Ermengarde (A Little Princess)

01CHAPTER III.

02Ermengarde On that first morning, when Sarah sat at Miss Minchin's side, aware that the whole schoolroom was devoting itself to observing her, she had noticed very soon one little girl, about her own age, who looked at her very hard, with a pair of light, rather dull, blue eyes.

03She was a fat child, who did not look as if she were in the least clever, but she had a good-naturedly pouting mouth.

04Her flaxen hair was braided in a tight pigtail, tied with a ribbon, and she had pulled this pigtail round her neck, and was biting the end of the ribbon, resting her elbows on the desk, as she stared wonderingly at the new pupil.

05When M.

06Dufarge began to speak to Sarah, she looked a little frightened, and when Sarah stepped forward and, looking at him with the innocent appealing eyes, answered him, without any warning, in French, the fat little girl gave a startled jump, and grew quite red in her awed amazement.

07Having wept hopeless tears for weeks in her efforts to remember that La Mère meant the mother, and Le Père the father, when one spoke sensible English, it was almost too much for her suddenly to find herself listening to a child her own age, who seemed not only quite familiar with these words, but apparently knew any number of others, and could mix them up with verbs as if they were mere trifles.

08She stared so hard, and bit the ribbon on her pigtail so fast, that she attracted the attention of Miss Minchin, who, feeling extremely cross at the moment, immediately pounced upon her.

09"'Miss St.

10John!' she exclaimed severely.

11"'What do you mean, by such conduct?

12Remove your elbows!

13Take your ribbon out of your mouth!

14Sit up at once!' Upon which Miss St.

15John gave another jump, and when Lavinia and Jessie tittered, she became redder than ever—so red, indeed, that she almost looked as if tears were coming in to her poor, dull, childish eyes.

16And Sarah saw her, and was so sorry for her, that she began rather to like her, and to want to be her friend.

17It was a way of hers to always want to spring into any fray in which some one was made uncomfortable or unhappy.

18If Sarah had been a boy, and lived a few centuries ago, her father used to say, she would have gone about the country with her sword drawn, rescuing and defending every one in distress.

19She always wants to fight when she sees people in trouble." So she took rather a fancy to fat, slow, little Miss St.

20John, and kept glancing toward her through the morning.

21She saw that lessons were no easy matter to her, and that there was no danger of her ever being spoiled by being treated as a show pupil.

22Her French lesson was a pathetic thing.

23Her pronunciation made even Monsieur Dufarge smile in spite of himself, and Lavinia and Jessie, and the more fortunate girls, either giggled or looked at her in wondering disdain.

24But Sarah did not laugh.

25She tried to look as if she did not hear when Miss St.

26John called Le Bon Pain, Le Bon Pang.

27She had a fine, hot little temper of her own, and it made her feel rather savage when she heard the titters and saw the poor, stupid, distressed child's face.

28It isn't funny, really, she said between her teeth, as she bent over her book.

29They ought not to laugh.

30When lessons were over, and the pupils gathered together in groups to talk, Sarah looked for Miss St.

31John, and finding her bundled rather disconsolately in a window-seat, she walked over to her and spoke.

32She only said the kind of thing little girls always say to each other by way of beginning an acquaintance, but there was something friendly about Sarah, and people always felt it.

33"'What is your name?' she said.

34To explain Miss St.

35John's amazement, one must recall that a new pupil is, for a short time, a somewhat uncertain thing, and of this new pupil the entire school had taught the night before, until it fell asleep quite exhausted by excitement in contradictory stories.

36A new pupil, with a carriage, and a pony, and a maid, and a voyage from India to discuss, was not an ordinary acquaintance.

37"'My name's Ermengarde St.

38John,' she answered.

39"'Mine is Sarah Crewe,' said Sarah.

40"'Yours is very pretty.

41It sounds like a story-book.' "'Do you like it?' fluttered Ermengarde.

42"'I—I like yours.' Miss St.

43John's chief trouble in life was that she had a clever father.

44Sometimes this seemed to her a dreadful calamity.

45If you have a father who knows everything, who speaks seven or eight languages, and has thousands of volumes which he has apparently learned by heart, he frequently expects you to be familiar with the contents of your lesson-books, at least.

