ect much, and was far too proud to try to continue to
be intimate with girls who evidently felt rather awkward and uncertain
about her. The fact was that Miss Minchin's pupils were a set of dull,
matter-of-fact young people. They were accustomed to being rich and
comfortable, and as Sara's frocks grew shorter and shabbier and
queerer-looking, and it became an established fact that she wore shoes
with holes in them and was sent out to buy groceries and carry them
through the streets in a basket on her arm when the cook wanted them in
a hurry, they felt rather as if, when they spoke to her, they were
addressing an under servant.

"To think that she was the girl with the diamond mines," Lavinia
commented. "She does look an object. And she's queerer than ever. I
never liked her much, but I can't bear that way she has now of looking
at people without speaking--just as if she was finding them out."

"I am," said Sara, promptly, when she heard of this. "That's what I
look at some people for. I like to know about them. I think them over
afterward."

The truth was that she had saved herself annoyance several times by
keeping her eye on Lavinia, who was quite ready to make mischief, and
would have been rather pleased to have made it for the ex-show pupil.

Sara never made any mischief herself, or interfered with anyone. She
worked like a drudge; she tramped through the wet streets, carrying
parcels and baskets; she labored with the childish inattention of the
little ones' French lessons; as she became shabbier and more
forlorn-looking, she was told that she had better take her meals
downstairs; she was treated as if she was nobody's concern, and her
heart grew proud and sore, but she never told anyone what she felt.

"Soldiers don't complain," she would say between her small, shut teeth,
"I am not going to do it; I will pretend this is part of a war."

But there were hours when her child heart might almost have broken with
loneliness but for three people.

The first, it must be owned, was Becky--just Becky. Throughout all
that first night spent in the garret, she had felt a vague comfort in
knowing that on the other side of the wall in which the rats scuffled
and squeaked there was another young human creature. And during the
nights that followed the sense of comfort grew. They had little chance
to speak to each other during the day. Each had her own tasks to
perform, and any attempt at conversation would have bee