A little Princess / Being the whole story of Sara Crewe now told for the first time

MISS MINCHIN,
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

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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.