46And it is not improbable that he will feel you ought to be able to remember a few incidents of history and to write a French exercise.

47Ermengarde was a severe trial to Mr.

48St.

49John.

50He could not understand how a child of his could be a notably and unmistakably dull creature who never shone in anything.

51"'Good heavens!' he had said more than once, as he stared at her.

52"'There are times when I think she is as stupid as her Aunt Eliza.' If her Aunt Eliza had been slow to learn and quick to forget a thing entirely when she had learned it, Ermengarde was strikingly like her.

53She was the monumental dunce of the school, and it could not be denied.

54"'She must be made to learn,' her father said to Miss Minchin.

55Consequently, Ermengarde spent the greater part of her life in disgrace or in tears.

56She learned things and forgot them, or if she remembered them, she did not understand them.

57So it was natural that, having made Sarah's acquaintance, she should sit and stare at her with profound admiration.

58"'You can speak French, can't you?' she said respectfully.

59Sarah got on to the window-seat, which was a big, deep one, and tucking up her feet, sat with her hands clasped round her knees.

60"'I can speak it because I have heard it all my life,' she answered.

61"'You could speak it if you had always heard it.' "'Oh, no, I couldn't,' said Ermengarde.

62"'I never could speak it.' "'Why?' inquired Sarah curiously.

63Ermengarde shook her head so that the pigtail wobbled.

64"'You heard me just now,' she said.

65"'I'm always like that.

66I can't say the words.

67They're so queer.' She paused a moment, and then added with a touch of awe in her voice, "'You're clever, aren't you?' Sarah looked out of the window into the dingy square, where the sparrows were hopping and twittering on the wet iron railings and the sooty branches of the trees.

68She reflected a few moments.

69She had heard it said very often that she was clever, and she wondered if she was, and if she was, how it had happened.

70"'I don't know,' she said.

71"'I can't tell.' Then, seeing a mournful look on the round, chubby face, she gave a little laugh and changed the subject.

72"'Would you like to see Emily?' she inquired.

73"'Who is Emily?' Ermengarde asked, just as Miss Minchin had done.

74"'Come up to my room and see,' said Sarah, holding out her hand.

75They jumped down from the window-seat together and went upstairs.

76"'Is it true,' Ermengarde whispered, as they went through the hall, "'is it true that you have a playroom all to yourself?' "'Yes,' Sarah answered.

77"'Papa asked Miss Minchin to let me have one, because—well, it was because when I play I make up stories and tell them to myself, and I don't like people to hear me.

78It spoils it if I think people listen.' They had reached the passage leading to Sarah's room by this time, and Ermengarde stopped short, staring, and quite losing her breath.

79"'You make up stories?' she gasped.

80"'Can you do that as well as speak French?

81Can you?' Sarah looked at her in simple surprise.

82"'Why, anyone can make up things,' she said.

83"'Have you never tried?' She put her hand, warningly on Ermengarde's.

84"'Let us go very quietly to the door,' she whispered.

85"'And then I will open it quite suddenly, and perhaps we may catch her.' She was half laughing.

86But there was a touch of mysterious hope in her eyes which fascinated Ermengarde, though she had not the remotest idea what it meant, or whom it was she wanted to catch, or why she wanted to catch her.

87Whatsoever she meant, Ermengarde was sure it was something delightfully exciting.

88So, quite thrilled with expectation, she followed her on tiptoe along the passage.

89They made not the least noise until they reached the door.

90Then Sarah suddenly turned the handle and threw it wide open.

91Its opening revealed the room quite neat and quiet, a fire gently burning in the grate, and a wonderful doll sitting in a chair by it, apparently reading a book.

92"'Oh, she got back to her seat before we could see her,' Sarah explained.

93"'Of course they always do.

94They're as quick as lightning.' Ermengarde looked from her to the doll and back again.

95"'Can she walk?' she asked breathlessly.

96"'Yes,' answered Sarah.

97"'At least I believe she can.

98At least I pretend I believe she can.

99And that makes it seem as if it were true.

