A Little Princess Read Online Free PDF

lessons and books, and could remember things when I
learned them. It just happened that I was born with a father who
was beautiful and nice and clever, and could give me everything I
liked. Perhaps I have not really a good temper at all, but if
you have everything you want and everyone is kind to you, how can
you help but be good-tempered? I don't know"—looking quite
serious—"how I shall ever find out whether I am really a nice
child or a horrid one. Perhaps I'm a HIDEOUS child, and no one
will ever know, just because I never have any trials."
    "Lavinia has no trials," said Ermengarde, stolidly, "and she is
horrid enough."
    Sara rubbed the end of her little nose reflectively, as she
thought the matter over.
    "Well," she said at last, "perhaps—perhaps that is because
Lavinia is GROWING." This was the result of a charitable
recollection of having heard Miss Amelia say that Lavinia was
growing so fast that she believed it affected her health and
temper.
    Lavinia, in fact, was spiteful. She was inordinately jealous of
Sara. Until the new pupil's arrival, she had felt herself the
leader in the school. She had led because she was capable of
making herself extremely disagreeable if the others did not
follow her. She domineered over the little children, and assumed
grand airs with those big enough to be her companions. She was
rather pretty, and had been the best-dressed pupil in the
procession when the Select Seminary walked out two by two, until
Sara's velvet coats and sable muffs appeared, combined with
drooping ostrich feathers, and were led by Miss Minchin at the
head of the line. This, at the beginning, had been bitter
enough; but as time went on it became apparent that Sara was a
leader, too, and not because she could make herself disagreeable,
but because she never did.
    "There's one thing about Sara Crewe," Jessie had enraged her
"best friend" by saying honestly, "she's never 'grand' about
herself the least bit, and you know she might be, Lavvie. I
believe I couldn't help being—just a little—if I had so many
fine things and was made such a fuss over. It's disgusting, the
way Miss Minchin shows her off when parents come."
    "'Dear Sara must come into the drawing room and talk to Mrs.
Musgrave about India,'" mimicked Lavinia, in her most highly
flavored imitation of Miss Minchin. "'Dear Sara must speak
French to Lady Pitkin. Her accent is so perfect.' She didn't
learn her French at the Seminary, at any rate. And there's
nothing so clever in her knowing it. She says herself she didn't
learn it at all. She just picked it up, because she always heard
her papa speak it. And, as to her papa, there is nothing so
grand in being an Indian officer."
    "Well," said Jessie, slowly, "he's killed tigers. He killed the
one in the skin Sara has in her room. That's why she likes it
so. She lies on it and strokes its head, and talks to it as if
it was a cat."
    "She's always doing something silly," snapped Lavinia. "My
mamma says that way of hers of pretending things is silly. She
says she will grow up eccentric."
    It was quite true that Sara was never "grand." She was a
friendly little soul, and shared her privileges and belongings
with a free hand. The little ones, who were accustomed to being
disdained and ordered out of the way by mature ladies aged ten
and twelve, were never made to cry by this most envied of them
all. She was a motherly young person, and when people fell down
and scraped their knees, she ran and helped them up and patted
them, or found in her pocket a bonbon or some other article of a
soothing nature. She never pushed them out of her way or alluded
to their years as a humiliation and a blot upon their small
characters.
    "If you are four you are four," she said severely to Lavinia on
an occasion of her having—it must be confessed—slapped Lottie
and called her "a brat;" "but you will be five next year, and
six the year after that. And," opening large, convicting eyes,
"it takes sixteen years to make you