s you say she carries.
The cook she's like one of the under-jailers. Tell me some more,
please, miss--tell me about the subt'ranean passage we've dug under the
walls."

"I'll tell you something warmer," shivered Sara. "Get your coverlet
and wrap it round you, and I'll get mine, and we will huddle close
together on the bed, and I'll tell you about the tropical forest where
the Indian gentleman's monkey used to live. When I see him sitting on
the table near the window and looking out into the street with that
mournful expression, I always feel sure he is thinking about the
tropical forest where he used to swing by his tail from coconut trees.
I wonder who caught him, and if he left a family behind who had
depended on him for coconuts."

"That is warmer, miss," said Becky, gratefully; "but, someways, even
the Bastille is sort of heatin' when you gets to tellin' about it."

"That is because it makes you think of something else," said Sara,
wrapping the coverlet round her until only her small dark face was to
be seen looking out of it. "I've noticed this. What you have to do
with your mind, when your body is miserable, is to make it think of
something else."

"Can you do it, miss?" faltered Becky, regarding her with admiring eyes.

Sara knitted her brows a moment.

"Sometimes I can and sometimes I can't," she said stoutly. "But when I
CAN I'm all right. And what I believe is that we always could--if we
practiced enough. I've been practicing a good deal lately, and it's
beginning to be easier than it used to be. When things are
horrible--just horrible--I think as hard as ever I can of being a
princess. I say to myself, 'I am a princess, and I am a fairy one, and
because I am a fairy nothing can hurt me or make me uncomfortable.'
You don't know how it makes you forget"--with a laugh.

She had many opportunities of making her mind think of something else,
and many opportunities of proving to herself whether or not she was a
princess. But one of the strongest tests she was ever put to came on a
certain dreadful day which, she often thought afterward, would never
quite fade out of her memory even in the years to come.

For several days it had rained continuously; the streets were chilly
and sloppy and full of dreary, cold mist; there was mud
everywhere--sticky London mud--and over everything the pall of drizzle
and fog. Of course there were several long and tiresome errands to be
done--there always were on days