broke loose, jumped on to the slates, ran across them chattering, and actually leaped on to Sara's shoulder, and from there down into her attic room. It made her laugh and delighted her; but she knew he must be restored to his master--if the Lascar was his master--and she wondered how this was to be done. Would he let her catch him, or would he be naughty and refuse to be caught, and perhaps get away and run off over the roofs and be lost? That would not do at all. Perhaps he belonged to the Indian gentleman, and the poor man was fond of him. She turned to the Lascar, feeling glad that she remembered still some of the Hindustani she had learned when she lived with her father. She could make the man understand. She spoke to him in the language he knew. "Will he let me catch him?" she asked. She thought she had never seen more surprise and delight than the dark face expressed when she spoke in the familiar tongue. The truth was that the poor fellow felt as if his gods had intervened, and the kind little voice came from heaven itself. At once Sara saw that he had been accustomed to European children. He poured forth a flood of respectful thanks. He was the servant of Missee Sahib. The monkey was a good monkey and would not bite; but, unfortunately, he was difficult to catch. He would flee from one spot to another, like the lightning. He was disobedient, though not evil. Ram Dass knew him as if he were his child, and Ram Dass he would sometimes obey, but not always. If Missee Sahib would permit Ram Dass, he himself could cross the roof to her room, enter the windows, and regain the unworthy little animal. But he was A Litte Princess evidently afraid Sara might think he was taking a great liberty and perhaps would not let him come. But Sara gave him leave at once. "Can you get across?" she inquired. "In a moment," he answered her. "Then come," she said; "he is flying from side to side of the room as if he was frightened." Ram Dass slipped through his attic window and crossed to hers as steadily and lightly as if he had walked on roofs all his life. He slipped through the skylight and dropped upon his feet without a sound. Then he turned to Sara and salaamed again. The monkey saw him and uttered a little scream. Ram Dass hastily took the precaution of shutting the skylight, and then went in chase of him. It was not a very long chase. The monkey prolonged it a few minutes evidently for the mere fun of it, but presently he sprang chattering on to Ram Dass's shoulder and sat there chattering and clinging to his neck with a weird little skinny arm. Ram Dass thanked Sara profoundly. She had seen that his quick native eyes had taken in at a glance all the bare shabbiness of the room, but he spoke to her as if he were speaking to the little daughter of a rajah, and pretended that he observed nothing. He did not presume to remain more than a few moments after he had caught the monkey, and those moments were given to further deep and grateful obeisance to her in return for her indulgence. This little evil one, he said, stroking the monkey, was, in truth, not so evil as he seemed, and his master, who was ill, was sometimes amused by him. He would have been made sad if his favorite had run away and been lost. Then he salaamed once more and got through the skylight and across the slates again with as much agility as the monkey himself had displayed. When he had gone Sara stood in the middle of her attic and thought of many things his face and his manner had brought back to her. The sight of his native costume and the profound reverence of his manner stirred all her past memories. It seemed a strange thing to remember that she-- the drudge whom the cook had said insulting things to an hour ago-- had only a few years ago been surrounded by people who all treated her as Ram A Litte Princess Dass had treated her; who salaamed when she went by, whose foreheads almost touched the ground when she spoke to them, who were her servants and her slaves. It was like a sort of dream. It was all over, and it could never come back. It certainly seemed that there was no way in which any change could take place. She knew what Miss Minchin intended that her future should be. So long as she was too young to be used as a regular teacher, she would be used as an errand girl and servant and yet expected to remember what she had learned and in some mysterious way to learn more. The greater number of her evenings she was supposed to spend at study, and at various indefinite intervals she was examined and knew she would have been severely admonished if she had not advanced as was expected of her. The truth, indeed, was that Miss Minchin knew that she was too anxious to learn to require teachers. Give her books, and she would devour them and end by knowing them by heart. She might be trusted to be equal to teaching a good deal in the course of a few years. This was what would happen: when she was older she would be expected to drudge in the schoolroom as she drudged now in various parts of the house; they would be obliged to give her more respectable clothes, but they would be sure to be plain and ugly and to make her look somehow like a servant. That was all there seemed to be to look forward to, and Sara stood quite still for several minutes and thought it over. Then a thought came back to her which made the color rise in her cheek and a spark light itself in her eyes. She straightened her thin little body and lifted her head. "Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it. There was Marie An{}toinette when she was in prison and her throne was gone and she had only a black gown on, and her hair was white, and they insulted her and called her Widow Capet. She was a great deal more like a queen then than when she was so gay and everything was so grand. I like her best then. Those howling mobs of people did not frighten her. She was stronger than they were, even when they cut her head off." A Litte Princess This was not a new thought, but quite an old one, by this time. It had consoled her through many a bitter day, and she had gone about the house with an expression in her face which Miss Minchin could not understand and which was a source of great annoyance to her, as it seemed as if the child were mentally living a life which held her above he rest of the world. It was as if she scarcely heard the rude and acid things said to her; or, if she heard them, did not care for them at all. Sometimes, when she was in the midst of some harsh, domineering speech, Miss Minchin would find the still, unchildish eyes fixed upon her with something like a proud smile in them. At such times she did not know that Sara was saying to herself: "You don't know that you are saying these things to a princess, and that if I chose I could wave my hand and order you to execution. I only spare you because I am a princess, and you are a poor, stupid, unkind, vulgar old thing, and don't know any better." This used to interest and amuse her more than anything else; and queer and fanciful as it was, she found comfort in it and it was a good thing for her. While the thought held possession of her, she could not be made rude and malicious by the rudeness and malice of those about her. "A princess must be polite," she said to herself. And so when the servants, taking their tone from their mistress, were insolent and ordered her about, she would hold her head erect and reply to them with a quaint civility which often made them stare at her. "She's got more airs and graces than if she come from Buckingham Palace, that young one," said the cook, chuckling a little sometimes. "I lose my temper with her often enough, but I will say she never forgets her manners. `If you please, cook'; `Will you be so kind, cook?' `I beg your pardon, cook'; `May I trouble you, cook?' She drops 'em about the kitchen as if they was nothing." The morning after the interview with Ram Dass and his monkey, Sara was in the schoolroom with her small pupils. Having finished giving them their lessons, she was putting the French exercise-books together and thinking, as she did it, of the various things royal personages in disguise were called upon to do: Alfred the Great, for instance, burning the cakes and getting his ears boxed by the wife of the neat-herd. How frightened A Litte Princess she must have been when she found out what she had done. If Miss Minchin should find out that she--Sara, whose toes were almost sticking out of her boots--was a princess--a real one! The look in her eyes was exactly the look which Miss Minchin most disliked. She would not have it; she was quite near her and was so enraged that she actually flew at her and boxed her ears--exactly as the neat-herd's wife had boxed King Alfred's. It made Sara start. She wakened from her dream at the shock, and, catching her breath, stood still a second. Then, not knowing she was going to do it, she broke into a little laugh. "What are you laughing at, you bold, impudent child?" Miss Minchin exclaimed. It took Sara a few seconds to control herself sufficiently to remember that she was a princess. Her cheeks were red and smarting from the blows she had received. "I was thinking," she answered. "Beg my pardon immediately," said Miss Minchin. Sara hesitated a second before she replied. "I will beg your pardon for laughing, if it was rude," she said then; "but I won't beg your pardon for thinking." "What were you thinking?" demanded Miss Minchin. "How dare you think? What were you thinking?" Jessie tittered, and she and Lavinia nudged each other in unison. All the girls looked up from their books to listen. Really, it always interested them a little when Miss Minchin attacked Sara. Sara always said something queer, and never seemed the least bit frightened. She was not in the least frightened now, though her boxed ears were scarlet and her eyes were as bright as stars. "I was thinking," she answered grandly and politely, "that you did not know what you were doing." "That I did not know what I was doing?" Miss Minchin fairly gasped. "Yes," said Sara, "and I was thinking what would happen if I were a princess and you boxed my ears--what I should do to you. And I was thinking that if I were one, you would never dare to do it, whatever I said A Litte Princess or did. And I was thinking how surprised and frightened you would be if you suddenly found out--" She had the imagined future so clearly before her eyes that she spoke in a manner which had an effect even upon Miss Minchin. It almost seemed for the moment to her narrow, unimaginative mind that there must be some real power hidden behind this candid daring. "What?" she exclaimed. "Found out what?" "That I really was a princess," said Sara, "and could do anything-- anything I liked." Every pair of eyes in the room widened to its full limit. Lavinia leaned forward on her seat to look. "Go to your room," cried Miss Minchin, breathlessly, "this instant! Leave the schoolroom! Attend to your lessons, young ladies!" Sara made a little bow. "Excuse me for laughing if it was impolite," she said, and walked out of the room, leaving Miss Minchin struggling with her rage, and the girls whispering over their books. "Did you see her? Did you see how queer she looked?" Jessie broke out. "I shouldn't be at all surprised if she did turn out to be something. Suppose she should!" A Litte Princess 12 The Other Side of the Wall When one lives in a row of houses, it is interesting to think of the things which are being done and said on the other side of the wall of the very rooms one is living in. Sara was fond of amusing herself by trying to imagine the things hidden by the wall which divided the Select Seminary from the Indian gentleman's house. She knew that the schoolroom was next to the Indian gentleman's study, and she hoped that the wall was thick so that the noise made sometimes after lesson hours would not disturb him. "I am growing quite fond of him," she said to Ermengarde; "I should not like him to be disturbed. I have adopted him for a friend. You can do that with people you never speak to at all. You can just watch them, and think about them and be sorry