A Little Princess (2 page)

Sara's green-gray eyes looked very solemn and quite soft as she
answered.

"She is a doll I haven't got yet," she said. "She is a doll
papa is going to buy for me. We are going out together to find
her. I have called her Emily. She is going to be my friend when
papa is gone. I want her to talk to about him."

Miss Minchin's large, fishy smile became very flattering indeed.

"What an original child!" she said. "What a darling little
creature!"

"Yes," said Captain Crewe, drawing Sara close. "She is a
darling little creature. Take great care of her for me, Miss
Minchin."

Sara stayed with her father at his hotel for several days; in
fact, she remained with him until he sailed away again to India.
They went out and visited many big shops together, and bought a
great many things. They bought, indeed, a great many more things
than Sara needed; but Captain Crewe was a rash, innocent young
man and wanted his little girl to have everything she admired and
everything he admired himself, so between them they collected a
wardrobe much too grand for a child of seven. There were velvet
dresses trimmed with costly furs, and lace dresses, and
embroidered ones, and hats with great, soft ostrich feathers, and
ermine coats and muffs, and boxes of tiny gloves and
handkerchiefs and silk stockings in such abundant supplies that
the polite young women behind the counters whispered to each
other that the odd little girl with the big, solemn eyes must be
at least some foreign princess—perhaps the little daughter of an
Indian rajah.

And at last they found Emily, but they went to a number of toy
shops and looked at a great many dolls before they discovered
her.

"I want her to look as if she wasn't a doll really," Sara said.
"I want her to look as if she LISTENS when I talk to her. The
trouble with dolls, papa"—and she put her head on one side and
reflected as she said it—"the trouble with dolls is that they
never seem to HEAR." So they looked at big ones and little ones—
at dolls with black eyes and dolls with blue—at dolls with
brown curls and dolls with golden braids, dolls dressed and dolls
undressed.

"You see," Sara said when they were examining one who had no
clothes. "If, when I find her, she has no frocks, we can take
her to a dressmaker and have her things made to fit. They will
fit better if they are tried on."

After a number of disappointments they decided to walk and look
in at the shop windows and let the cab follow them. They had
passed two or three places without even going in, when, as they
were approaching a shop which was really not a very large one,
Sara suddenly started and clutched her father's arm.

"Oh, papa!" she cried. "There is Emily!"

A flush had risen to her face and there was an expression in her
green-gray eyes as if she had just recognized someone 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 some of her clothes. What DO you think of them?"

"I think they are perfectly ridiculous," replied Miss Minchin,
sharply; "but they will look very well at the head of the line
when we take the schoolchildren to church on Sunday. She has
been provided for as if she were a little princess."

And upstairs in the locked room Sara and Emily sat on the floor
and stared at the corner round which the cab had disappeared,
while Captain Crewe looked backward, waving and kissing his hand
as if he could not bear to stop.

When Sara entered the schoolroom the next morning everybody
looked at her with wide, interested eyes. By that time every
pupil— from Lavinia Herbert, who was nearly thirteen and felt
quite grown up, to Lottie Legh, who was only just four and the
baby of the school— had heard a great deal about her. They knew
very certainly that she was Miss Minchin's show pupil and was
considered a credit to the establishment. One or two of them had
even caught a glimpse of her French maid, Mariette, who had
arrived the evening before. Lavinia had managed to pass Sara's
room when the door was open, and had seen Mariette opening a box
which had arrived late from some shop.

"It was full of petticoats with lace frills on them—frills and
frills," she whispered to her friend Jessie as she bent over her
geography. "I saw her shaking them out. I heard Miss Minchin
say to Miss Amelia that her clothes were so grand that they were
ridiculous for a child. My mamma says that children should be
dressed simply. She has got one of those petticoats on now. I
saw it when she sat down."

"She has silk stockings on!" whispered Jessie, bending over her
geography also. "And what little feet! I never saw such little
feet."

"Oh," sniffed Lavinia, spitefully, "that is the way her slippers
are made. My mamma says that even big feet can be made to look
small if you have a clever shoemaker. I don't think she is
pretty at all. Her eyes are such a queer color."

