Select Seminary for Young Ladies.
"Here we are, Sara," said Captain Crewe, making his voice sound as
cheerful as possible. Then he lifted her out of the cab and they
mounted the steps and rang the bell. Sara often thought afterward that
the house was somehow exactly like Miss Minchin. It was respectable
and well furnished, but everything in it was ugly; and the very
armchairs seemed to have hard bones in them. In the hall everything
was hard and polished--even the red cheeks of the moon face on the tall
clock in the corner had a severe varnished look. The drawing room into
which they were ushered was covered by a carpet with a square pattern
upon it, the chairs were square, and a heavy marble timepiece stood
upon the heavy marble mantel.
As she sat down in one of the stiff mahogany chairs, Sara cast one of
her quick looks about her.
"I don't like it, papa," she said. "But then I dare say soldiers--even
brave ones--don't really LIKE going into battle."
Captain Crewe laughed outright at this. He was young and full of fun,
and he never tired of hearing Sara's queer speeches.
"Oh, little Sara," he said. "What shall I do when I have no one to say
solemn things to me? No one else is as solemn as you are."
"But why do solemn things make you laugh so?" inquired Sara.
"Because you are such fun when you say them," he answered, laughing
still more. And then suddenly he swept her into his arms and kissed
her very hard, stopping laughing all at once and looking almost as if
tears had come into his eyes.
It was just then that Miss Minchin entered the room. She was very like
her house, Sara felt: tall and dull, and respectable and ugly. She had
large, cold, fishy eyes, and a large, cold, fishy smile. It spread
itself into a very large smile when she saw Sara and Captain Crewe.
She had heard a great many desirable things of the young soldier from
the lady who had recommended her school to him. Among other things, she
had heard that he was a rich father who was willing to spend a great
deal of money on his little daughter.
"It will be a great privilege to have charge of such a beautiful and
promising child, Captain Crewe," she said, taking Sara's hand and
stroking it. "Lady Meredith has told me of her unusual cleverness. A
clever child is a great treasure in an establishment like mine."
Sara stood quietly, with her eyes fixed upon Miss Minchin's face. She
was thinking something odd, as usual.
"Why does she say I am a beautiful child?" she was thinking. "I am not
beautiful at all. Colonel Grange's little girl, Isobel, is beautiful.
She has dimples and rose-colored cheeks, and long hair the color of
gold. I have short black hair and green eyes; besides which, I am a
thin child and not fair in the least. I am one of the ugliest children
I ever saw. She is beginning by telling a story."
She was mistaken, however, in thinking she was an ugly child. She was
not in the least like Isobel Grange, who had been the beauty of the
regiment, but she had an odd charm of her own. She was a slim, supple
creature, rather tall for her age, and had an intense, attractive
little face. Her hair was heavy and quite black and only curled at the
tips; her eyes were greenish gray, it is true, but they were big,
wonderful eyes with long, black lashes, and though she herself did not
like the color of them, many other people did. Still she was very firm
in her belief that she was an ugly little girl, and she was not at all
elated by Miss Minchin's flattery.
"I should be telling a story if I said she was beautiful," she thought;
"and I should know I was telling a story. I believe I am as ugly as
she is--in my way. What did she say that for?"
After she had known Miss Minchin longer she learned why she had said
it. She discovered that she said the same thing to each papa and mamma
who brought a child to her school.
Sara stood near her father and listened while he and Miss Minchin
talked. She had been brought to the seminary because Lady Meredith's
two little girls had been educated there, and Captain Crewe had a great
respect for Lady Meredith's experience. Sara was to be what was known
as "a parlor boarder," and she was to enjoy even greater privileges
than parlor boarders usually did. She was to have a pretty bedroom and
sitting room of her own; she was to have a pony and a carriage, and a
maid to take the place of the ayah who had been her nurse in India.
"I am not in the least anxious about her education," Captain Crewe
said, with his gay laugh, as he held Sara's hand and patted it. "The
difficulty will be to keep her from learning too fast and too much.
