verything was so still, when the only
sound in the attic was the occasional sudden scurry and squeak of
Melchisedec's family in the wall. One of her "pretends" was that Emily
was a kind of good witch who could protect her. Sometimes, after she
had stared at her until she was wrought up to the highest pitch of
fancifulness, she would ask her questions and find herself ALMOST
feeling as if she would presently answer. But she never did.

"As to answering, though," said Sara, trying to console herself, "I
don't answer very often. I never answer when I can help it. When
people are insulting you, there is nothing so good for them as not to
say a word--just to look at them and THINK. Miss Minchin turns pale
with rage when I do it, Miss Amelia looks frightened, and so do the
girls. When you will not fly into a passion people know you are
stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your
rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wish they
hadn't said afterward. There's nothing so strong as rage, except what
makes you hold it in--that's stronger. It's a good thing not to answer
your enemies. I scarcely ever do. Perhaps Emily is more like me than I
am like myself. Perhaps she would rather not answer her friends, even.
She keeps it all in her heart."

But though she tried to satisfy herself with these arguments, she did
not find it easy. When, after a long, hard day, in which she had been
sent here and there, sometimes on long errands through wind and cold
and rain, she came in wet and hungry, and was sent out again because
nobody chose to remember that she was only a child, and that her slim
legs might be tired and her small body might be chilled; when she had
been given only harsh words and cold, slighting looks for thanks; when
the cook had been vulgar and insolent; when Miss Minchin had been in
her worst mood, and when she had seen the girls sneering among
themselves at her shabbiness--then she was not always able to comfort
her sore, proud, desolate heart with fancies when Emily merely sat
upright in her old chair and stared.

One of these nights, when she came up to the attic cold and hungry,
with a tempest raging in her young breast, Emily's stare seemed so
vacant, her sawdust legs and arms so inexpressive, that Sara lost all
control over herself. There was nobody but Emily--no one in the world.
And there she sat.

"I shall die presently," she said at first.

Emily simply sta