for them, until they seem almost like relations. I'm quite anxious sometimes when I see the doctor call twice a day." "I have very few relations," said Ermengarde, reflectively, "and I'm very glad of it. I don't like those I have. My two aunts are always saying, `Dear me, Ermengarde! You are very fat. You shouldn't eat sweets,' and my uncle is always asking me things like, `When did Edward the Third ascend the throne?' and, `Who died of a surfeit of lampreys?'" Sara laughed. "People you never speak to can't ask you questions like that," she said; "and I'm sure the Indian gentleman wouldn't even if he was quite intimate with you. I am fond of him." She had become fond of the Large Family because they looked happy; but she had become fond of the Indian gentleman because he looked unhappy. He had evidently not fully recovered from some very severe illness. In the kitchen--where, of course, the servants, through some mysterious means, knew everything--there was much discussion of his case. He was not an Indian gentleman really, but an Englishman who had lived in India. He had met with great misfortunes which had for a time so imperilled his whole fortune that he had thought himself ruined A Litte Princess and disgraced forever. The shock had been so great that he had almost died of brain fever; and ever since he had been shattered in health, though his fortunes had changed and all his possessions had been restored to him. His trouble and peril had been connected with mines. "And mines with diamonds in 'em!" said the cook. "No savin's of mine never goes into no mines--particular diamond ones"-- with a side glance at Sara. "We all know somethin' of THEM>." "He felt as my papa felt," Sara thought. "He was ill as my papa was; but he did not die." So her heart was more drawn to him than before. When she was sent out at night she used sometimes to feel quite glad, because there was always a chance that the curtains of the house next door might not yet be closed and she could look into the warm room and see her adopted friend. When no one was about she used sometimes to stop, and, holding to the iron railings, wish him good night as if he could hear her. "Perhaps you can FEEL if you can't hear," was her fancy. "Perhaps kind thoughts reach people somehow, even through windows and doors and walls. Perhaps you feel a little warm and comforted, and don't know why, when I am standing here in the cold and hoping you will get well and happy again. I am so sorry for you," she would whisper in an intense little voice. "I wish you had a `Little Missus' who could pet you as I used to pet papa when he had a headache. I should like to be your `Little Missus' myself, poor dear! Good night--good night. God bless you!" She would go away, feeling quite comforted and a little warmer herself. Her sympathy was so strong that it seemed as if it MUST reach him somehow as he sat alone in his armchair by the fire, nearly always in a great dressing gown, and nearly always with his forehead resting in his hand as he gazed hopelessly into the fire. He looked to Sara like a man who had a trouble on his mind still, not merely like one whose troubles lay all in the past. "He always seems as if he were thinking of something that hurts him NOW>, she said to herself, "but he has got his money back and he will get over his brain fever in time, so he ought not to look like that. I wonder if there is something else." If there was something else--something even servants did not hear of-- A Litte Princess she could not help believing that the father of the Large Family knew it-- the gentleman she called Mr. Montmorency. Mr. Montmorency went to see him often, and Mrs. Montmorency and all the little Montmorencys went, too, though less often. He seemed particularly fond of the two elder little girls--the Janet and Nora who had been so alarmed when their small brother Donald had given Sara his sixpence. He had, in fact, a very tender place in his heart for all children, and particularly for little girls. Janet and Nora were as fond of him as he was of them, and looked forward with the greatest pleasure to the afternoons when they were allowed to cross the square and make their well-behaved little visits to him. They were extremely decorous little visits because he was an invalid. "He is a poor thing," said Janet, "and he says we cheer him up. We try to cheer him up very quietly." Janet was the head of the family, and kept the rest of it in order. It was she who decided when it was discreet to ask the Indian gentleman to tell stories about India, and it was she who saw when he was tired and it was the time to steal quietly away and tell Ram Dass to go to him. They were very fond of Ram Dass. He could have told any number of stories if he had been able to speak anything but Hindustani. The Indian gentleman's real name was Mr. Carrisford, and Janet told Mr. Carrisford about the encounter with the little-girl-who-was-not-a-beggar. He was very much interested, and all the more so when he heard from Ram Dass of the adventure of the monkey on the roof. Ram Dass made for him a very clear picture of the attic and its desolateness-- of the bare floor and broken plaster, the rusty, empty grate, and the hard, narrow bed. "Carmichael," he said to the father of the Large Family, after he had heard this description, "I wonder how many of the attics in this square are like that one, and how many wretched little servant girls sleep on such beds, while I toss on my down pillows, loaded and harassed by wealth that is, most of it--not mine." "My dear fellow," Mr. Carmichael answered cheerily, "the sooner you cease tormenting yourself the better it will be for you. If you possessed all the wealth of all the Indies, you could not set right all the discomforts in the world, and if you began to refurnish all the attics in this square, A Litte Princess there would still remain all the attics in all the other squares and streets to put in order. And there you are!" Mr. Carrisford sat and bit his nails as he looked into the glowing bed of coals in the grate. "Do you suppose," he said slowly, after a pause-- "do you think it is possible that the other child--the child I never cease thinking of, I believe--could be--could POSSIBLY be reduced to any such condition as the poor little soul next door?" Mr. Carmichael looked at him uneasily. He knew that the worst thing the man could do for himself, for his reason and his health, was to begin to think in the particular way of this particular subject. "If the child at Madame Pascal's school in Paris was the one you are in search of," he answered soothingly, "she would seem to be in the hands of people who can afford to take care of her. They adopted her because she had been the favorite companion of their little daughter who died. They had no other children, and Madame Pascal said that they were extremely well-to-do Russians." "And the wretched woman actually did not know where they had taken her!" exclaimed Mr. Carrisford. Mr. Carmichael shrugged his shoulders. "She was a shrewd, worldly Frenchwoman, and was evidently only too glad to get the child so comfortably off her hands when the father's death left her totally unprovided for. Women of her type do not trouble themselves about the futures of children who might prove burdens. The adopted parents apparently disappeared and left no trace." "But you say `IF> the child was the one I am in search of. You say 'if.' We are not sure. There was a difference in the name." "Madame Pascal pronounced it as if it were Carew instead of Crewe-- but that might be merely a matter of pronunciation. The circumstances were curiously similar. An English officer in India had placed his motherless little girl at the school. He had died suddenly after losing his fortune." Mr. Carmichael paused a moment, as if a new thought had occurred to him. "Are you SURE the child was left at a school in Paris? Are you sure it was Paris?" "My dear fellow," broke forth Carrisford, with restless bitterness, "I A Litte Princess am SURE of nothing. I never saw either the child or her mother. Ralph Crewe and I loved each other as boys, but we had not met since our school days, until we met in India. I was absorbed in the magnificent promise of the mines. He became absorbed, too. The whole thing was so huge and glittering that we half lost our heads. When we met we scarcely spoke of anything else. I only knew that the child had been sent to school somewhere. I do not even remember, now, HOW I knew it." He was beginning to be excited. He always became excited when his still weakened brain was stirred by memories of the catastrophes of the past. Mr. Carmichael watched him anxiously. It was necessary to ask some questions, but they must be put quietly and with caution. "But you had reason to think the school WAS in Paris?" "Yes," was the answer, "because her mother was a Frenchwoman, and I had heard that she wished her child to be educated in Paris. It seemed only likely that she would be there." "Yes," Mr. Carmichael said, "it seems more than probable." The Indian gentleman leaned forward and struck the table with a long, wasted hand. "Carmichael," he said, "I MUST find her. If she is alive, she is somewhere. If she is friendless and penniless, it is through my fault. How is a man to get back his nerve with a thing like that on his mind? This sudden change of luck at the mines has made realities of all our most fantastic dreams, and poor Crewe's child may be begging in the street!" "No, no," said Carmichael. "Try to be calm. Console yourself with the fact that when she is found you have a fortune to hand over to her." "Why was I not man enough to stand my ground when things looked black?" Carrisford groaned in petulant misery. "I believe I should have stood my ground if I had not been responsible for other people's money as well as my own. Poor Crewe had put into the scheme every penny that he owned. He trusted me--he LOVED me. And he died thinking I had ruined him--I--Tom Carrisford, who played cricket at Eton with him. What a villain he must have thought me!" "Don't reproach yourself so bitterly." A Litte Princess "I don't reproach myself because the speculation threatened to fail-- I reproach myself for losing my courage. I ran away like a swindler and a thief, because I could not face my best friend and tell him I had ruined him and his child." The good-hearted father of the Large Family put his hand on his shoulder comfortingly. "You ran away because your brain had given way under the strain of mental torture," he said. "You were half delirious already. If you had not been you would have stayed and fought it out. You were in a hospital, strapped down in bed, raving with brain fever, two days after you left the place. Remember that." Carrisford dropped his forehead in his hands. "Good God! Yes," he said. "I was driven mad with dread and horror. I had not slept for weeks. The night I staggered out of my house all the air seemed full of hideous things mocking and mouthing at me." "That is explanation enough in itself," said Mr. Carmichael. "How could a man on the verge of brain fever judge sanely!" Carrisford shook his drooping head. "And when I returned to consciousness poor Crewe was dead--and buried. And I seemed to remember nothing. I did not remember the child for months and months. Even when I began to recall her existence everything seemed in a sort of haze." He stopped a moment and rubbed his forehead. "It sometimes seems so now when I try to remember. Surely I must sometime have heard Crewe speak of the school she was sent to. Don't you think so?" "He might not have spoken of it definitely. You never seem even to have heard her real name." "He used to call her by an odd pet name he had invented. He called her his `Little Missus.' But the wretched mines drove everything else out of our heads. We talked of nothing else. If he spoke of the school, I forgot--I forgot. And now I shall never remember." "Come, come," said Carmichael. "We shall find her yet. We will continue to search for Madame Pascal's good-natured Russians. She A Litte Princess seemed to have a vague idea that