A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett [ebook reader macos txt] 📗

stricken with fever when the news came. The shock was too much for him. He died delirious, raving about his little girl—and didn’t leave a penny.”

Now Miss Minchin understood, and never had she received such a blow in her life. Her show pupil, her show patron, swept away from the Select Seminary at one blow. She felt as if she had been outraged and robbed, and that Captain Crewe and Sara and Mr. Barrow were equally to blame.

“Do you mean to tell me,” she cried out, “that he left NOTHING! That Sara will have no fortune! That the child is a beggar! That she is left on my hands a little pauper instead of an heiress?”

Mr. Barrow was a shrewd businessman, and felt it as well to make his own freedom from responsibility quite clear without any delay.

“She is certainly left a beggar,” he replied. “And she is certainly left on your hands, ma’am—as she hasn’t a relation in the world that we know of.”

Miss Minchin started forward. She looked as if she was going to open the door and rush out of the room to stop the festivities going on joyfully and rather noisily that moment over the refreshments.

“It is monstrous!” she said. “She’s in my sitting room at this moment, dressed in silk gauze and lace petticoats, giving a party at my expense.”

“She’s giving it at your expense, madam, if she’s giving it,” said Mr. Barrow, calmly. “Barrow & Skipworth are not responsible for anything. There never was a cleaner sweep made of a man’s fortune. Captain Crewe died without paying OUR last bill—and it was a big one.”

Miss Minchin turned back from the door in increased indignation. This was worse than anyone could have dreamed of its being.

“That is what has happened to me!” she cried. “I was always so sure of his payments that I went to all sorts of ridiculous expenses for the child. I paid the bills for that ridiculous doll and her ridiculous fantastic wardrobe. The child was to have anything she wanted. She has a carriage and a pony and a maid, and I’ve paid for all of them since the last cheque came.”

Mr. Barrow evidently did not intend to remain to listen to the story of Miss Minchin’s grievances after he had made the position of his firm clear and related the mere dry facts. He did not feel any particular sympathy for irate keepers of boarding schools.

“You had better not pay for anything more, ma’am,” he remarked, “unless you want to make presents to the young lady. No one will remember you. She hasn’t a brass farthing to call her own.”

“But what am I to do?” demanded Miss Minchin, as if she felt it entirely his duty to make the matter right. “What am I to do?”

“There isn’t anything to do,” said Mr. Barrow, folding up his eyeglasses and slipping them into his pocket. “Captain Crewe is dead. The child is left a pauper. Nobody is responsible for her but you.”

“I am not responsible for her, and I refuse to be made responsible!”

Miss Minchin became quite white with rage.

Mr. Barrow turned to go.

“I have nothing to do with that, madam,” he said un-interestedly. “Barrow & Skipworth are not responsible. Very sorry the thing has happened, of course.”

“If you think she is to be foisted off on me, you are greatly mistaken,” Miss Minchin gasped. “I have been robbed and cheated; I will turn her into the street!”

If she had not been so furious, she would have been too discreet to say quite so much. She saw herself burdened with an extravagantly brought-up child whom she had always resented, and she lost all self-control.

Mr. Barrow undisturbedly moved toward the door.

“I wouldn’t do that, madam,” he commented; “it wouldn’t look well. Unpleasant story to get about in connection with the establishment. Pupil bundled out penniless and without friends.”

He was a clever business man, and he knew what he was saying. He also knew that Miss Minchin was a business woman, and would be shrewd enough to see the truth. She could not afford to do a thing which would make people speak of her as cruel and hard-hearted.

“Better keep her and make use of her,” he added. “She’s a clever child, I believe. You can get a good deal out of her as she grows older.”

“I will get a good deal out of her before she grows older!” exclaimed Miss Minchin.

“I am sure you will, ma’am,” said Mr. Barrow, with a little sinister smile. “I am sure you will. Good morning!”

He bowed himself out and closed the door, and it must be confessed that Miss Minchin stood for a few moments and glared at it. What he had said was quite true. She knew it. She had absolutely no redress. Her show pupil had melted into nothingness, leaving only a friendless, beggared little girl. Such money as she herself had advanced was lost and could not be regained.

And as she stood there breathless under her sense of injury, there fell upon her ears a burst of gay voices from her own sacred room, which had actually been given up to the feast. She could at least stop this.

But as she started toward the door it was opened by Miss Amelia, who, when she caught sight of the changed, angry face, fell back a step in alarm.

“What IS the matter, sister?” she ejaculated.

Miss Minchin’s voice was almost fierce when she answered:

“Where is Sara Crewe?”

Miss Amelia was bewildered.

“Sara!” she stammered. “Why, she’s with the children in your room, of course.”

“Has she a black frock in her sumptuous wardrobe?”—in bitter irony.

“A black frock?” Miss Amelia stammered again. “A BLACK one?”

“She has frocks of every other color. Has she a black one?”

