A Little Princess / Маленькая принцесса. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Фрэнсис Элиза Бёрнетт

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course,” said Sara, looking into her face as she held her on her knee, “of course papa, this is Emily.”

      So Emily was bought and actually taken to a children’s outfitter’s shop[34] and measured for a wardrobe as grand as Sara’s own. She had lace frocks, too, and velvet and muslin ones, and hats and coats and beautiful lace-trimmed underclothes, and gloves and handkerchiefs and furs.

      “I should like her always to look as if she was a child with a good mother,” said Sara. “I’m her mother, though I am going to make a companion of her.”

      Captain Crewe would really have enjoyed the shopping tremendously, but that a sad thought kept tugging at his heart[35]. This all meant that he was going to be separated from his beloved, quaint little comrade.

      He got out of his bed in the middle of that night and went and stood looking down at Sara, who lay asleep with Emily in her arms. Her black hair was spread out on the pillow and Emily’s golden-brown hair mingled with it, both of them had lace-rufled nightgowns, and both had long eyelashes which lay and curled up on their cheeks. Emily looked so like a real child that Captain Crewe felt glad she was there. He drew a big sigh and pulled his mustache with a boyish expression.

      “Heigh-ho, little Sara!” he said to himself. “I don’t believe you know how much your daddy will miss you.”

      The next day he took her to Miss Minchin’s and left her there. He was to sail away the next morning. He explained to Miss Minchin that his solicitors, Messrs. Barrow & Skip-worth, had charge of his affairs in England and would give her any advice she wanted, and that they would pay the bills she sent in for Sara’s expenses. He would write to Sara twice a week, and she was to be given every pleasure she asked for.

      “She is a sensible little thing, and she never wants anything it isn’t safe to give her,” he said.

      Then he went with Sara into her little sitting room and they bade each other good-bye[36]. Sara sat on his knee and held the lapels of his coat in her small hands, and looked long and hard at his face.

      “Are you learning me by heart, little Sara?” he said, stroking her hair.

      “No,” she answered. “I know you by heart. You are inside my heart.” And they put their arms round each other and kissed as if they would never let each other go.

      When the cab drove away from the door, Sara was sitting on the floor of her sitting room, with her hands under her chin and her eyes following it until it had turned the corner of the square. Emily was sitting by her, and she looked after it, too. When Miss Minchin sent her sister, Miss Amelia, to see what the child was doing, she found she could not open the door.

      “I have locked it,” said a queer, polite little voice from inside. “I want to be quite by myself, if you please[37].”

      Miss Amelia was fat and dumpy, and stood very much in awe of her sister. She was really the better-natured person of the two, but she never disobeyed Miss Minchin. She went downstairs again, looking almost alarmed.

      “I never saw such a funny, old-fashioned child, sister,” she said. “She has locked herself in, and she is not making the least particle of noise[38].”

      “It is much better than if she kicked and screamed, as some of them do,” Miss Minchin answered. “I expected that a child as much spoiled as she is would set the whole house in an uproar[39]. If ever a child was given her own way in everything, she is.”

      “I’ve been opening her trunks and putting her things away,” said Miss Amelia. “I never saw anything like them – sable and ermine on her coats, and real Valenciennes lace[40] on her underclothing. You have seen some of her clothes. What DO you think of them?”

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

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

      2

      A French Lesson

      When Sara entered the schoolroom the next morning everybody looked at her with wide, interested eyes. By that time every pupil – from Lavinia Herbert, who was nearly thirteen and felt quite grown up, to Lottie Legh, who was only just four and the baby of the school – had heard a great deal about her[41]. They knew very certainly that she was Miss Minchin’s show pupil[42] and was considered a credit to the establishment[43]. One or two of them had even caught a glimpse of her French maid, Mariette, who had arrived the evening before. Lavinia had managed to pass Sara’s room when the door was open, and had seen Mariette opening a box which had arrived late from some shop.

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

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

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

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

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

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

      She was a child full of imaginings and whimsical thoughts[44], and one of her fancies was that there would be a great deal of comfort in even pretending that Emily was alive and really heard and understood. After Mariette had dressed her in her dark-blue schoolroom frock and tied her hair with a dark-blue ribbon, she went to Emily, who sat in a chair of her own, and gave her a book.

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

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