they lived in Moscow. We will take that as a clue. I will go to Moscow." "If I were able to travel, I would go with you," said Carrisford; "but I can only sit here wrapped in furs and stare at the fire. And when I look into it I seem to see Crewe's gay young face gazing back at me. He looks as if he were asking me a question. Sometimes I dream of him at night, and he always stands before me and asks the same question in words. Can you guess what he says, Carmichael?" Mr. Carmichael answered him in a rather low voice. "Not exactly," he said. "He always says, `Tom, old man--Tom--where is the Little Missus?'" He caught at Carmichael's hand and clung to it. "I must be able to answer him--I must!" he said. "Help me to find her. Help me." On the other side of the wall Sara was sitting in her garret talking to Melchisedec, who had come out for his evening meal. "It has been hard to be a princess today, Melchisedec," she said. "It has been harder than usual. It gets harder as the weather grows colder and the streets get more sloppy. When Lavinia laughed at my muddy skirt as I passed her in the hall, I thought of something to say all in a flash- -and I only just stopped myself in time. You can't sneer back at people like that--if you are a princess. But you have to bite your tongue to hold yourself in. I bit mine. It was a cold afternoon, Melchisedec. And it's a cold night." Quite suddenly she put her black head down in her arms, as she often did when she was alone. "Oh, papa," she whispered, "what a long time it seems since I was your `Little Missus'!" This was what happened that day on both sides of the wall. A Litte Princess 13 One of the Populace The winter was a wretched one. There were days on which Sara tramped through snow when she went on her errands; there were worse days when the snow melted and combined itself with mud to form slush; there were others when the fog was so thick that the lamps in the street were lighted all day and London looked as it had looked the afternoon, several years ago, when the cab had driven through the thoroughfares with Sara tucked up on its seat, leaning against her father's shoulder. On such days the windows of the house of the Large Family always looked delightfully cozy and alluring, and the study in which the Indian gentleman sat glowed with warmth and rich color. But the attic was dismal beyond words. There were no longer sunsets or sunrises to look at, and scarcely ever any stars, it seemed to Sara. The clouds hung low over the skylight and were either gray or mud-color, or dropping heavy rain. At four o'clock in the afternoon, even when there was no special fog, the daylight was at an end. If it was necessary to go to her attic for anything, Sara was obliged to light a candle. The women in the kitchen were depressed, and that made them more ill-tempered than ever. Becky was driven like a little slave. "'Twarn't for you, miss," she said hoarsely to Sara one night when she had crept into the attic--"'twarn't for you, an' the Bastille, an' bein' the prisoner in the next cell, I should die. That there does seem real now, doesn't it? The missus is more like the head jailer every day she lives. I can jest see them big keys you say she carries. The cook she's like one of the under-jailers. Tell me some more, please, miss--tell me about the subt'ranean passage we've dug under the walls." "I'll tell you something warmer," shivered Sara. "Get your coverlet and wrap it round you, and I'll get mine, and we will huddle close together on the bed, and I'll tell you about the tropical forest where the Indian gentleman's monkey used to live. When I see him sitting on the table near the window and looking out into the street with that mournful expression, I always feel sure he is thinking about the tropical forest where A Litte Princess he used to swing by his tail from coconut trees. I wonder who caught him, and if he left a family behind who had depended on him for coconuts." "That is warmer, miss," said Becky, gratefully; "but, someways, even the Bastille is sort of heatin' when you gets to tellin' about it." "That is because it makes you think of something else," said Sara, wrapping the coverlet round her until only her small dark face was to be seen looking out of it. "I've noticed this. What you have to do with your mind, when your body is miserable, is to make it think of something else." "Can you do it, miss?" faltered Becky, regarding her with admiring eyes. Sara knitted her brows a moment. "Sometimes I can and sometimes I can't," she said stoutly. "But when I CAN I'm all right. And what I believe is that we always could--if we practiced enough. I've been practicing a good deal lately, and it's beginning to be easier than it used to be. When things are horrible--just horrible--I think as hard as ever I can of being a princess. I say to myself, `I am a princess, and I am a fairy one, and because I am a fairy nothing can hurt me or make me uncomfortable.' You don't know how it makes you forget"-- with a laugh. She had many opportunities of making her mind think of something else, and many opportunities of proving to herself whether or not she was a princess. But one of the strongest tests she was ever put to came on a certain dreadful day which, she often thought afterward, would never quite fade out of her memory even in the years to come. For several days it had rained continuously; the streets were chilly and sloppy and full of dreary, cold mist; there was mud everywhere-- sticky London mud--and over everything the pall of drizzle and fog. Of course there were several long and tiresome errands to be done-- there always were on days like this--and Sara was sent out again and again, until her shabby clothes were damp through. The absurd old feathers on her forlorn hat were more draggled and absurd than ever, and her downtrodden shoes were so wet that they could not hold any more water. A Litte Princess Added to this, she had been deprived of her dinner, because Miss Minchin had chosen to punish her. She was so cold and hungry and tired that her face began to have a pinched look, and now and then some kind-hearted person passing her in the street glanced at her with sudden sympathy. But she did not know that. She hurried on, trying to make her mind think of something else. It was really very necessary. Her way of doing it was to "pretend" and "suppose" with all the strength that was left in her. But really this time it was harder than she had ever found it, and once or twice she thought it almost made her more cold and hungry instead of less so. But she persevered obstinately, and as the muddy water squelched through her broken shoes and the wind seemed trying to drag her thin jacket from her, she talked to herself as she walked, though she did not speak aloud or even move her lips. "Suppose I had dry clothes on," she thought. "Suppose I had good shoes and a long, thick coat and merino stockings and a whole umbrella. And suppose--suppose--just when I was near a baker's where they sold hot buns, I should find sixpence--which belonged to nobody. SUPPOSE> if I did, I should go into the shop and buy six of the hottest buns and eat them all without stopping." Some very odd things happen in this world sometimes. It certainly was an odd thing that happened to Sara. She had to cross the street just when she was saying this to herself The mud was dreadful-- she almost had to wade. She picked her way as carefully as she could, but she could not save herself much; only, in picking her way, she had to look down at her feet and the mud, and in looking down-- just as she reached the pavement--she saw something shining in the gutter. It was actually a piece of silver--a tiny piece trodden upon by many feet, but still with spirit enough left to shine a little. Not quite a sixpence, but the next thing to it-- a fourpenny piece. In one second it was in her cold little red-and-blue hand. "Oh," she gasped, "it is true! It is true!" And then, if you will believe me, she looked straight at the shop directly facing her. And it was a baker's shop, and a cheerful, stout, motherly woman with rosy cheeks was putting into the window a tray of A Litte Princess delicious newly baked hot buns, fresh from the oven-- large, plump, shiny buns, with currants in them. It almost made Sara feel faint for a few seconds--the shock, and the sight of the buns, and the delightful odors of warm bread floating up through the baker's cellar window. She knew she need not hesitate to use the little piece of money. It had evidently been lying in the mud for some time, and its owner was completely lost in the stream of passing people who crowded and jostled each other all day long. "But I'll go and ask the baker woman if she has lost anything," she said to herself, rather faintly. So she crossed the pavement and put her wet foot on the step. As she did so she saw something that made her stop. It was a little figure more forlorn even than herself--a little figure which was not much more than a bundle of rags, from which small, bare, red muddy feet peeped out, only because the rags with which their owner was trying to cover them were not long enough. Above the rags appeared a shock head of tangled hair, and a dirty face with big, hollow, hungry eyes. Sara knew they were hungry eyes the moment she saw them, and she felt a sudden sympathy. "This," she said to herself, with a little sigh, "is one of the populace-- and she is hungrier than I am." The child--this "one of the populace"--stared up at Sara, and shuffled herself aside a little, so as to give her room to pass. She was used to being made to give room to everybody. She knew that if a policeman chanced to see her he would tell her to "move on." Sara clutched her little fourpenny piece and hesitated for a few seconds. Then she spoke to her. "Are you hungry?" she asked. The child shuffled herself and her rags a little more. "Ain't I jist?" she said in a hoarse voice. "Jist ain't I?" "Haven't you had any dinner?" said Sara. "No dinner," more hoarsely still and with more shuffling. "Nor yet no bre'fast--nor yet no supper. No nothin'. A Litte Princess "Since when?" asked Sara. "Dunno. Never got nothin' today--nowhere. I've axed an' axed." Just to look at her made Sara more hungry and faint. But those queer little thoughts were at work in her brain, and she was talking to herself, though she was sick at heart. "If I'm a princess," she was saying, "if I'm a princess--when they were poor and driven from their thrones--they always shared-- with the populace--if they met one poorer and hungrier than themselves. They always shared. Buns are a penny each. If it had been sixpence I could have eaten six. It won't be enough for either of us. But it will be better than nothing." "Wait a minute," she said to the beggar child. She went into the shop. It was warm and smelled deliciously. The woman was just going to put some more hot buns into the window. "If you please," said Sara, "have you lost fourpence--a silver fourpence?" And she held the forlorn little piece of money out to her. The woman looked at it and then at her--at her intense little face and draggled, once fine clothes. "Bless us, no," she answered. "Did you find it?" "Yes," said Sara. "In the gutter." "Keep it, then," said the woman. "It may have been there for a week, and goodness knows who lost it. YOU could never find out." "I know that," said Sara, "but I thought I would ask you." "Not many would," said the woman, looking puzzled and interested and good-natured all at once. "Do you want to buy something?" she added, as she saw Sara glance at the buns. "Four buns, if you please," said Sara. "Those at a penny each." The woman went to the window and put some in a paper bag. Sara noticed that she put in six. "I said four, if you please," she explained. "I have only fourpence." "I'll throw in two for makeweight," said the woman with her good- natured look. "I dare say you can eat them sometime. Aren't you hungry?" A Litte Princess A mist rose before Sara's eyes. "Yes," she answered. "I am very hungry, and I am much obliged to you for your kindness; and"--she was going to add--"there