ried. She did not cry now. She laid Emily across her knees
and put her face down upon her and her arms around her, and sat there,
her little black head resting on the black draperies, not saying one
word, not making one sound.

And as she sat in this silence there came a low tap at the door--such a
low, humble one that she did not at first hear it, and, indeed, was not
roused until the door was timidly pushed open and a poor tear-smeared
face appeared peeping round it. It was Becky's face, and Becky had
been crying furtively for hours and rubbing her eyes with her kitchen
apron until she looked strange indeed.

"Oh, miss," she said under her breath. "Might I--would you allow
me--jest to come in?"

Sara lifted her head and looked at her. She tried to begin a smile,
and somehow she could not. Suddenly--and it was all through the loving
mournfulness of Becky's streaming eyes--her face looked more like a
child's not so much too old for her years. She held out her hand and
gave a little sob.

"Oh, Becky," she said. "I told you we were just the same--only two
little girls--just two little girls. You see how true it is. There's
no difference now. I'm not a princess anymore."

Becky ran to her and caught her hand, and hugged it to her breast,
kneeling beside her and sobbing with love and pain.

"Yes, miss, you are," she cried, and her words were all broken.
"Whats'ever 'appens to you--whats'ever--you'd be a princess all the
same--an' nothin' couldn't make you nothin' different."

8

In the Attic

The first night she spent in her attic was a thing Sara never forgot.
During its passing she lived through a wild, unchildlike woe of which
she never spoke to anyone about her. There was no one who would have
understood. It was, indeed, well for her that as she lay awake in the
darkness her mind was forcibly distracted, now and then, by the
strangeness of her surroundings. It was, perhaps, well for her that
she was reminded by her small body of material things. If this had not
been so, the anguish of her young mind might have been too great for a
child to bear. But, really, while the night was passing she scarcely
knew that she had a body at all or remembered any other thing than one.

"My papa is dead!" she kept whispering to herself. "My papa is dead!"

It was not until long afterward that she realized that her bed had been
so hard that she turned over and over in it to find a place to rest,
that th