"She isn't pretty as other pretty people are," said Jessie,
stealing a glance across the room; "but she makes you want to
look at her again. She has tremendously long eyelashes, but her
eyes are almost green."

Sara was sitting quietly in her seat, waiting to be told what to
do. She had been placed near Miss Minchin's desk. She was not
abashed at all by the many pairs of eyes watching her. She was
interested and looked back quietly at the children who looked at
her. She wondered what they were thinking of, and if they liked
Miss Minchin, and if they cared for their lessons, and if any of
them had a papa at all like her own. She had had a long talk
with Emily about her papa that morning.

"He is on the sea now, Emily," she had said. "We must be very
great friends to each other and tell each other things. Emily,
look at me. You have the nicest eyes I ever saw—but I wish you
could speak."

She was a child full of imaginings and whimsical thoughts, and
one of her fancies was that there would be a great deal of
comfort in even pretending that Emily was alive and really heard
and understood. After Mariette had dressed her in her dark-blue
schoolroom frock and tied her hair with a dark-blue ribbon, she
went to Emily, who sat in a chair of her own, and gave her a
book.

"You can read that while I am downstairs," she said; and, seeing
Mariette looking at her curiously, she spoke to her with a
serious little face.

"What I believe about dolls," she said, "is that they can do
things they will not let us know about. Perhaps, really, Emily
can read and talk and walk, but she will only do it when people
are out of the room. That is her secret. You see, if people
knew that dolls could do things, they would make them work. So,
perhaps, they have promised each other to keep it a secret. If
you stay in the room, Emily will just sit there and stare; but if
you go out, she will begin to read, perhaps, or go and look out
of the window. Then if she heard either of us coming, she would
just run back and jump into her chair and pretend she had been
there all the time."

"Comme elle est drole!" Mariette said to herself, and when she
went downstairs she told the head housemaid about it. But she
had already begun to like this odd little girl who had such an
intelligent small face and such perfect manners. She had taken
care of children before who were not so polite. Sara was a very
fine little person, and had a gentle, appreciative way of saying,
"If you please, Mariette," "Thank you, Mariette," which was very
charming. Mariette told the head housemaid that she thanked her
as if she was thanking a lady.

"Elle a l'air d'une princesse, cette petite," she said. Indeed,
she was very much pleased with her new little mistress and liked
her place greatly.

After Sara had sat in her seat in the schoolroom for a few
minutes, being looked at by the pupils, Miss Minchin rapped in a
dignified manner upon her desk.

"Young ladies," she said, "I wish to introduce you to your new
companion." All the little girls rose in their places, and Sara
rose also. "I shall expect you all to be very agreeable to Miss
Crewe; she has just come to us from a great distance—in fact,
from India. As soon as lessons are over you must make each
other's acquaintance."

The pupils bowed ceremoniously, and Sara made a little curtsy,
and then they sat down and looked at each other again.

"Sara," said Miss Minchin in her schoolroom manner, "come here
to me."

She had taken a book from the desk and was turning over its
leaves. Sara went to her politely.

"As your papa has engaged a French maid for you," she began, "I
conclude that he wishes you to make a special study of the French
language."

Sara felt a little awkward.

"I think he engaged her," she said, "because he—he thought I
would like her, Miss Minchin."

"I am afraid," said Miss Minchin, with a slightly sour smile,
"that you have been a very spoiled little girl and always
imagine that things are done because you like them. My
impression is that your papa wished you to learn French."

If Sara had been older or less punctilious about being quite
polite to people, she could have explained herself in a very few
words. But, as it was, she felt a flush rising on her cheeks.
Miss Minchin was a very severe and imposing person, and she
seemed so absolutely sure that Sara knew nothing whatever of
French that she felt as if it would be almost rude to correct
her. The truth was that Sara could not remember the time when
she had not seemed to know French. Her father had often spoken
it to her when she had been a baby. Her mother had been a French
woman, and Captain Crewe had loved her language, so it happened
that Sara had always heard and been familiar with it.