is a child outside who is hungrier than I am." But just at that moment two or three customers came in at once, and each one seemed in a hurry, so she could only thank the woman again and go out. The beggar girl was still huddled up in the corner of the step. She looked frightful in her wet and dirty rags. She was staring straight before her with a stupid look of suffering, and Sara saw her suddenly draw the back of her roughened black hand across her eyes to rub away the tears which seemed to have surprised her by forcing their way from under her lids. She was muttering to herself. Sara opened the paper bag and took out one of the hot buns, which had already warmed her own cold hands a little. "See," she said, putting the bun in the ragged lap, "this is nice and hot. Eat it, and you will not feel so hungry." The child started and stared up at her, as if such sudden, amazing good luck almost frightened her; then she snatched up the bun and began to cram it into her mouth with great wolfish bites. "Oh, my! Oh, my!" Sara heard her say hoarsely, in wild delight. "OH my>!" Sara took out three more buns and put them down. The sound in the hoarse, ravenous voice was awful. "She is hungrier than I am," she said to herself. "She's starving." But her hand trembled when she put down the fourth bun. "I'm not starving," she said--and she put down the fifth. The little ravening London savage was still snatching and devouring when she turned away. She was too ravenous to give any thanks, even if she had ever been taught politeness--which she had not. She was only a poor little wild animal. "Good-bye," said Sara. When she reached the other side of the street she looked back. The child had a bun in each hand and had stopped in the middle of a bite to watch her. Sara gave her a little nod, and the child, after another stare--a A Litte Princess curious lingering stare--jerked her shaggy head in response, and until Sara was out of sight she did not take another bite or even finish the one she had begun. At that moment the baker-woman looked out of her shop window. "Well, I never!" she exclaimed. "If that young un hasn't given her buns to a beggar child! It wasn't because she didn't want them, either. Well, well, she looked hungry enough. I'd give something to know what she did it for." She stood behind her window for a few moments and pondered. Then her curiosity got the better of her. She went to the door and spoke to the beggar child. "Who gave you those buns?" she asked her. The child nodded her head toward Sara's vanishing figure. "What did she say?" inquired the woman. "Axed me if I was 'ungry," replied the hoarse voice. "What did you say?" "Said I was jist." "And then she came in and got the buns, and gave them to you, did she?" The child nodded. "How many?" "Five." The woman thought it over. "Left just one for herself," she said in a low voice. "And she could have eaten the whole six--I saw it in her eyes." She looked after the little draggled far-away figure and felt more disturbed in her usually comfortable mind than she had felt for many a day. "I wish she hadn't gone so quick," she said. "I'm blest if she shouldn't have had a dozen." Then she turned to the child. "Are you hungry yet?" she said. "I'm allus hungry," was the answer, "but 't ain't as bad as it was." "Come in here," said the woman, and she held open the shop door. The child got up and shuffled in. To be invited into a warm place full A Litte Princess of bread seemed an incredible thing. She did not know what was going to happen. She did not care, even. "Get yourself warm," said the woman, pointing to a fire in the tiny back room. "And look here; when you are hard up for a bit of bread, you can come in here and ask for it. I'm blest if I won't give it to you for that young one's sake." * * * Sara found some comfort in her remaining bun. At all events, it was very hot, and it was better than nothing. As she walked along she broke off small pieces and ate them slowly to make them last longer. "Suppose it was a magic bun," she said, "and a bite was as much as a whole dinner. I should be overeating myself if I went on like this." It was dark when she reached the square where the Select Seminary was situated. The lights in the houses were all lighted. The blinds were not yet drawn in the windows of the room where she nearly always caught glimpses of members of the Large Family. Frequently at this hour she could see the gentleman she called Mr. Montmorency sitting in a big chair, with a small swarm round him, talking, laughing, perching on the arms of his seat or on his knees or leaning against them. This evening the swarm was about him, but he was not seated. On the contrary, there was a good deal of excitement going on. It was evident that a journey was to be taken, and it was Mr. Montmorency who was to take it. A brougham stood before the door, and a big portmanteau had been strapped upon it. The children were dancing about, chattering and hanging on to their father. The pretty rosy mother was standing near him, talking as if she was asking final questions. Sara paused a moment to see the little ones lifted up and kissed and the bigger ones bent over and kissed also. "I wonder if he will stay away long," she thought. "The portmanteau is rather big. Oh, dear, how they will miss him! I shall miss him myself--even though he doesn't know I am alive." When the door opened she moved away--remembering the sixpence-- but she saw the traveler come out and stand against the background of the warmly-lighted hall, the older children still hovering about him. "Will Moscow be covered with snow?" said the little girl Janet. "Will there be ice everywhere?" A Litte Princess "Shall you drive in a drosky?" cried another. "Shall you see the Czar?" "I will write and tell you all about it," he answered, laughing. "And I will send you pictures of muzhiks and things. Run into the house. It is a hideous damp night. I would rather stay with you than go to Moscow. Good night! Good night, duckies! God bless you!" And he ran down the steps and jumped into the brougham. "If you find the little girl, give her our love," shouted Guy Clarence, jumping up and down on the door mat. Then they went in and shut the door. "Did you see," said Janet to Nora, as they went back to the room--"the little-girl-who-is-not-a-beggar was passing? She looked all cold and wet, and I saw her turn her head over her shoulder and look at us. Mamma says her clothes always look as if they had been given her by someone who was quite rich--someone who only let her have them because they were too shabby to wear. The people at the school always send her out on errands on the horridest days and nights there are." Sara crossed the square to Miss Minchin's area steps, feeling faint and shaky. "I wonder who the little girl is," she thought--"the little girl he is going to look for." And she went down the area steps, lugging her basket and finding it very heavy indeed, as the father of the Large Family drove quickly on his way to the station to take the train which was to carry him to Moscow, where he was to make his best efforts to search for the lost little daughter of Captain Crewe. A Litte Princess 14 What Melchisedec Heard and Saw On this very afternoon, while Sara was out, a strange thing happened in the attic. Only Melchisedec saw and heard it; and he was so much alarmed and mystified that he scuttled back to his hole and hid there, and really quaked and trembled as he peeped out furtively and with great caution to watch what was going on. The attic had been very still all the day after Sara had left it in the early morning. The stillness had only been broken by the pattering of the rain upon the slates and the skylight. Melchisedec had, in fact, found it rather dull; and when the rain ceased to patter and perfect silence reigned, he decided to come out and reconnoiter, though experience taught him that Sara would not return for some time. He had been rambling and sniffing about, and had just found a totally unexpected and unexplained crumb left from his last meal, when his attention was attracted by a sound on the roof. He stopped to listen with a palpitating heart. The sound suggested that something was moving on the roof. It was approaching the skylight; it reached the skylight. The skylight was being mysteriously opened. A dark face peered into the attic; then another face appeared behind it, and both looked in with signs of caution and interest. Two men were outside on the roof, and were making silent preparations to enter through the skylight itself. One was Ram Dass and the other was a young man who was the Indian gentleman's secretary; but of course Melchisedec did not know this. He only knew that the men were invading the silence and privacy of the attic; and as the one with the dark face let himself down through the aperture with such lightness and dexterity that he did not make the slightest sound, Melchisedec turned tail and fled precipitately back to his hole. He was frightened to death. He had ceased to be timid with Sara, and knew she would never throw anything but crumbs, and would never make any sound other than the soft, low, coaxing whistling; but strange men were dangerous things to remain near. He lay close and flat near the entrance of his home, just managing to peep through the crack with a bright, alarmed eye. How much he understood of the talk he heard A Litte Princess I am not in the least able to say; but, even if he had understood it all, he would probably have remained greatly mystified. The secretary, who was light and young, slipped through the skylight as noiselessly as Ram Dass had done; and he caught a last glimpse of Melchisedec's vanishing tail. "Was that a rat?" he asked Ram Dass in a whisper. "Yes; a rat, Sahib," answered Ram Dass, also whispering. "There are many in the walls." "Ugh!" exclaimed the young man. "It is a wonder the child is not terrified of them." Ram Dass made a gesture with his hands. He also smiled respectfully. He was in this place as the intimate exponent of Sara, though she had only spoken to him once. "The child is the little friend of all things, Sahib," he answered. "She is not as other children. I see her when she does not see me. I slip across the slates and look at her many nights to see that she is safe. I watch her from my window when she does not know I am near. She stands on the table there and looks out at the sky as if it spoke to her. The sparrows come at her call. The rat she has fed and tamed in her loneliness. The poor slave of the house comes to her for comfort. There is a little child who comes to her in secret; there is one older who worships her and would listen to her forever if she might. This I have seen when I have crept across the roof. By the mistress of the house-- who is an evil woman--she is treated like a pariah; but she has the bearing of a child who is of the blood of kings!" "You seem to know a great deal about her," the secretary said. "All her life each day I know," answered Ram Dass. "Her going out I know, and her coming in; her sadness and her poor joys; her coldness and her hunger. I know when she is alone until midnight, learning from her books; I know when her secret friends steal to her and she is happier--as children can be, even in the midst of poverty-- because they come and she may laugh and talk with them in whispers. If she were ill I should know, and I would come and serve her if it might be done." "You are sure no one comes near this place but herself, and that she A Litte Princess will not return and surprise us. She would be frightened if she found us here, and the Sahib Carrisford's plan would be spoiled." Ram Dass crossed noiselessly to the door and stood close to it. "None mount here but herself, Sahib," he said. "She has gone out with her basket and may be gone for hours. If I stand here I can hear any step before it reaches the last flight of the stairs." The secretary took a pencil and a tablet from his breast pocket. "Keep your ears open," he said; and he began to walk slowly and softly round the miserable little room, making rapid notes on his tablet