giving you a home."

Sara made two or three steps toward her. Her thin little chest heaved
up and down, and she spoke in a strange un-childishly fierce way.

"You are not kind," she said. "You are NOT kind, and it is NOT a
home." And she had turned and run out of the room before Miss Minchin
could stop her or do anything but stare after her with stony anger.

She went up the stairs slowly, but panting for breath and she held
Emily tightly against her side.

"I wish she could talk," she said to herself. "If she could speak--if
she could speak!"

She meant to go to her room and lie down on the tiger-skin, with her
cheek upon the great cat's head, and look into the fire and think and
think and think. But just before she reached the landing Miss Amelia
came out of the door and closed it behind her, and stood before it,
looking nervous and awkward. The truth was that she felt secretly
ashamed of the thing she had been ordered to do.

"You--you are not to go in there," she said.

"Not go in?" exclaimed Sara, and she fell back a pace.

"That is not your room now," Miss Amelia answered, reddening a little.

Somehow, all at once, Sara understood. She realized that this was the
beginning of the change Miss Minchin had spoken of.

"Where is my room?" she asked, hoping very much that her voice did not
shake.

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

Sara knew where it was. Becky had told her about it. She turned, and
mounted up two flights of stairs. The last one was narrow, and covered
with shabby strips of old carpet. She felt as if she were walking away
and leaving far behind her the world in which that other child, who no
longer seemed herself, had lived. This child, in her short, tight old
frock, climbing the stairs to the attic, was quite a different creature.

When she reached the attic door and opened it, her heart gave a dreary
little thump. Then she shut the door and stood against it and looked
about her.

Yes, this was another world. The room had a slanting roof and was
whitewashed. The whitewash was dingy and had fallen off in places.
There was a rusty grate, an old iron bedstead, and a hard bed covered
with a faded coverlet. Some pieces of furniture too much worn to be
used downstairs had been sent up. Under the skylight in the roof,
which showed nothing but an oblong piece of dull gray sky, there stood
an old battered red footstool. Sara went to it and sat down. She
seldom c