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enjoyed ordering about the "young one" who had been made so much
fuss over for so long. They were not servants of the best class,
and had neither good manners nor good tempers, and it was frequently
convenient to have at hand someone on whom blame could be laid.
During the first month or two, Sara thought that her willingness
to do things as well as she could, and her silence under reproof,
might soften those who drove her so hard. In her proud little heart
she wanted them to see that she was trying to earn her living and not
accepting charity. But the time came when she saw that no one was
softened at all; and the more willing she was to do as she was told,
the more domineering and exacting careless housemaids became,
and the more ready a scolding cook was to blame her.
If she had been older, Miss Minchin would have given her the bigger
girls to teach and saved money by dismissing an instructress; but
while she remained and looked like a child, she could be made more
useful as a sort of little superior errand girl and maid of all work.
An ordinary errand boy would not have been so clever and reliable.
Sara could be trusted with difficult commissions and complicated messages.
She could even go and pay bills, and she combined with this the ability
to dust a room well and to set things in order.
Her own lessons became things of the past. She was taught nothing,
and only after long and busy days spent in running here and there
at everybody's orders was she grudgingly allowed to go into the
deserted schoolroom, with a pile of old books, and study alone
at night.
"If I do not remind myself of the things I have learned, perhaps I
may forget them," she said to herself. "I am almost a scullery maid,
and if I am a scullery maid who knows nothing, I shall be like
poor Becky. I wonder if I could QUITE forget and begin to drop
my H'S and not remember that Henry the Eighth had six wives."
One of the most curious things in her new existence was her changed
position among the pupils. Instead of being a sort of small royal
personage among them, she no longer seemed to be one of their number
at all. She was kept so constantly at work that she scarcely
ever had an opportunity of speaking to any of them, and she could
not avoid seeing that Miss Minchin preferred that she should live
a life apart from that of the occupants of the schoolroom.
"I will not have her forming intimacies and talking to the
other children," that lady said. "Girls like a grievance,
and if she begins to tell romantic stories about herself,
she will become an ill-used heroine, and parents will be
given a wrong impression. It is better that she should live
a separate life--one suited to her circumstances. I am giving
her a home, and that is more than she has any right to expect from me."
Sara did not expect much, and was far too proud to try to continue
to be intimate with girls who evidently felt rather awkward and
uncertain about her. The fact was that Miss Minchin's pupils were
a set of dull, matter-of-fact young people. They were accustomed
to being rich and comfortable, and as Sara's frocks grew shorter
and shabbier and queerer-looking, and it became an established fact
that she wore shoes with holes in them and was sent out to buy
groceries and carry them through the streets in a basket on her
arm when the cook wanted them in a hurry, they felt rather as if,
when they spoke to her, they were addressing an under servant.
"To think that she was the girl with the diamond mines, Lavinia commented.
"She does look an object. And she's queerer than ever. I never liked
her much, but I can't bear that way she has now of looking at people
without speaking--just as if she was finding them out."
"I am," said Sara, promptly, when she heard of this. "That's what I
look at some people for. I like to know about them. I think them
over afterward."
The truth was that she had saved herself annoyance several times
by keeping her eye on Lavinia, who was quite ready to make mischief,
and would have been rather pleased to have made it for the ex-show pupil.
Sara never made any mischief herself, or interfered with anyone.
She worked like a drudge; she tramped through the wet streets, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]