as he looked at things. First he went to the narrow bed. He pressed his hand upon the mattress and uttered an exclamation. "As hard as a stone," he said. "That will have to be altered some day when she is out. A special journey can be made to bring it across. It cannot be done tonight." He lifted the covering and examined the one thin pillow. "Coverlet dingy and worn, blanket thin, sheets patched and ragged," he said. "What a bed for a child to sleep in--and in a house which calls itself respectable! There has not been a fire in that grate for many a day," glancing at the rusty fireplace. "Never since I have seen it," said Ram Dass. "The mistress of the house is not one who remembers that another than herself may be cold." The secretary was writing quickly on his tablet. He looked up from it as he tore off a leaf and slipped it into his breast pocket. "It is a strange way of doing the thing," he said. "Who planned it?" Ram Dass made a modestly apologetic obeisance. "It is true that the first thought was mine, Sahib," he said; "though it was naught but a fancy. I am fond of this child; we are both lonely. It is her way to relate her visions to her secret friends. Being sad one night, I lay close to the open skylight and listened. The vision she related told what this miserable room might be if it had comforts in it. She seemed to see it as she talked, and she grew cheered and warmed as she spoke. Then she came to this fancy; and the next day, the Sahib being ill and wretched, I told him of the thing to amuse him. It seemed then but a A Litte Princess dream, but it pleased the Sahib. To hear of the child's doings gave him entertainment. He became interested in her and asked questions. At last he began to please himself with the thought of making her visions real things." "You think that it can be done while she sleeps? Suppose she awakened," suggested the secretary; and it was evident that whatsoever the plan referred to was, it had caught and pleased his fancy as well as the Sahib Carrisford's. "I can move as if my feet were of velvet," Ram Dass replied; "and children sleep soundly--even the unhappy ones. I could have entered this room in the night many times, and without causing her to turn upon her pillow. If the other bearer passes to me the things through the window, I can do all and she will not stir. When she awakens she will think a magician has been here." He smiled as if his heart warmed under his white robe, and the secretary smiled back at him. "It will be like a story from the Arabian Nights," he said. "Only an Oriental could have planned it. It does not belong to London fogs." They did not remain very long, to the great relief of Melchisedec, who, as he probably did not comprehend their conversation, felt their movements and whispers ominous. The young secretary seemed interested in everything. He wrote down things about the floor, the fireplace, the broken footstool, the old table, the walls-- which last he touched with his hand again and again, seeming much pleased when he found that a number of old nails had been driven in various places. "You can hang things on them," he said. Ram Dass smiled mysteriously. "Yesterday, when she was out," he said, "I entered, bringing with me small, sharp nails which can be pressed into the wall without blows from a hammer. I placed many in the plaster where I may need them. They are ready." The Indian gentleman's secretary stood still and looked round him as he thrust his tablets back into his pocket. "I think I have made notes enough; we can go now," he said. "The A Litte Princess Sahib Carrisford has a warm heart. It is a thousand pities that he has not found the lost child." "If he should find her his strength would be restored to him," said Ram Dass. "His God may lead her to him yet." Then they slipped through the skylight as noiselessly as they had entered it. And, after he was quite sure they had gone, Melchisedec was greatly relieved, and in the course of a few minutes felt it safe to emerge from his hole again and scuffle about in the hope that even such alarming human beings as these might have chanced to carry crumbs in their pockets and drop one or two of them. A Litte Princess 15 The Magic When Sara had passed the house next door she had seen Ram Dass closing the shutters, and caught her glimpse of this room also. "It is a long time since I saw a nice place from the inside," was the thought which crossed her mind. There was the usual bright fire glowing in the grate, and the Indian gentleman was sitting before it. His head was resting in his hand, and he looked as lonely and unhappy as ever. "Poor man!" said Sara. "I wonder what you are supposing." And this was what he was "supposing" at that very moment. "Suppose," he was thinking, "suppose--even if Carmichael traces the people to Moscow--the little girl they took from Madame Pascal's school in Paris is NOT the one we are in search of. Suppose she proves to be quite a different child. What steps shall I take next?" When Sara went into the house she met Miss Minchin, who had come downstairs to scold the cook. "Where have you wasted your time?" she demanded. "You have been out for hours." "It was so wet and muddy," Sara answered, "it was hard to walk, because my shoes were so bad and slipped about." "Make no excuses," said Miss Minchin, "and tell no falsehoods." Sara went in to the cook. The cook had received a severe lecture and was in a fearful temper as a result. She was only too rejoiced to have someone to vent her rage on, and Sara was a convenience, as usual. "Why didn't you stay all night?" she snapped. Sara laid her purchases on the table. "Here are the things," she said. The cook looked them over, grumbling. She was in a very savage humor indeed. "May I have something to eat?" Sara asked rather faintly. "Tea's over and done with," was the answer. "Did you expect me to keep it hot for you?" A Litte Princess Sara stood silent for a second. "I had no dinner," she said next, and her voice was quite low. She made it low because she was afraid it would tremble. "There's some bread in the pantry," said the cook. "That's all you'll get at this time of day." Sara went and found the bread. It was old and hard and dry. The cook was in too vicious a humor to give her anything to eat with it. It was always safe and easy to vent her spite on Sara. Really, it was hard for the child to climb the three long flights of stairs leading to her attic. She often found them long and steep when she was tired; but tonight it seemed as if she would never reach the top. Several times she was obliged to stop to rest. When she reached the top landing she was glad to see the glimmer of a light coming from under her door. That meant that Ermengarde had managed to creep up to pay her a visit. There was some comfort in that. It was better than to go into the room alone and find it empty and desolate. The mere presence of plump, comfortable Ermengarde, wrapped in her red shawl, would warm it a little. Yes; there Ermengarde was when she opened the door. She was sitting in the middle of the bed, with her feet tucked safely under her. She had never become intimate with Melchisedec and his family, though they rather fascinated her. When she found herself alone in the attic she always preferred to sit on the bed until Sara arrived. She had, in fact, on this occasion had time to become rather nervous, because Melchisedec had appeared and sniffed about a good deal, and once had made her utter a repressed squeal by sitting up on his hind legs and, while he looked at her, sniffing pointedly in her direction. "Oh, Sara," she cried out, "I am glad you have come. Melchy WOULD sniff about so. I tried to coax him to go back, but he wouldn't for such a long time. I like him, you know; but it does frighten me when he sniffs right at me. Do you think he ever WOULD jump?" "No," answered Sara. Ermengarde crawled forward on the bed to look at her. "You DO look tired, Sara," she said; "you are quite pale." "I AM tired," said Sara, dropping on to the lopsided footstool. "Oh, A Litte Princess there's Melchisedec, poor thing. He's come to ask for his supper." Melchisedec had come out of his hole as if he had been listening for her footstep. Sara was quite sure he knew it. He came forward with an affectionate, expectant expression as Sara put her hand in her pocket and turned it inside out, shaking her head. "I'm very sorry," she said. "I haven't one crumb left. Go home, Melchisedec, and tell your wife there was nothing in my pocket. I'm afraid I forgot because the cook and Miss Minchin were so cross." Melchisedec seemed to understand. He shuffled resignedly, if not contentedly, back to his home. "I did not expect to see you tonight, Ermie," Sara said. Ermengarde hugged herself in the red shawl. "Miss Amelia has gone out to spend the night with her old aunt," she explained. "No one else ever comes and looks into the bedrooms after we are in bed. I could stay here until morning if I wanted to." She pointed toward the table under the skylight. Sara had not looked toward it as she came in. A number of books were piled upon it. Ermengarde's gesture was a dejected one. "Papa has sent me some more books, Sara," she said. "There they are." Sara looked round and got up at once. She ran to the table, and picking up the top volume, turned over its leaves quickly. For the moment she forgot her discomforts. "Ah," she cried out, "how beautiful! Carlyle's French Revolution. I have SO wanted to read that!" "I haven't," said Ermengarde. "And papa will be so cross if I don't. He'll expect me to know all about it when I go home for the holidays. What SHALL I do?" Sara stopped turning over the leaves and looked at her with an excited flush on her cheeks. "Look here," she cried, "if you'll lend me these books, _I'll_ read them--and tell you everything that's in them afterward-- and I'll tell it so that you will remember it, too." "Oh, goodness!" exclaimed Ermengarde. "Do you think you can?" A Litte Princess "I know I can," Sara answered. "The little ones always remember what I tell them." "Sara," said Ermengarde, hope gleaming in her round face, "if you'll do that, and make me remember, I'll--I'll give you anything." "I don't want you to give me anything," said Sara. "I want your books-- I want them!" And her eyes grew big, and her chest heaved. "Take them, then," said Ermengarde. "I wish I wanted them-- but I don't. I'm not clever, and my father is, and he thinks I ought to be." Sara was opening one book after the other. "What are you going to tell your father?" she asked, a slight doubt dawning in her mind. "Oh, he needn't know," answered Ermengarde. "He'll think I've read them." Sara put down her book and shook her head slowly. "That's almost like telling lies," she said. "And lies--well, you see, they are not only wicked--they're VULGAR>. Sometimes"--reflectively--"I've thought perhaps I might do something wicked--I might suddenly fly into a rage and kill Miss Minchin, you know, when she was ill-treating me--but I COULDN'T be vulgar. Why can't you tell your father _I_ read them?" "He wants me to read them," said Ermengarde, a little discouraged by this unexpected turn of affairs. "He wants you to know what is in them," said Sara. "And if I can tell it to you in an easy way and make you remember it, I should think he would like that." "He'll like it if I learn anything in ANY way," said rueful Ermengarde. "You would if you were my father." "It's not your fault that--" began Sara. She pulled herself up and stopped rather suddenly. She had been going to say, "It's not your fault that you are stupid." "That what?" Ermengarde asked. "That you can't learn things quickly," amended Sara. "If you can't, you can't. If I can--why, I can; that's all." She always felt very tender of Ermengarde, and tried not to let her feel too strongly the difference between being able to learn anything at once, and not being able to learn anything at all. As she looked at her plump A Litte Princess face, 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 great deal to other people. If Miss Minchin knew everything on earth and 