Sara Crewe, Frances Hodgson Burnett [classic novels for teens TXT] 📗

since that wet afternoon, just along o’ thinkin’ of you. An’ how wet an’ cold you was, an’ how you looked,—an’ yet you give away your hot buns as if you was a princess.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, miss,” said the girl.

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

 

The End of Project Gutenberg etext of “Sara Crewe”