OUR BOYS & GIRLS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 839, 30 March 1888, Page 5

OUR BOYS & GIRLS.

SARAH CREWE : OR WHAT HAP. PENED AT MISS MINCHIN’S (By the Author or ‘Little Lord FountleyROY.) In the first place, Miss Minchin lived in London. Her home was a large, dull, tall one, in a large, dnll square, where all the houses were alike, and all the sparrows were alike, and where all the door knockers made the same heavy sound, and on still days—and nearly all the days were still—seemed to resound through the entire row in which' the knock was knocked. On Miss Minchin’s door there was a brass plate. On the brass plate there was inscribed in black letters, Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary tor Young Ladies. Little Sara Crewe never went in or out of the house without reading that door-plate and reflecting upon it. By the time she was twelve, she had decided that all her trouble arose because, in the first place, she was not ‘Select,’and in the second, she was not a ‘Young Lady.’ When she was eight years old, she had been brought to Miss Minchin as a pupil, and left with her. Her papa had brought her all the way from India. Her mamma had died when she was a baby, and her papa had kept her with him as long as he could. And then, finding the hot climate was making her very delicate, he had brought her to England and left her with Miss Minohin, to be part of the Select Semi, nary for Young Ladies. Sara, who had always bsen a sharp little child, who remembered things, recollected hearing him say that he had not a relative in the world whom he knew of, and so he was obliged to place her at a boarding school, and he had heard Jliss Minchin’s establishment spoken of very

highly. The same day, he took Sara out and I bought her a great many beautiful clothes, — ( clothes so grand and rich that only a very I young and inexperienced man would have I bought them for a mite of a child who was to j be bought up in a boarding-school. But the j fact was that he was a rash, innocent young j man, and very sad at the thought of parting with his little girl, who was all he had left to remind him of her beautiful mother, whom he had dearly loved. And he wished her to have everything the most fortunate little girl could have; and so, when the polite saleswoman in the shops said, ‘ Here is our very latest th’ng in hats, the plume 3 are exactly the same as those we sold to Lady Diana Sinclair yesterday,’ he immediately bought what was offered to him, and paid whatever was asked. The consequence was that Sara had a most extraordinary wardrobe. Her dresses were silk and velvet and India cashmere, her hats and bonnets were covered with bows and plumes, her small undergarments were adorned with real lace, and she returned in the cab to Miss Minehin’s with a doll almost as large as herself, dressed quite as grandly as herself, too. Then her papa gave Miss Minchin some money and went away, and for several days Sara would neither touch the doll, nor her breakfast, nor her dinner, nor her tea, and would do nothing but crouch in a corner by the (window and cry. She cried so muoh, indeed, that she made herself ill. She was a queer little child, with old-fashioned ways and strong feelings, and she had adored her papa, and could not be made to think that India and an interesting bungalow were not better for her than London and Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary. The instant she had entered the house, she had begun promptly to hate Miss Minohin, and to think little of Miss Amelia Minchin, who was smooth and dumpy, and lisped, and was evidently afraid of her older sister. Miss Minchin was tall, and her large, cold, fishy eyes, and large, cold hands, which Beamed fishy too, because they were damp and made chills run down Sara’s back when they’ touched her, as Miss Minohin pushed her hair off her fore,head and said :

‘ A most beautiful and promising little girl, Captain Crewe. She will be a favorite pupil; quite a favorite pupil, I see.’ For the first year she was a favorite pupil: at least she was indulged a great deal more than was good for her. And when the Select Seminary went walking, two by two, she was always decked out in her grandest olothes, and led by the hand, at the head of the genteel procession, by Miss Minchin her - self. And when the parents of any of the pupils came, she was always dressed and called into the parlor with her doll; and she used to hear Miss Minchiu say that her father was a distinguished Indian officer, and she would be heiress to a great fortune. That her father had inherited a great deal of money, Sara had heard before ; and also that some day it would be hers, and that he would not long remain in the army, bat would come to live in London. And every time a letter came, she hoped it would say he waß coming, and they were to live together again.