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 have been wicked. Look at Robespierre--" She stopped and examined Ermengarde's countenance, which was beginning to look bewildered. "Don't you remember?" she demanded. "I told you about him not long ago. I believe you've forgotten." "Well, I don't remember ALL of it," admitted Ermengarde. "Well, you wait a minute," said Sara, "and I'll take off my wet things and wrap myself in the coverlet and tell you over again." She took off her hat and coat and hung them on a nail against the wall, and she changed her wet shoes for an old pair of slippers. Then she jumped on the bed, and drawing the coverlet about her shoulders, sat with her arms round her knees. "Now, listen," she said. She plunged into the gory records of the French Revolution, and told such stories of it that Ermengarde's eyes grew round with alarm and she held her breath. But though she was rather terrified, there was a delightful thrill in listening, and she was not likely to forget Robespierre again, or to have any doubts about the Princesse de Lamballe. "You know they put her head on a pike and danced round it," Sara explained. "And she had beautiful floating 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." It was agreed that Mr. St. John was to be told the plan they had made, and for the present the books were to be left in the attic. "Now let's tell each other things," said Sara. "How are you getting on with your French lessons?" "Ever so much better since the last time I came up here and you explained the conjugations. Miss Minchin could not understand why I did my exercises so well that first morning." Sara laughed a little and hugged her knees. "She doesn't understand why Lottie is doing her sums so well," she A Litte Princess said; "but it is because she creeps up here, too, and I help her." She glanced round the room. "The attic would be rather nice--if it wasn't so dreadful," she said, laughing again. "It's a good place to pretend in." The truth was that Ermengarde did not know anything of the sometimes almost unbearable side of life in the attic and she had not a sufficiently vivid imagination to depict it for herself. On the rare occasions that she could reach Sara's room she only saw the side of it which was made exciting by things which were "pretended" and stories which were told. Her visits partook of the character of adventures; and though sometimes Sara looked rather pale, and it was not to be denied that she had grown very thin, her proud little spirit would not admit of complaints. She had never confessed that at times she was almost ravenous with hunger, as she was tonight. She was growing rapidly, and her constant walking and running about would have given her a keen appetite even if she had had abundant and regular meals of a much more nourishing nature than the unappetizing, inferior food snatched at such odd times as suited the kitchen convenience. She was growing used to a certain gnawing feeling in her young stomach. "I suppose soldiers feel like this when they are on a long and weary march," she often said to herself. She liked the sound of the phrase, "long and weary march." It made her feel rather like a soldier. She had also a quaint sense of being a hostess in the attic. "If I lived in a castle," she argued, "and Ermengarde was the lady of another castle, and came to see me, with knights and squires and vassals riding with her, and pennons flying, when I heard the clarions sounding outside the drawbridge I should go down to receive her, and I should spread feasts in the banquet hall and call in minstrels to sing and play and relate romances. When she comes into the attic I can't spread feasts, but I can tell stories, and not let her know disagreeable things. I dare say poor chatelaines had to do that in time of famine, when their lands had been pillaged." She was a proud, brave little chatelaine, and dispensed generously the one hospitality she could offer--the dreams she dreamed-- the visions she saw--the imaginings which were her joy and comfort. So, as they sat together, Ermengarde did not know that she was faint as A Litte Princess well as ravenous, and that while she talked she now and then wondered if her hunger would let her sleep when she was left alone. She felt as if she had never been quite so hungry before. "I wish I was as thin as you, Sara," Ermengarde said suddenly. "I believe you are thinner than you used to be. Your eyes look so big, and look at the sharp little bones sticking out of your elbow!" Sara pulled down her sleeve, which had pushed itself up. "I always was a thin child," she said bravely, "and I always had big green eyes." "I love your queer eyes," said Ermengarde, looking into them with affectionate admiration. "They always look as if they saw such a long way. I love them--and I love them to be green-- though they look black generally." "They are cat's eyes," laughed Sara; "but I can't see in the dark with them--because I have tried, and I couldn't--I wish I could." It was just at this minute that something happened at the skylight which neither of them saw. If either of them had chanced to turn and look, she would have been startled by the sight of a dark face which peered cautiously into the room and disappeared as quickly and almost as silently as it had appeared. Not QUITE as silently, however. Sara, who had keen ears, suddenly turned a little and looked up at the roof. "That didn't sound like Melchisedec," she said. "It wasn't scratchy enough." "What?" said Ermengarde, a little startled. "Didn't you think you heard something?" asked Sara. "N-no," Ermengarde faltered. "Did you?" {another ed. has "No-no,"} "Perhaps I didn't," said Sara; "but I thought I did. It sounded as if something was on the slates--something that dragged softly." "What could it be?" said Ermengarde. "Could it be--robbers?" "No," Sara began cheerfully. "There is nothing to steal--" She broke off in the middle of her words. They both heard the sound that checked her. It was not on the slates, but on the stairs below, and it was Miss Minchin's angry voice. Sara sprang off the bed, and put out the candle. A Litte Princess "She is scolding Becky," she whispered, as she stood in the darkness. "She is making her cry." "Will she come in here?" Ermengarde whispered back, panic- stricken. "No. She will think I am in bed. Don't stir." It was very seldom that Miss Minchin mounted the last flight of stairs. Sara could only remember that she had done it once before. But now she was angry enough to be coming at least part of the way up, and it sounded as if she was driving Becky before her. "You impudent, dishonest child!" they heard her say. "Cook tells me she has missed things repeatedly." "'T warn't me, mum," said Becky sobbing. "I was 'ungry enough, but 't warn't me--never!" "You deserve to be sent to prison," said Miss Minchin's voice. "Picking and stealing! Half a meat pie, indeed!" "'T warn't me," wept Becky. "I could 'ave eat a whole un--but I never laid a finger on it." Miss Minchin was out of breath between temper and mounting the stairs. The meat pie had been intended for her special late supper. It became apparent that she boxed Becky's ears. "Don't tell falsehoods," she said. "Go to your room this instant." Both Sara and Ermengarde heard the slap, and then heard Becky run in her slipshod shoes up the stairs and into her attic. They heard her door shut, and knew that she threw herself upon her bed. "I could 'ave e't two of 'em," they heard her cry into her pillow. "An' I never took a bite. 'Twas cook give it to her policeman." Sara stood in the middle of the room in the darkness. She was clenching her little teeth and opening and shutting fiercely her outstretched hands. She could scarcely stand still, but she dared not move until Miss Minchin had gone down the stairs and all was still. "The wicked, cruel thing!" she burst forth. "The cook takes things herself and then says Becky steals them. She DOESN'T>! She DOESN'T> She's so hungry sometimes that she eats crusts out of the ash barrel!" She pressed her hands hard against her face and burst into A Litte Princess passionate little sobs, and Ermengarde, hearing this unusual thing, was overawed by it. Sara was crying! The unconquerable Sara! It seemed to denote something new--some mood she had never known. Suppose-- suppose--a new dread possibility presented itself to her kind, slow, little mind all at once. She crept off the bed in the dark and found her way to the table where the candle stood. She struck a match and lit the candle. When she had lighted it, she bent forward and looked at Sara, with her new thought growing to definite fear in her eyes. "Sara," she said in a timid, almost awe-stricken voice, are--are-- you never told me--I don't want to be rude, but--are YOU ever hungry?" It was too much just at that moment. The barrier broke down. Sara lifted her face from her hands. "Yes," she said in a new passionate way. "Yes, I am. I'm so hungry now that I could almost eat you. And it makes it worse to hear poor Becky. She's hungrier than I am." Ermengarde gasped. "Oh, oh!" she cried woefully. "And I never knew!" "I didn't want you to know," Sara said. "It would have made me feel like a street beggar. I know I look like a street beggar." "No, you don't--you don't!" Ermengarde broke in. "Your clothes are a little queer--but you couldn't look like a street beggar. You haven't a street-beggar face." "A little boy once gave me a sixpence for charity," said Sara, with a short little laugh in spite of herself. "Here it is." And she pulled out the thin ribbon from her neck. "He wouldn't have given me his Christmas sixpence if I hadn't looked as if I needed it." Somehow the sight of the dear little sixpence was good for both of them. It made them laugh a little, though they both had tears in their eyes. "Who was he?" asked Ermengarde, looking at it quite as if it had not been a mere ordinary silver sixpence. "He was a darling little thing going to a party," said Sara. "He was one of the Large Family, the little one with the round legs-- the one I call Guy Clarence. I suppose his nursery was crammed with Christmas A Litte Princess presents and hampers full of cakes and things, and he could see I had nothing." Ermengarde gave a little jump backward. The last sentences had recalled something to her troubled mind and given her a sudden inspiration. "Oh, Sara!" she cried. "What a silly thing I am not to have thought of it!" "Of what?" "Something splendid!" said Ermengarde, in an excited hurry. "This very afternoon my nicest aunt sent me a box. It is full of good things. I never touched it, I had so much pudding at dinner, and I was so bothered about papa's books." Her words began to tumble over each other. "It's got cake in it, and little meat pies, and jam tarts and buns, and oranges and red-currant wine, and figs and chocolate. I'll creep back to my room and get it this minute, and we'll eat it now." Sara almost reeled. When one is faint with hunger the mention of food has sometimes a curious effect. She clutched Ermengarde's arm. "Do you think--you COULD>? she ejaculated. "I know I could," answered Ermengarde, and she ran to the door-- opened it softly--put her head out into the darkness, and listened. Then she went back to Sara. "The lights are out. Everybody's in bed. I can creep--and creep--and no one will hear." It was so delightful that they caught each other's hands and a sudden light sprang into Sara's eyes. "Ermie!" she said. "Let us PRETEND>! Let us pretend it's a party! And oh, won't you invite the prisoner in the next cell?" "Yes! Yes! Let us knock on the wall now. The jailer won't hear." Sara went to the wall. Through it she could hear poor Becky crying more softly. She knocked four times. "That means, `Come to me through the secret passage under the wall,' she explained. `I have something to communicate.'" Five quick knocks answered her. "She is coming," she said. Almost immediately the door of the attic opened and Becky appeared. A Litte Princess Her eyes were red and her cap was sliding off, and when she caught sight of Ermengarde she began to rub her face nervously