Page:A Little Princess.djvu/138

108 up in her shawl. Ermengarde looked at the odd, big-eyed little face adoringly.

"I could n't bear it any more," she said. " I dare say you could live without me, Sara; but I could n't live without you. I was nearly dead. So to-night, when I was crying under the bedclothes, I thought all at once of creeping up here and just begging you to let us be friends again."

"You are nicer than I am," said Sara. "I was too proud to try and make friends. You see, now that trials have come, they have shown that I am not a nice child. I was afraid they would. Perhaps"—wrinkling her forehead wisely—"that is what they were sent for."

"I don't see any good in them," said Ermengarde, stoutly.

"Neither do I—to speak the truth," admitted Sara, frankly. "But I suppose there might be good in things, even if we don't see it. There might—doubtfully—"be good in Miss Minchin."

Ermengarde looked round the attic with a rather fearsome curiosity.

"Sara," she said, "do you think you can bear living here?"

Sara looked round also.

"If I pretend it 's quite different, I can," she answered; "or if I pretend it is a place in a story."

She spoke slowly. Her imagination was beginning to work for her. It had not worked for her at all since her troubles had come upon her. She had felt as if it had been stunned.