Sara Crewe

F >> Frances Hodgson Burnett >> Sara Crewe


"And now, my dear," said good Mrs. Carmichael, patting Sara's hand, "all
your troubles are over, I am sure, and you are to come home with me and
be taken care of as if you were one of my own little girls; and we are
so pleased to think of having you with us until everything is settled,
and Mr. Carrisford is better. The excitement of last night has made him
very weak, but we really think he will get well, now that such a load
is taken from his mind. And when he is stronger, I am sure he will be as
kind to you as your own papa would have been. He has a very good heart,
and he is fond of children--and he has no family at all. But we must
make you happy and rosy, and you must learn to play and run about, as my
little girls do--"

"As your little girls do?" said Sara. "I wonder if I could. I used to
watch them and wonder what it was like. Shall I feel as if I belonged to
somebody?"

"Ah, my love, yes!--yes!" said Mrs. Carmichael; "dear me, yes!" And her
motherly blue eyes grew quite moist, and she suddenly took Sara in her
arms and kissed her. That very night, before she went to sleep, Sara had
made the acquaintance of the entire Large Family, and such excitement
as she and the monkey had caused in that joyous circle could hardly be
described. There was not a child in the nursery, from the Eton boy who
was the eldest, to the baby who was the youngest, who had not laid
some offering on her shrine. All the older ones knew something of her
wonderful story. She had been born in India; she had been poor and
lonely and unhappy, and had lived in a garret and been treated unkindly;
and now she was to be rich and happy, and be taken care of. They were so
sorry for her, and so delighted and curious about her, all at once. The
girls wished to be with her constantly, and the little boys wished to be
told about India; the second baby, with the short round legs, simply
sat and stared at her and the monkey, possibly wondering why she had not
brought a hand-organ with her.

"I shall certainly wake up presently," Sara kept saying to herself.
"This one must be a dream. The other one turned out to be real; but this
couldn't be. But, oh! how happy it is!"

And even when she went to bed, in the bright, pretty room not far from
Mrs. Carmichael's own, and Mrs. Carmichael came and kissed her and
patted her and tucked her in cozily, she was not sure that she would not
wake up in the garret in the morning.

"And oh, Charles, dear," Mrs. Carmichael said to her husband, when she
went downstairs to him, "We must get that lonely look out of her eyes!
It isn't a child's look at all. I couldn't bear to see it in one of my
own children. What the poor little love must have had to bear in that
dreadful woman's house! But, surely, she will forget it in time."


But though the lonely look passed away from Sara's face, she never quite
forgot the garret at Miss Minchin's; and, indeed, she always liked to
remember the wonderful night when the tired princess crept upstairs,
cold and wet, and opening the door found fairy-land waiting for her. And
there was no one of the many stories she was always being called upon to
tell in the nursery of the Large Family which was more popular than that
particular one; and there was no one of whom the Large Family were so
fond as of Sara. Mr. Carrisford did not die, but recovered, and Sara
went to live with him; and no real princess could have been better taken
care of than she was. It seemed that the Indian Gentleman could not do
enough to make her happy, and to repay her for the past; and the Lascar
was her devoted slave. As her odd little face grew brighter, it grew so
pretty and interesting that Mr. Carrisford used to sit and watch it many
an evening, as they sat by the fire together.

They became great friends, and they used to spend hours reading and
talking together; and, in a very short time, there was no pleasanter
sight to the Indian Gentleman than Sara sitting in her big chair on the
opposite side of the hearth, with a book on her knee and her soft, dark
hair tumbling over her warm cheeks. She had a pretty habit of looking
up at him suddenly, with a bright smile, and then he would often say to
her:

"Are you happy, Sara?"

And then she would answer:

"I feel like a real princess, Uncle Tom."

He had told her to call him Uncle Tom.

"There doesn't seem to be anything left to `suppose,'" she added.

There was a little joke between them that he was a magician, and so
could do anything he liked; and it was one of his pleasures to invent
plans to surprise her with enjoyments she had not thought of. Scarcely
a day passed in which he did not do something new for her. Sometimes she
found new flowers in her room; sometimes a fanciful little gift tucked
into some odd corner, sometimes a new book on her pillow;--once as they
sat together in the evening they heard the scratch of a heavy paw on
the door of the room, and when Sara went to find out what it was, there
stood a great dog--a splendid Russian boar-hound with a grand silver and
gold collar. Stooping to read the inscription upon the collar, Sara was
delighted to read the words: "I am Boris; I serve the Princess Sara."

Then there was a sort of fairy nursery arranged for the entertainment of
the juvenile members of the Large Family, who were always coming to see
Sara and the Lascar and the monkey. Sara was as fond of the Large Family
as they were of her. She soon felt as if she were a member of it, and
the companionship of the healthy, happy children was very good for
her. All the children rather looked up to her and regarded her as the
cleverest and most brilliant of creatures--particularly after it was
discovered that she not only knew stories of every kind, and could
invent new ones at a moment's notice, but that she could help with
lessons, and speak French and German, and discourse with the Lascar in
Hindustani.

It was rather a painful experience for Miss Minchin to watch her
ex-pupil's fortunes, as she had the daily opportunity to do, and to feel
that she had made a serious mistake, from a business point of view. She
had even tried to retrieve it by suggesting that Sara's education should
be continued under her care, and had gone to the length of making an
appeal to the child herself.

"I have always been very fond of you," she said.

Then Sara fixed her eyes upon her and gave her one of her odd looks.

"Have you?" she answered.

"Yes," said Miss Minchin. "Amelia and I have always said you were
the cleverest child we had with us, and I am sure we could make you
happy--as a parlor boarder."

Sara thought of the garret and the day her ears were boxed,--and of that
other day, that dreadful, desolate day when she had been told that she
belonged to nobody; that she had no home and no friends,--and she kept
her eyes fixed on Miss Minchin's face.