Miss Amelia began to turn pale.

“No—ye-es!” she said. “But it is too short for her. She has only the old black velvet, and she has outgrown it.”

“Go and tell her to take off that preposterous pink silk gauze, and put the black one on, whether it is too short or not. She has done with finery!”

Then Miss Amelia began to wring her fat hands and cry.

“Oh, sister!” she sniffed. “Oh, sister! What CAN have happened?”

Miss Minchin wasted no words.

“Captain Crewe is dead,” she said. “He has died without a penny. That spoiled, pampered, fanciful child is left a pauper on my hands.”

Miss Amelia sat down quite heavily in the nearest chair.

“Hundreds of pounds have I spent on nonsense for her. And I shall never see a penny of it. Put a stop to this ridiculous party of hers. Go and make her change her frock at once.”

“I?” panted Miss Amelia. “M-must I go and tell her now?”

“This moment!” was the fierce answer. “Don’t sit staring like a goose. Go!”

Poor Miss Amelia was accustomed to being called a goose. She knew, in fact, that she was rather a goose, and that it was left to geese to do a great many disagreeable things. It was a somewhat embarrassing thing to go into the midst of a room full of delighted children, and tell the giver of the feast that she had suddenly been transformed into a little beggar, and must go upstairs and put on an old black frock which was too small for her. But the thing must be done. This was evidently not the time when questions might be asked.

She rubbed her eyes with her handkerchief until they looked quite red. After which she got up and went out of the room, without venturing to say another word. When her older sister looked and spoke as she had done just now, the wisest course to pursue was to obey orders without any comment. Miss Minchin walked across the room. She spoke to herself aloud without knowing that she was doing it. During the last year the story of the diamond mines had suggested all sorts of possibilities to her. Even proprietors of seminaries might make fortunes in stocks, with the aid of owners of mines. And now, instead of looking forward to gains, she was left to look back upon losses.

“The Princess Sara, indeed!” she said. “The child has been pampered as if she were a QUEEN.” She was sweeping angrily past the corner table as she said it, and the next moment she started at the sound of a loud, sobbing sniff which issued from under the cover.

“What is that!” she exclaimed angrily. The loud, sobbing sniff was heard again, and she stooped and raised the hanging folds of the table cover.

“How DARE you!” she cried out. “How dare you! Come out immediately!”

It was poor Becky who crawled out, and her cap was knocked on one side, and her face was red with repressed crying.

“If you please, ‘m—it’s me, mum,” she explained. “I know I hadn’t ought to. But I was lookin’ at the doll, mum—an’ I was frightened when you come in—an’ slipped under the table.”

“You have been there all the time, listening,” said Miss Minchin.

“No, mum,” Becky protested, bobbing curtsies. “Not listenin’—I thought I could slip out without your noticin’, but I couldn’t an’ I had to stay. But I didn’t listen, mum—I wouldn’t for nothin’. But I couldn’t help hearin’.”

Suddenly it seemed almost as if she lost all fear of the awful lady before her. She burst into fresh tears.

“Oh, please, ‘m,” she said; “I dare say you’ll give me warnin, mum—but I’m so sorry for poor Miss Sara—I’m so sorry!”

“Leave the room!” ordered Miss Minchin.

Becky curtsied again, the tears openly streaming down her cheeks.

“Yes, ‘m; I will, ‘m,” she said, trembling; “but oh, I just wanted to arst you: Miss Sara—she’s been such a rich young lady, an’ she’s been waited on, ‘and and foot; an’ what will she do now, mum, without no maid? If—if, oh please, would you let me wait on her after I’ve done my pots an’ kettles? I’d do ‘em that quick—if you’d let me wait on her now she’s poor. Oh,” breaking out afresh, “poor little Miss Sara, mum—that was called a princess.”

Somehow, she made Miss Minchin feel more angry than ever. That the very scullery maid should range herself on the side of this child—whom she realized more fully than ever that she had never liked—was too much. She actually stamped her foot.

“No—certainly not,” she said. “She will wait on herself, and on other people, too. Leave the room this instant, or you’ll leave your place.”

Becky threw her apron over her head and fled. She ran out of the room and down the steps into the scullery, and there she sat down among her pots and kettles, and wept as if her heart would break.

“It’s exactly like the ones in the stories,” she wailed. “Them pore princess ones that was drove into the world.”

Miss Minchin had never looked quite so still and hard as she did when Sara came to her, a few hours later, in response to a message she had sent her.

Even by that time it seemed to Sara as if the birthday party had either been a dream or a thing which had happened years ago, and had happened in the life of quite another little girl.

Every sign of the festivities had been swept away; the holly had been removed from the schoolroom walls, and the forms and desks put back into their places. Miss Minchin’s sitting room looked as it always did—all traces of the feast were gone, and Miss Minchin had resumed her usual dress. The pupils had been ordered to lay aside their party frocks; and this having been done, they had returned to the schoolroom and huddled