第36章 The Indian Gentleman(3)

Perhaps Emily is more like me than I am like myself.Perhaps she would rather not answer her friends,even.She keeps it all in her heart."

But though she tried to satisfy herself with these arguments,she did not find it easy.When,after a long,hard day,in which she had been sent here and there,sometimes on long errands through wind and cold and rain,she came in wet and hungry,and was sent out again because nobody chose to remember that she was only a child,and that her slim legs might be tired and her small body might be chilled;when she had been given only harsh words and cold,slighting looks for thanks;when the cook had been vulgar and insolent;

when Miss Minchin had been in her worst mood,and when she had seen the girls sneering among themselves at her shabbiness--then she was not always able to comfort her sore,proud,desolate heart with fancies when Emily merely sat upright in her old chair and stared.

One of these nights,when she came up to the attic cold and hungry,with a tempest raging in her young breast,Emily's stare seemed so vacant,her sawdust legs and arms so inexpressive,that Sara lost all control over herself.There was nobody but Emily--no one in the world.And there she sat.

"I shall die presently,"she said at first.

Emily simply stared.

"I can't bear this,"said the poor child,trembling."I know Ishall die.I'm cold;I'm wet;I'm starving to death.I've walked a thousand miles today,and they have done nothing but scold me from morning until night.And because I could not find that last thing the cook sent me for,they would not give me any supper.Some men laughed at me because my old shoes made me slip down in the mud.

I'm covered with mud now.And they laughed.Do you hear?"

She looked at the staring glass eyes and complacent face,and suddenly a sort of heartbroken rage seized her.She lifted her little savage hand and knocked Emily off the chair,bursting into a passion of sobbing--Sara who never cried.

"You are nothing but a DOLL>!she cried."Nothing but a doll--doll--doll!You care for nothing.You are stuffed with sawdust.

You never had a heart.Nothing could ever make you feel.

You are a DOLL>!"

Emily lay on the floor,with her legs ignominiously doubled up over her head,and a new flat place on the end of her nose;

but she was calm,even dignified.Sara hid her face in her arms.

The rats in the wall began to fight and bite each other and squeak and scramble.Melchisedec was chastising some of his family.

Sara's sobs gradually quieted themselves.It was so unlike her to break down that she was surprised at herself.After a while she raised her face and looked at Emily,who seemed to be gazing at her round the side of one angle,and,somehow,by this time actually with a kind of glassy-eyed sympathy.Sara bent and picked her up.

Remorse overtook her.She even smiled at herself a very little smile.

"You can't help being a doll,"she said with a resigned sigh,"any more than Lavinia and Jessie can help not having any sense.

We are not all made alike.Perhaps you do your sawdust best."

And she kissed her and shook her clothes straight,and put her back upon her chair.

She had wished very much that some one would take the empty house next door.She wished it because of the attic window which was so near hers.It seemed as if it would be so nice to see it propped open someday and a head and shoulders rising out of the square aperture.

"If it looked a nice head,"she thought,"I might begin by saying,`Good morning,'and all sorts of things might happen.But,of course,it's not really likely that anyone but under servants would sleep there."

One morning,on turning the corner of the square after a visit to the grocer's,the butcher's,and the baker's,she saw,to her great delight,that during her rather prolonged absence,a van full of furniture had stopped before the next house,the front doors were thrown open,and men in shirt sleeves were going in and out carrying heavy packages and pieces of furniture.

"It's taken!"she said."It really IS taken!Oh,I do hope a nice head will look out of the attic window!"

She would almost have liked to join the group of loiterers who had stopped on the pavement to watch the things carried in.

She had an idea that if she could see some of the furniture she could guess something about the people it belonged to.

"Miss Minchin's tables and chairs are just like her,"she thought;

"I remember thinking that the first minute I saw her,even though I was so little.I told papa afterward,and he laughed and said it was true.

I am sure the Large Family have fat,comfortable armchairs and sofas,and I can see that their red-flowery wallpaper is exactly like them.

It's warm and cheerful and kind-looking and happy."