"You know why I would not stay with you," she said.

And it seems probable that Miss Minchin did, for after that simple
answer she had not the boldness to pursue the subject. She merely sent
in a bill for the expense of Sara's education and support, and she made
it quite large enough. And because Mr. Carrisford thought Sara would
wish it paid, it was paid. When Mr. Carmichael paid it he had a brief
interview with Miss Minchin in which he expressed his opinion with much
clearness and force; and it is quite certain that Miss Minchin did not
enjoy the conversation.

Sara had been about a month with Mr. Carrisford, and had begun to
realize that her happiness was not a dream, when one night the Indian
Gentleman saw that she sat a long time with her cheek on her hand
looking at the fire.

"What are you `supposing,' Sara?" he asked. Sara looked up with a bright
color on her cheeks.

"I was `supposing,'" she said; "I was remembering that hungry day, and a
child I saw."

"But there were a great many hungry days," said the Indian Gentleman,
with a rather sad tone in his voice. "Which hungry day was it?"

"I forgot you didn't know," said Sara. "It was the day I found the
things in my garret."

And then she told him the story of the bun-shop, and the fourpence, and
the child who was hungrier than herself; and somehow as she told it,
though she told it very simply indeed, the Indian Gentleman found it
necessary to shade his eyes with his hand and look down at the floor.

"And I was `supposing' a kind of plan," said Sara, when she had
finished; "I was thinking I would like to do something."

"What is it?" said her guardian in a low tone. "You may do anything you
like to do, Princess."

"I was wondering," said Sara,--"you know you say I have a great deal of
money--and I was wondering if I could go and see the bun-woman and
tell her that if, when hungry children--particularly on those dreadful
days--come and sit on the steps or look in at the window, she would just
call them in and give them something to eat, she might send the bills to
me and I would pay them--could I do that?"

"You shall do it to-morrow morning," said the Indian Gentleman.

"Thank you," said Sara; "you see I know what it is to be hungry, and it
is very hard when one can't even pretend it away."

"Yes, yes, my dear," said the Indian Gentleman. "Yes, it must be. Try
to forget it. Come and sit on this footstool near my knee, and only
remember you are a princess."

"Yes," said Sara, "and I can give buns and bread to the Populace." And
she went and sat on the stool, and the Indian Gentleman (he used to
like her to call him that, too, sometimes,--in fact very often) drew her
small, dark head down upon his knee and stroked her hair.

The next morning a carriage drew up before the door of the baker's shop,
and a gentleman and a little girl got out,--oddly enough, just as the
bun-woman was putting a tray of smoking hotbuns into the window. When
Sara entered the shop the woman turned and looked at her and, leaving
the buns, came and stood behind the counter. For a moment she looked at
Sara very hard indeed, and then her good-natured face lighted up.

"I'm that sure I remember you, miss," she said. "And yet--"

"Yes," said Sara, "once you gave me six buns for fourpence, and--"

"And you gave five of 'em to a beggar-child," said the woman. "I've
always remembered it. I couldn't make it out at first. I beg pardon,
sir, but there's not many young people that notices a hungry face in
that way, and I've thought of it many a time. Excuse the liberty, miss,
but you look rosier and better than you did that day."

"I am better, thank you," said Sara, "and--and I am happier, and I have
come to ask you to do something for me."

"Me, miss!" exclaimed the woman, "why, bless you, yes, miss! What can I
do?"

And then Sara made her little proposal, and the woman listened to it
with an astonished face.

"Why, bless me!" she said, when she had heard it all. "Yes, miss, it'll
be a pleasure to me to do it. I am a working woman, myself, and can't
afford to do much on my own account, and there's sights of trouble on
every side; but if you'll excuse me, I'm bound to say I've given many
a bit of bread away since that wet afternoon, just along o' thinkin' of
you. An' how wet an' cold you was, an' how you looked,--an' yet you give
away your hot buns as if you was a princess."

The Indian Gentleman smiled involuntarily, and Sara smiled a little too.
"She looked so hungry," she said. "She was hungrier than I was."

"She was starving," said the woman. "Many's the time she's told me of it
since--how she sat there in the wet, and felt as if a wolf was a-tearing
at her poor young insides."

"Oh, have you seen her since then?" exclaimed Sara. "Do you know where
she is?"

"I know!" said the woman. "Why, she's in that there back room now, miss,
an' has been for a month, an' a decent, well-meaning girl she's going to
turn out, an' such a help to me in the day shop, an' in the kitchen, as
you'd scarce believe, knowing how she's lived."

She stepped to the door of the little back parlor and spoke; and the
next minute a girl came out and followed her behind the counter. And
actually it was the beggar-child, clean and neatly clothed, and looking
as if she had not been hungry for a long time. She looked shy, but she
had a nice face, now that she was no longer a savage; and the wild look
had gone from her eyes. And she knew Sara in an instant, and stood and
looked at her as if she could never look enough.

"You see," said the woman, "I told her to come here when she was hungry,
and when she'd come I'd give her odd jobs to do, an' I found she was
willing, an' somehow I got to like her; an' the end of it was I've given
her a place an' a home, an' she helps me, an' behaves as well, an' is as
thankful as a girl can be. Her name's Anne--she has no other."

The two children stood and looked at each other a few moments. In Sara's
eyes a new thought was growing.

"I'm glad you have such a good home," she said. "Perhaps Mrs. Brown will
let you give the buns and bread to the children--perhaps you would like
to do it--because you know what it is to be hungry, too."

"Yes, miss," said the girl.

And somehow Sara felt as if she understood her, though the girl said
nothing more, and only stood still and looked, and looked after her as
she went out of the shop and got into the carriage and drove away.