100Have you never pretended things?' "'No,' said Ermengarde.

101"'Never.

102I—' "'Tell me about it.' She was so bewitched by this odd new companion that she actually stared at Sarah instead of at Emily, notwithstanding that Emily was the most attractive doll person she had ever seen.

103"'Let her sit down,' said Sarah, "'and I will tell you.

104It's so easy that when you begin you can't stop.

105You just go on and on doing it always, and it's beautiful.

106Emily, you must listen.

107This is Ermengarde St.

108John, Emily.

109Ermengarde, this is Emily.

110Would you like to hold her?' "'Oh, may I?' said Ermengarde.

111"'May I really?

112She's beautiful!' And Emily was put into our arms.

113Never in her dull, short life had Miss St.

114John dreamed of such an hour as the one she spent with the queer new pupil before they heard the lunch-bell ring, and were obliged to go downstairs.

115Sarah sat upon the hearth-rug and told her strange things.

116She sat rather huddled up, and her green eyes shone and her cheeks flushed.

117She told stories of the voyage and stories of India.

118But what fascinated Ermengarde the most was her fancy about the dolls who walked and talked, and who could do anything they choose when the human beings were out of the room, but who must keep their powers a secret, and so flew back to their places like lightning when people returned to the room.

119"'We couldn't do it,' said Sarah seriously.

120"'You see, it's a kind of magic.' Once, when she was relating the story of the search for Emily, Ermengarde saw her face suddenly change.

121A cloud seemed to pass over it, and put out the light in her shining eyes.

122She drew her breath in so sharply that it made a funny, sad little sound, and then she shut her lips and held them tightly closed, as if she was determined either to do, or not to do, something.

123Ermengarde had an idea that if she had been like any other little girl she might have suddenly burst out sobbing and crying.

124But she did not.

125"'Have you a—a pain?' Ermengarde ventured.

126"'Yes,' Sarah answered, after a moment's silence.

127"'But it is not in my body.' Then she added something in a low voice, which she tried to keep quite steady, and it was this.

128"'Do you love your father more than anything else in the whole world?' Ermengarde's mouth fell open a little.

129She knew that it would be far from behaving like a respectable child at a select seminary to say that it had never occurred to you that you could love your father, that you would do anything desperate to avoid being left alone in his society for ten minutes.

130She was, indeed, greatly embarrassed.

131"'I—I—I—I scarcely ever see him,' she stammered.

132"'He is always in the library, reading things.' "'I love mine more than all the world ten times over,' Sarah said.

133"'That is what my pain is.

134He has gone away.' She put her head down quietly on her little huddled-up knees, and sat very still for a few minutes.

135"'She is going to cry out loud,' thought Ermengarde, fearfully.

136But she did not.

137Her short black locks tumbled about her ears, and she sat still.

138Then she spoke without lifting her head.

139"'I promised him I would bear it,' she said.

140"'And I will.

141You have to bear things.

142Think what soldiers bear.

143Papa is a soldier.

144If there was a war he would have to bear marching and thirstiness and, perhaps, deep wounds.

145And he would never say a word—not one word.' Ermengarde could only gaze at her.

146But she felt that she was beginning to adore her.

147She was so wonderful and different from any one else.

148Presently she lifted her face and shook back her black locks, with a queer little smile.

149"'If I go on talking and talking,' she said, and telling you things about pretending, I shall bear it better.

150You don't forget, but you bear it better.' Ermengarde did not know why a lump came into her throat, and her eyes felt as if tears were in them.

151"'Lavinia and Jessie are best friends,' she said rather huskily.

152"'I wish we could be best friends.

153Would you have me for yours?

154You're clever, and I'm the stupidest child in the school, but I—oh, I do so like you.' "'I am glad of that,' said Sarah.

155"'It makes you thankful when you are liked.

156Yes, we will be friends.

157And I'll tell you what—a sudden gleam lighting her face.

158I can help you with your French lessons.' End of chapter 3 End of chapter 3 End of chapter 3 End of chapter 3 End of chapter 3 End of chapter 3 End of chapter 3 End of chapter 3 End of chapter 3 end of chapter 3 end of chapter 3