hing hot and
savory in it--something delicious. The tea-pot had tea in it, ready for
the boiling water from the little kettle; one plate had toast on it,
another, muffins.

"It is real," said Sara. "The fire is real enough to warm me; I can sit
in the chair; the things are real enough to eat."

It was like a fairy story come true--it was heavenly. She went to the
bed and touched the blankets and the wrap. They were real too. She
opened one book, and on the title-page was written in a strange hand,
"The little girl in the attic."

Suddenly--was it a strange thing for her to do?--Sara put her face down
on the queer, foreign-looking quilted robe and burst into tears.

"I don't know who it is," she said, "but somebody cares about me a
little--somebody is my friend."

Somehow that thought warmed her more than the fire. She had never had a
friend since those happy, luxurious days when she had had everything;
and those days had seemed such a long way off--so far away as to be only
like dreams--during these last years at Miss Minchin's.

She really cried more at this strange thought of having a friend--even
though an unknown one--than she had cried over many of her worst
troubles.

But these tears seemed different from the others, for when she had wiped
them away they did not seem to leave her eyes and her heart hot and
smarting.

And then imagine, if you can, what the rest of the evening was like. The
delicious comfort of taking off the damp clothes and putting on the
soft, warm, quilted robe before the glowing fire--of slipping her cold
feet into the luscious little wool-lined slippers she found near her
chair. And then the hot tea and savory dishes, the cushioned chair and
the books!

It was just like Sara, that, once having found the things real, she
should give herself up to the enjoyment of them to the very utmost. She
had lived such a life of imagining, and had found her pleasure so long
in improbabilities, that she was quite equal to accepting any wonderful
thing that happened. After she was quite warm and had eaten her supper
and enjoyed herself for an hour or so, it had almost ceased to be
surprising to her that such magical surroundings should be hers. As to
finding out who had done all this, she knew that it was out of the
question. She did not know a human soul by whom it could seem in the
least degree probable that it could have been done.

"There is nobody," she said to herself, "nobody." She discuss