I do so like you!
Im glad of that, said Sara. It makes you thankful when you are liked. Yes. We will be friends. And Ill tell you what a sudden gleam lighting her face I can help you with your French lessons.
CHAPTER IV LOTTIE
Things happen to people by accident, she used to say. A lot of nice accidents have happened to me. It just happened that I always liked lessons and books, and could remember things when I learned them. It just happened that I was born with a father who was beautiful and nice and clever, and could give me everything I liked. Perhaps I have not really a good temper at all, but if you have everything you want and every one is kind to you, how can you help but be good-tempered? I dont know looking quite serious how I shall ever find out whether I am really a nice child or a horrid one. Perhaps Im a hideous child, and no one will ever know, just because I never have any trials.
Lavinia has no trials, said Ermengarde, stolidly, and she is horrid enough.
Sara rubbed the end of her little nose reflectively, as she thought the matter over.
Well, she said at last, perhaps perhaps that is because Lavinia is growing .
This was the result of a charitable recollection of having heard Miss Amelia say that Lavinia was growing so fast that she believed it affected her health and temper.
Lavinia, in fact, was spiteful. She was inordinately jealous of Sara. Until the new pupils arrival, she had felt herself the leader in the school. She had led because she was capable of making herself extremely disagreeable if the others did not follow her. She domineered over the little children, and assumed grand airs with those big enough to be her companions. She was rather pretty, and had been the best-dressed pupil in the procession when the Select Seminary walked out two by two, until Saras velvet coats and sable muffs appeared, combined with drooping ostrich feathers, and were led by Miss Minchin at the head of the line. This, at the beginning, had been bitter enough; but as time went on it became apparent that Sara was a leader, too, and not because she could make herself
disagreeable, but because she never did.
Theres one thing about Sara Crewe, Jessie had enraged her best friend by saying honestly, shes never grand about herself the least bit, and you know she might be, Lavvie. I believe I couldnt help being just a little if I had so many fine things and was made such a fuss over. Its disgusting, the way Miss Minchin shows her off when parents come.
Dear Sara must come into the drawing-room and talk to Mrs. Musgrave about India, mimicked Lavinia, in her most highly flavored imitation of Miss Minchin. Dear Sara must speak French to Lady Pitkin. Her accent is so perfect. She didnt learn her French at the Seminary, at any rate. And theres nothing so clever in her knowing it. She says herself she didnt learn it at all. She just picked it up, because she always heard her papa speak it. And, as to her papa, there is nothing so grand in being an Indian officer.
Well, said Jessie, slowly, hes killed tigers. He killed the one in the skin Sara has in her room. Thats why she likes it so. She lies on it and strokes its head, and talks to it as if it was a cat.
Shes always doing something silly, snapped Lavinia. My mamma says that way of hers of pretending things is silly. She says she will grow up eccentric.
It was quite true that Sara was never grand. She was a friendly little soul, and shared her privileges and belongings with a free hand. The little ones, who were accustomed to being disdained and ordered out of the way by mature ladies aged ten and twelve, were never made to cry by this most envied of them all. She was a motherly young person, and when people fell down and scraped their knees, she ran and helped them up and patted them, or found in her pocket a bonbon or some other article of a soothing nature. She never pushed them out of her way or alluded to their years as a humiliation and a blot upon their small characters.
If you are four you are four, she said severely to Lavinia on an occasion of her having it must be confessed slapped Lottie and called her a brat; but you will be five next year, and six the year after that. And, opening large, convicting eyes, it only takes sixteen years to make you twenty.
Dear me! said Lavinia; how we can calculate! In fact, it was not to be denied that sixteen and four made twenty, and twenty was an age the most daring were scarcely bold enough to dream of.
So the younger children adored Sara. More than once she had been known to have a tea-party, made up of these despised ones, in her own room. And Emily had been played with, and Emilys own tea-service used the one with cups which held quite a lot of much-sweetened weak tea and had blue flowers on them. No one had seen such a very real dolls tea-set before. From that afternoon Sara was regarded as a goddess and a queen by the entire alphabet class.