But about the middle of the third year a letter came bringing very different news. Because he was not a business man himself, her papa had given his affairs into the hands o| a friend he trnsted. The friend had deceived and robbed him. All the money was gone, no one knew exactly where, and the shock was so great to the poor,' rash yonng officer, that, being attacked by jungle fever shortly afterward,' he had no strength to rally, and so died, leaving Sara with no one to take care of her.

Miss Minohin’a cold and fishy eyes had never looked so cold and fishy as they did when Sara went into the parlor, on being sent for, a few days after the letter was received.

No one had said anything to the child about mourning, so, in her old-fashioned way, she had decided to find a black dress for herself, and had picked out a black velvet she had outgrown, and came into the room in it, looking the queerest little figure in the world, and a sad little figure, too. The dress was too short and too tight, her face was white, her eyes had dark rings around them, and her doll, wrapped in a piece of old black crape, was held under her arm. She was not a pretty child. She was thin, and had a wierd, interesting little face, short black hair, and very large green-grey eyes fringed all around with heavy blacklashes. ‘I am the ugliest child in the school,’ she had said once, after staring at herself in the glass for some minutes. But there had been a clever, good-natured little French teacher who had said to the music-master :

‘Zat leetle Crewe. Yat a child ! A so ogly beauty ! Ze so large eyes ; ze so little spirituelle face. Waid till she grow up. You shall see !’

This morning, however, in the tight, small black frock, she looked thinner and odder than ever, and her eyes were fixed on Miss Minchin with a queer steadiness as she slowly ad\ anced into the parlor, clntching her doll.

‘ Put your doll down ! said Miss Minchin.

‘No/ said the child, ‘ I won’t put her down ; I want her with me. She is all I have. She has stayed with me all the time since my papa died.’ She had never been an obedient child. She had had her own way ever since she was born, and there was about her an air of silent determination under which Miss Minchin had always felt secretly uncomfortable. And that lady felt even now that perhaps it would be as well not to insist on her point. So she looked at her as severely as possible.

* Yon will have no time for dolls in future,’ she said ; ‘ you will have to work and improve yourself, and make yourself useful.’

1 Sara kept the big odd eyes fixed on her teacher and said nothing. | ‘ Everything will be different now,’ Miss \ Minchin went on. * I sent for you to talk |to you and make you understand. Yonr i father is dead. You have no friends. Yon ! have no money. You have no home and no j one to take care of you.’ The little paleolive face twitched nervously, but the green-gray eyes did not move from Mi3s Miuchiu’s, and still Sara said nothing. ‘ What are you staring at!’ demanded Miss Minchin sharply. ‘ Are you so stupid, you don't uuderstand what I mean? I telL you that you are quite alone-in the world,, and have uo one to do anything for you,, unless I choose to keep yon here.’ The truth was, Miss Minchin was in her worst mood. To be suddenly deprived of a large sum of money yearly and a show pupil, and to find herself with a little beggar on. her hands, was more than she could bear With any degree of calmness. ‘ Now listen to me,’ she went on, * and remember what I say. If you work hard and prepare to make -■yourself useful in a few years, I shall let you stay here. You are only a child, bnt you are a sharp child, and you pick up things almost without being taught. You speak French very well/and in a year or so you can begin to help with the younger pupils. By the time you ara fifteen you ought to be able to do that much at least. ’

‘ I can speak French better than you, now/ said Sara ; ‘ I always spoke it with my papa in India. ’ Which was not at all polite, bnt was painfully true ; because Miss Minchin could not speak French at all, and, indeed, was not in the least a clever person. But she was a hard, grasping business woman, and, after the first shock of disappointment, had seen' that at very little expense to herself she mightprepsre this clever, determined child to be very useful to her and save her the necessity of paying large salaries to teachers of languages. (To be continued.)