with her apron. "Don't mind me a bit, Becky!" cried Ermengarde. "Miss Ermengarde has asked you to come in," said Sara, "because she is going to bring a box of good things up here to us." Becky's cap almost fell off entirely, she broke in with such excitement. "To eat, miss?" she said. "Things that's good to eat?" "Yes," answered Sara, "and we are going to pretend a party." "And you shall have as much as you WANT to eat," put in Ermengarde. "I'll go this minute!" She was in such haste that as she tiptoed out of the attic she dropped her red shawl and did not know it had fallen. No one saw it for a minute or so. Becky was too much overpowered by the good luck which had befallen her. "Oh, miss! oh, miss!" she gasped; "I know it was you that asked her to let me come. It--it makes me cry to think of it." And she went to Sara's side and stood and looked at her worshipingly. But in Sara's hungry eyes the old light had begun to glow and transform her world for her. Here in the attic--with the cold night outside-- with the afternoon in the sloppy streets barely passed--with the memory of the awful unfed look in the beggar child's eyes not yet faded-- this simple, cheerful thing had happened like a thing of magic. She caught her breath. "Somehow, something always happens," she cried, "just before things get to the very worst. It is as if the Magic did it. If I could only just remember that always. The worst thing never QUITE comes." She gave Becky a little cheerful shake. "No, no! You mustn't cry!" she said. "We must make haste and set the table." "Set the table, miss?" said Becky, gazing round the room. "What'll we set it with?" Sara looked round the attic, too. "There doesn't seem to be much," she answered, half laughing. That moment she saw something and pounced upon it. It was A Litte Princess Ermengarde's red shawl which lay upon the floor. "Here's the shawl," she cried. "I know she won't mind it. It will make such a nice red tablecloth." They pulled the old table forward, and threw the shawl over it. Red is a wonderfully kind and comfortable color. It began to make the room look furnished directly. "How nice a red rug would look on the floor!" exclaimed Sara. "We must pretend there is one!" Her eye swept the bare boards with a swift glance of admiration. The rug was laid down already. "How soft and thick it is!" she said, with the little laugh which Becky knew the meaning of; and she raised and set her foot down again delicately, as if she felt something under {i}t. "Yes, miss," answered Becky, watching her with serious rapture. She was always quite serious. "What next, now?" said Sara, and she stood still and put her hands over her eyes. "Something will come if I think and wait a little"-- in a soft, expectant voice. "The Magic will tell me." One of her favorite fancies was that on "the outside," as she called it, thoughts were waiting for people to call them. Becky had seen her stand and wait many a time before, and knew that in a few seconds she would uncover an enlightened, laughing face. In a moment she did. "There!" she cried. "It has come! I know now! I must look among the things in the old trunk I had when I was a princess." She flew to its corner and kneeled down. It had not been put in the attic for her benefit, but because there was no room for it elsewhere. Nothing had been left in it but rubbish. But she knew she should find something. The Magic always arranged that kind of thing in one way or another. In a corner lay a package so insignificant-looking that it had been overlooked, and when she herself had found it she had kept it as a relic. It contained a dozen small white handkerchiefs. She seized them joyfully and ran to the table. She began to arrange them upon the red table-cover, A Litte Princess patting and coaxing them into shape with the narrow lace edge curling outward, her Magic working its spells for her as she did it. "These are the plates," she said. "They are golden plates. These are the richly embroidered napkins. Nuns worked them in convents in Spain." "Did they, miss?" breathed Becky, her very soul uplifted by the information. "You must pretend it," said Sara. "If you pretend it enough, you will see them." "Yes, miss," said Becky; and as Sara returned to the trunk she devoted herself to the effort of accomplishing an end so much to be desired. Sara turned suddenly to find her standing by the table, looking very queer indeed. She had shut her eyes, and was twisting her face in strange convulsive contortions, her hands hanging stiffly clenched at her sides. She looked as if she was trying to lift some enormous weight. "What is the matter, Becky?" Sara cried. "What are you doing?" Becky opened her eyes with a start. I was a-'pretendin',' miss," she answered a little sheepishly; "I was tryin' to see it like you do. I almost did," with a hopeful grin. "But it takes a lot o' stren'th." "Perhaps it does if you are not used to it," said Sara, with friendly sympathy; "but you don't know how easy it is when you've done it often. I wouldn't try so hard just at first. It will come to you after a while. I'll just tell you what things are. Look at these." She held an old summer hat in her hand which she had fished out of the bottom of the trunk. There was a wreath of flowers on it. She pulled the wreath off. "These are garlands for the feast," she said grandly. "They fill all the air with perfume. There's a mug on the wash-stand, Becky. Oh--and bring the soap dish for a cen{}terpiece." Becky handed them to her reverently. "What are they now, miss?" she inquired. "You'd think they was made of crockery--but I know they ain't." "This is a carven flagon," said Sara, arranging tendrils of the wreath A Litte Princess about the mug. "And this"--bending tenderly over the soap dish and heaping it with roses--"is purest alabaster encrusted with gems." She touched the things gently, a happy smile hovering about her lips which made her look as if she were a creature in a dream. "My, ain't it lovely!" whispered Becky. "If we just had something for bonbon dishes," Sara murmured. "There!"--darting to the trunk again. "I remember I saw something this minute." It was only a bundle of wool wrapped in red and white tissue paper, but the tissue paper was soon twisted into the form of little dishes, and was combined with the remaining flowers to ornament the candlestick which was to light the feast. Only the Magic could have made it more than an old table covered with a red shawl and set with rubbish from a long- unopened trunk. But Sara drew back and gazed at it, seeing wonders; and Becky, after staring in delight, spoke with bated breath. "This 'ere," she suggested, with a glance round the attic--"is it the Bastille now--or has it turned into somethin' different?" "Oh, yes, yes!" said Sara. "Quite different. It is a banquet hall!" "My eye, miss!" ejaculated Becky. "A blanket 'all!" and she turned to view the splendors about her with awed bewilderment. "A banquet hall," said Sara. "A vast chamber where feasts are given. It has a vaulted roof, and a minstrels' gallery, and a huge chimney filled with blazing oaken logs, and it is brilliant with waxen tapers twinkling on every side." "My eye, Miss Sara!" gasped Becky again. Then the door opened, and Ermengarde came in, rather staggering under the weight of her hamper. She started back with an exclamation of joy. To enter from the chill darkness outside, and find one's self confronted by a totally unanticipated festal board, draped with red, adorned with white napery, and wreathed with flowers, was to feel that the preparations were brilliant indeed. "Oh, Sara!" she cried out. "You are the cleverest girl I ever saw!" "Isn't it nice?" said Sara. "They are things out of my old trunk. I asked my Magic, and it told me to go and look." A Litte Princess "But oh, miss," cried Becky, "wait till she's told you what they are! They ain't just--oh, miss, please tell her," appealing to Sara. So Sara told her, and because her Magic helped her she made her ALMOST see it all: the golden platters--the vaulted spaces-- the blazing logs--the twinkling waxen tapers. As the things were taken out of the hamper--the frosted cakes--the fruits-- the bonbons and the wine--the feast became a splendid thing. "It's like a real party!" cried Ermengarde. "It's like a queen's table," sighed Becky. Then Ermengarde had a sudden brilliant thought. "I'll tell you what, Sara," she said. "Pretend you are a princess now and this is a royal feast." "But it's your feast," said Sara; "you must be the princess, and we will be your maids of honor." "Oh, I can't," said Ermengarde. "I'm too fat, and I don't know how. YOU be her." "Well, if you want me to," said Sara. But suddenly she thought of something else and ran to the rusty grate. "There is a lot of paper and rubbish stuffed in here!" she exclaimed. "If we light it, there will be a bright blaze for a few minutes, and we shall feel as if it was a real fire." She struck a match and lighted it up with a great specious glow which illuminated the room. "By the time it stops blazing," Sara said, "we shall forget about its not being real." She stood in the dancing glow and smiled. "Doesn't it LOOK real?" she said. "Now we will begin the party." She led the way to the table. She waved her hand graciously to Ermengarde and Becky. She was in the midst of her dream. "Advance, fair damsels," she said in her happy dream-voice, "and be seated at the banquet table. My noble father, the king, who is absent on a long journey, has commanded me to feast you." She turned her head slightly toward the corner of the room. "What, ho, there, minstrels! Strike up with your viols and bassoons. Princesses," she explained rapidly to Ermengarde and Becky, "always had minstrels to play at their A Litte Princess feasts. Pretend there is a minstrel gallery up there in the corner. Now we will begin." They had barely had time to take their pieces of cake into their hands-- not one of them had time to do more, when--they all three sprang to their feet and turned pale faces toward the door--listening--listening. Someone was coming up the stairs. There was no mistake about it. Each of them recognized the angry, mounting tread and knew that the end of all things had come. "It's--the missus!" choked Becky, and dropped her piece of cake upon the floor. "Yes," said Sara, her eyes growing shocked and large in her small white face. "Miss Minchin has found us out." Miss Minchin struck the door open with a blow of her hand. She was pale herself, but it was with rage. She looked from the frightened faces to the banquet table, and from the banquet table to the last flicker of the burnt paper in the grate. "I have been suspecting something of this sort," she exclaimed; "but I did not dream of such audacity. Lavinia was telling the truth." So they knew that it was Lavinia who had somehow guessed their secret and had betrayed them. Miss Minchin strode over to Becky and boxed her ears for a second time. "You impudent creature!" she said. "You leave the house in the morning!" Sara stood quite still, her eyes growing larger, her face paler. Ermengarde burst into tears. "Oh, don't send her away," she sobbed. "My aunt sent me the hamper. We're--only--having a party." "So I see," said Miss Minchin, witheringly. "With the Princess Sara at the head of the table." She turned fiercely on Sara. "It is your doing, I know," she cried. "Ermengarde would never have thought of such a thing. You decorated the table, I suppose-- with this rubbish." She stamped her foot at Becky. "Go to your attic!" she commanded, and Becky stole away, her face hidden in her apron, her shoulders shaking. Then it was Sara's turn again. A Litte Princess "I will attend to you tomorrow. You shall have neither breakfast, dinner, nor supper!" "I have not had either dinner or supper today, Miss Minchin," said Sara, rather faintly. "Then all the better. You will have something to remember. Don't stand there. Put those things into the hamper again." She began to sweep them off the table into the hamper herself, and caught sight of Ermengarde's new books. "And you"--to Ermengarde--"have brought your