e, and I send you
away, you have no home but the street. You can go now."

Sara turned away.

"Stay," commanded Miss Minchin, "don't you intend to thank me?"

Sara turned toward her. The nervous twitch was to be seen again in her
face, and she seemed to be trying to control it.

"What for?" she said.

"For my kindness to you," replied Miss Minchin. "For my kindness in
giving you a home."

Sara went two or three steps nearer to her. Her thin little chest was
heaving up and down, and she spoke in a strange, unchildish voice.

"You are not kind," she said. "You are not kind." And she turned again
and went out of the room, leaving Miss Minchin staring after her
strange, small figure in stony anger.

The child walked up the staircase, holding tightly to her doll; she
meant to go to her bedroom, but at the door she was met by Miss Amelia.

"You are not to go in there," she said. "That is not your room now."

"Where is my room?" asked Sara.

"You are to sleep in the attic next to the cook."

Sara walked on. She mounted two flights more, and reached the door of
the attic room, opened it and went in, shutting it behind her. She stood
against it and looked about her. The room was slanting-roofed and
whitewashed; there was a rusty grate, an iron bedstead, and some odd
articles of furniture, sent up from better rooms below, where they had
been used until they were considered to be worn out. Under the skylight
in the roof, which showed nothing but an oblong piece of dull gray sky,
there was a battered old red footstool.

Sara went to it and sat down. She was a queer child, as I have said
before, and quite unlike other children. She seldom cried. She did not
cry now. She laid her doll, 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 crape, not saying one word, not making one
sound.

* * * * *

From that day her life changed entirely. Sometimes she used to feel as
if it must be another life altogether, the life of some other child. She
was a little drudge and outcast; she was given her lessons at odd times
and expected to learn without being taught; she was sent on errands by
Miss Minchin, Miss Amelia and the cook. Nobody took any notice of her
except when they ordered her about. She was often kept busy all day and
then sent into the deserted school-room with a pile of books to learn