She is always sitting with her little nose burrowing into books. She
doesn't read them, Miss Minchin; she gobbles them up as if she were a
little wolf instead of a little girl. She is always starving for new
books to gobble, and she wants grown-up books--great, big, fat
ones--French and German as well as English--history and biography and
poets, and all sorts of things. Drag her away from her books when she
reads too much. Make her ride her pony in the Row or go out and buy a
new doll. She ought to play more with dolls."
"Papa," said Sara, "you see, if I went out and bought a new doll every
few days I should have more than I could be fond of. Dolls ought to be
intimate friends. Emily is going to be my intimate friend."
Captain Crewe looked at Miss Minchin and Miss Minchin looked at Captain
Crewe.
"Who is Emily?" she inquired.
"Tell her, Sara," Captain Crewe said, smiling.
Sara's green-gray eyes looked very solemn and quite soft as she
answered.
"She is a doll I haven't got yet," she said. "She is a doll papa is
going to buy for me. We are going out together to find her. I have
called her Emily. She is going to be my friend when papa is gone. I
want her to talk to about him."
Miss Minchin's large, fishy smile became very flattering indeed.
"What an original child!" she said. "What a darling little creature!"
"Yes," said Captain Crewe, drawing Sara close. "She is a darling
little creature. Take great care of her for me, Miss Minchin."
Sara stayed with her father at his hotel for several days; in fact, she
remained with him until he sailed away again to India. They went out
and visited many big shops together, and bought a great many things.
They bought, indeed, a great many more things than Sara needed; but
Captain Crewe was a rash, innocent young man and wanted his little girl
to have everything she admired and everything he admired himself, so
between them they collected a wardrobe much too grand for a child of
seven. There were velvet dresses trimmed with costly furs, and lace
dresses, and embroidered ones, and hats with great, soft ostrich
feathers, and ermine coats and muffs, and boxes of tiny gloves and
handkerchiefs and silk stockings in such abundant supplies that the
polite young women behind the counters whispered to each other that the
odd little girl with the big, solemn eyes must be at least some foreign
princess--perhaps the little daughter of an Indian rajah.
And at last they found Emily, but they went to a number of toy shops
and looked at a great many dolls before they discovered her.
"I want her to look as if she wasn't a doll really," Sara said. "I
want her to look as if she LISTENS when I talk to her. The trouble with
dolls, papa"--and she put her head on one side and reflected as she
said it--"the trouble with dolls is that they never seem to HEAR." So
they looked at big ones and little ones--at dolls with black eyes and
dolls with blue--at dolls with brown curls and dolls with golden
braids, dolls dressed and dolls undressed.
"You see," Sara said when they were examining one who had no clothes.
"If, when I find her, she has no frocks, we can take her to a
dressmaker and have her things made to fit. They will fit better if
they are tried on."
After a number of disappointments they decided to walk and look in at
the shop windows and let the cab follow them. They had passed two or
three places without even going in, when, as they were approaching a
shop which was really not a very large one, Sara suddenly started and
clutched her father's arm.
"Oh, papa!" she cried. "There is Emily!"
A flush had risen to her face and there was an expression in her
green-gray eyes as if she had just recognized someone she was intimate
with and fond of.
"She is actually waiting there for us!" she said. "Let us go in to
her."
"Dear me," said Captain Crewe, "I feel as if we ought to have someone
to introduce us."
"You must introduce me and I will introduce you," said Sara. "But I
knew her the minute I saw her--so perhaps she knew me, too."
Perhaps she had known her. She had certainly a very intelligent
expression in her eyes when Sara took her in her arms. She was a large
doll, but not too large to carry about easily; she had naturally
curling golden-brown hair, which hung like a mantle about her, and her
eyes were a deep, clear, gray-blue, with soft, thick eyelashes which
were real eyelashes and not mere painted lines.
"Of 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
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. 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-ruffled 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 & Skipworth, 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-by. 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."
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."
"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. 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 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.
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