beautiful new books into this dirty attic. Take them up and go back to bed. You will stay there all day tomorrow, and I shall write to your papa. What would HE say if he knew where you are tonight?" Something she saw in Sara's grave, fixed gaze at this moment made her turn on her fiercely. "What are you thinking of?" she demanded. "Why do you look at me like that?" "I was wondering," answered Sara, as she had answered that notable day in the schoolroom. "What were you wondering?" It was very like the scene in the schoolroom. There was no pertness in Sara's manner. It was only sad and quiet. "I was wondering," she said in a low voice, "what MY papa would say if he knew where I am tonight." Miss Minchin was infuriated just as she had been before and her anger expressed itself, as before, in an intemperate fashion. She flew at her and shook her. "You insolent, unmanageable child!" she cried. "How dare you! How dare you!" She picked up the books, swept the rest of the feast back into the hamper in a jumbled heap, thrust it into Ermengarde's arms, and pushed her before her toward the door. "I will leave you to wonder," she said. "Go to bed this instant." And she shut the door behind herself and poor stumbling Ermengarde, and left Sara standing quite alone. A Litte Princess The dream was quite at an end. The last spark had died out of the paper in the grate and left only black tinder; the table was left bare, the golden plates and richly embroidered napkins, and the garlands were transformed again into old handkerchiefs, scraps of red and white paper, and discarded artificial flowers all scattered on the floor; the minstrels in the minstrel gallery had stolen away, and the viols and bassoons were still. Emily was sitting with her back against the wall, staring very hard. Sara saw her, and went and picked her up with trembling hands. "There isn't any banquet left, Emily," she said. "And there isn't any princess. There is nothing left but the prisoners in the Bastille." And she sat down and hid her face. What would have happened if she had not hidden it just then, and if she had chanced to look up at the skylight at the wrong moment, I do not know--perhaps the end of this chapter might have been quite different-- because if she had glanced at the skylight she would certainly have been startled by what she would have seen. She would have seen exactly the same face pressed against the glass and peering in at her as it had peered in earlier in the evening when she had been talking to Ermengarde. But she did not look up. She sat with her little black head in her arms for some time. She always sat like that when she was trying to bear something in silence. Then she got up and went slowly to the bed. "I can't pretend anything else--while I am awake," she said. "There wouldn't be any use in trying. If I go to sleep, perhaps a dream will come and pretend for me." She suddenly felt so tired--perhaps through want of food--that she sat down on the edge of the bed quite weakly. "Suppose there was a bright fire in the grate, with lots of little dancing flames," she murmured. "Suppose there was a comfortable chair before it--and suppose there was a small table near, with a little hot--hot supper on it. And suppose"--as she drew the thin coverings over her--"suppose this was a beautiful soft bed, with fleecy blankets and large downy pillows. Suppose--suppose--" And her very weariness was good to her, for her eyes closed and she fell fast asleep. She did not know how long she slept. But she had been tired A Litte Princess enough to sleep deeply and profoundly--too deeply and soundly to be disturbed by anything, even by the squeaks and scamperings of Melchisedec's entire family, if all his sons and daughters had chosen to come out of their hole to fight and tumble and play. When she awakened it was rather suddenly, and she did not know that any particular thing had called her out of her sleep. The truth was, however, that it was a sound which had called her back-- a real sound--the click of the skylight as it fell in closing after a lithe white figure which slipped through it and crouched down close by upon the slates of the roof- -just near enough to see what happened in the attic, but not near enough to be seen. At first she did not open her eyes. She felt too sleepy and-- curiously enough--too warm and comfortable. She was so warm and comfortable, indeed, that she did not believe she was really awake. She never was as warm and cozy as this except in some lovely vision. "What a nice dream!" she murmured. "I feel quite warm. I--don't-- want--to--wake--up." Of course it was a dream. She felt as if warm, delightful bedclothes were heaped upon her. She could actually FEEL blankets, and when she put out her hand it touched something exactly like a satin-covered eider- down quilt. She must not awaken from this delight-- she must be quite still and make it last. But she could not--even though she kept her eyes closed tightly, she could not. Something was forcing her to awaken-- something in the room. It was a sense of light, and a sound-- the sound of a crackling, roaring little fire. "Oh, I am awakening," she said mournfully. "I can't help it-- I can't." Her eyes opened in spite of herself. And then she actually smiled-- for what she saw she had never seen in the attic before, and knew she never should see. "Oh, I HAVEN'T awakened," she whispered, daring to rise on her elbow and look all about her. "I am dreaming yet." She knew it MUST be a dream, for if she were awake such things could not-- could not be. Do you wonder that she felt sure she had not come back to earth? A Litte Princess This is what she saw. In the grate there was a glowing, blazing fire; on the hob was a little brass kettle hissing and boiling; spread upon the floor was a thick, warm crimson rug; before the fire a folding-chair, unfolded, and with cushions on it; by the chair a small folding-table, unfolded, covered with a white cloth, and upon it spread small covered dishes, a cup, a saucer, a teapot; on the bed were new warm coverings and a satin- covered down quilt; at the foot a curious wadded silk robe, a pair of quilted slippers, and some books. The room of her dream seemed changed into fairyland-- and it was flooded with warm light, for a bright lamp stood on the table covered with a rosy shade. She sat up, resting on her elbow, and her breathing came short and fast. "It does not--melt away," she panted. "Oh, I never had such a dream before." She scarcely dared to stir; but at last she pushed the bedclothes aside, and put her feet on the floor with a rapturous smile. "I am dreaming--I am getting out of bed," she heard her own voice say; and then, as she stood up in the midst of it all, turning slowly from side to side--"I am dreaming it stays--real! I'm dreaming it FEELS real. It's bewitched--or I'm bewitched. I only THINK I see it all." Her words began to hurry themselves. "If I can only keep on thinking it," she cried, "I don't care! I don't care!" She stood panting a moment longer, and then cried out again. "Oh, it isn't true!" she said. "It CAN'T be true! But oh, how true it seems!" The blazing fire drew her to it, and she knelt down and held out her hands close to it--so close that the heat made her start back. "A fire I only dreamed wouldn't be HOT>, she cried. She sprang up, touched the table, the dishes, the rug; she went to the bed and touched the blankets. She took up the soft wadded dressing- gown, and suddenly clutched it to her breast and held it to her cheek. "It's warm. It's soft!" she almost sobbed. "It's real. It must be!" She threw it over her shoulders, and put her feet into the slippers. "They are real, too. It's all real!" she cried. "I am NOT>- I am NOT dreaming!" A Litte Princess She almost staggered to the books and opened the one which lay upon the top. Something was written on the flyleaf--just a few words, and they were these: "To the little girl in the attic. From a friend." When she saw that--wasn't it a strange thing for her to do-- she put her face down upon the page and burst into tears. "I don't know who it is," she said; "but somebody cares for me a little. I have a friend." She took her candle and stole out of her own room and into Becky's, and stood by her bedside. "Becky, Becky!" she whispered as loudly as she dared. "Wake up!" When Becky wakened, and she sat upright staring aghast, her face still smudged with traces of tears, beside her stood a little figure in a luxurious wadded robe of crimson silk. The face she saw was a shining, wonderful thing. The Princess Sara--as she remembered her-- stood at her very bedside, holding a candle in her hand. "Come," she said. "Oh, Becky, come!" Becky was too frightened to speak. She simply got up and followed her, with her mouth and eyes open, and without a word. And when they crossed the threshold, Sara shut the door gently and drew her into the warm, glowing midst of things which made her brain reel and her hungry senses faint. "It's true! It's true!" she cried. "I've touched them all. They are as real as we are. The Magic has come and done it, Becky, while we were asleep--the Magic that won't let those worst things EVER quite happen." A Litte Princess 16 The Visitor Imagine, if you can, what the rest of the evening was like. How they crouched by the fire which blazed and leaped and made so much of itself in the little grate. How they removed the covers of the dishes, and found rich, hot, savory soup, which was a meal in itself, and sandwiches and toast and muffins enough for both of them. The mug from the washstand was used as Becky's tea cup, and the tea was so delicious that it was not necessary to pretend that it was anything but tea. They were warm and full-fed and happy, and it was just like Sara that, having found her strange good fortune real, she should give herself up to the enjoyment of it to the utmost. She had lived such a life of imaginings that she was quite equal to accepting any wonderful thing that happened, and almost to cease, in a short time, to find it bewildering. "I don't know anyone in the world who could have done it," she said; "but there has been someone. And here we are sitting by their fire-- and-- and--it's true! And whoever it is--wherever they are-- I have a friend, Becky--someone is my friend." It cannot be denied that as they sat before the blazing fire, and ate the nourishing, comfortable food, they felt a kind of rapturous awe, and looked into each other's eyes with something like doubt. "Do you think," Becky faltered once, in a whisper, "do you think it could melt away, miss? Hadn't we better be quick?" And she hastily crammed her sandwich into her mouth. If it was only a dream, kitchen manners would be overlooked. "No, it won't melt away," said Sara. "I am EATING this muffin, and I can taste it. You never really eat things in dreams. You only think you are going to eat them. Besides, I keep giving myself pinches; and I touched a hot piece of coal just now, on purpose." The sleepy comfort which at length almost overpowered them was a heavenly thing. It was the drowsiness of happy, well-fed childhood, and they sat in the fire glow and luxuriated in it until Sara found herself turning to look at her transformed bed. A Litte Princess There were even blankets enough to share with Becky. The narrow couch in the next attic was more comfortable that night than its occupant had ever dreamed that it could be. As she went out of the room, Becky turned upon the threshold and looked about her with devouring eyes. "If it ain't here in the mornin', miss," she said, "it's been here tonight, anyways, an' I shan't never forget it." She looked at each particular thing, as if to commit it to memory. "The fire was THERE>, pointing with her finger, "an' the table was before it; an' the lamp was there, an' the light looked rosy red; an' there was a satin cover on your bed, an' a warm rug on the floor, an' everythin' looked beautiful; an'"--she paused a second, and laid her hand on her stomach tenderly--"there WAS soup an' sandwiches an' muffins-- there WAS>." And, with this conviction a reality at least, she went away.