not stay with her.

"Couldn't you go to that place with me, papa?" she had asked when she
was five years old. "Couldn't you go to school, too? I would help you
with your lessons."

"But you will not have to stay for a very long time, little Sara," he
had always said. "You will go to a nice house where there will be a
lot of little girls, and you will play together, and I will send you
plenty of books, and you will grow so fast that it will seem scarcely a
year before you are big enough and clever enough to come back and take
care of papa."

She had liked to think of that. To keep the house for her father; to
ride with him, and sit at the head of his table when he had dinner
parties; to talk to him and read his books--that would be what she
would like most in the world, and if one must go away to "the place" in
England to attain it, she must make up her mind to go. She did not care
very much for other little girls, but if she had plenty of books she
could console herself. She liked books more than anything else, and
was, in fact, always inventing stories of beautiful things and telling
them to herself. Sometimes she had told them to her father, and he had
liked them as much as she did.

"Well, papa," she said softly, "if we are here I suppose we must be
resigned."

He laughed at her old-fashioned speech and kissed her. He was really
not at all resigned himself, though he knew he must keep that a secret.
His quaint little Sara had been a great companion to him, and he felt
he should be a lonely fellow when, on his return to India, he went into
his bungalow knowing he need not expect to see the small figure in its
white frock come forward to meet him. So he held her very closely in
his arms as the cab rolled into the big, dull square in which stood the
house which was their destination.

It was a big, dull, brick house, exactly like all the others in its
row, but that on the front door there shone a brass plate on which was
engraved in black letters:

MISS MINCHIN,

Select Seminary for Young Ladies.

"Here we are, Sara," said Captain Crewe, making his voice sound as
cheerful as possible. Then he lifted her out of the cab and they
mounted the steps and rang the bell. Sara often thought afterward that
the house was somehow exactly like Miss Minchin. It was respectable
and well furnished, but everything in it was ugly; and the very
armchairs seemed to have hard bones in them. In the hall everything