s we could coax the
sparrows until we made such friends with them that they would come and
peck at the window and ask to be let in."

"Oh, Sara!" cried Lottie. "I should like to live here!"

When Sara had persuaded her to go downstairs again, and, after setting
her on her way, had come back to her attic, she stood in the middle of
it and looked about her. The enchantment of her imaginings for Lottie
had died away. The bed was hard and covered with its dingy quilt. The
whitewashed wall showed its broken patches, the floor was cold and
bare, the grate was broken and rusty, and the battered footstool,
tilted sideways on its injured leg, the only seat in the room. She sat
down on it for a few minutes and let her head drop in her hands. The
mere fact that Lottie had come and gone away again made things seem a
little worse--just as perhaps prisoners feel a little more desolate
after visitors come and go, leaving them behind.

"It's a lonely place," she said. "Sometimes it's the loneliest place
in the world."

She was sitting in this way when her attention was attracted by a
slight sound near her. She lifted her head to see where it came from,
and if she had been a nervous child she would have left her seat on the
battered footstool in a great hurry. A large rat was sitting up on his
hind quarters and sniffing the air in an interested manner. Some of
Lottie's crumbs had dropped upon the floor and their scent had drawn
him out of his hole.

He looked so queer and so like a gray-whiskered dwarf or gnome that
Sara was rather fascinated. He looked at her with his bright eyes, as
if he were asking a question. He was evidently so doubtful that one of
the child's queer thoughts came into her mind.

"I dare say it is rather hard to be a rat," she mused. "Nobody likes
you. People jump and run away and scream out, 'Oh, a horrid rat!' I
shouldn't like people to scream and jump and say, 'Oh, a horrid Sara!'
the moment they saw me. And set traps for me, and pretend they were
dinner. It's so different to be a sparrow. But nobody asked this rat
if he wanted to be a rat when he was made. Nobody said, 'Wouldn't you
rather be a sparrow?'"

She had sat so quietly that the rat had begun to take courage. He was
very much afraid of her, but perhaps he had a heart like the sparrow
and it told him that she was not a thing which pounced. He was very
hungry. He had a wife and a large family in the wall, and they had had
fright