nd in her pocket a bonbon or some other
article of a soothing nature. She never pushed them out of her way or
alluded to their years as a humiliation and a blot upon their small
characters.

"If you are four you are four," she said severely to Lavinia on an
occasion of her having--it must be confessed--slapped Lottie and called
her "a brat;" "but you will be five next year, and six the year after
that. And," opening large, convicting eyes, "it takes sixteen years to
make you twenty."

"Dear me," said Lavinia, "how we can calculate!" In fact, it was not
to be denied that sixteen and four made twenty--and twenty was an age
the most daring were scarcely bold enough to dream of.

So the younger children adored Sara. More than once she had been known
to have a tea party, made up of these despised ones, in her own room.
And Emily had been played with, and Emily's own tea service used--the
one with cups which held quite a lot of much-sweetened weak tea and had
blue flowers on them. No one had seen such a very real doll's tea set
before. From that afternoon Sara was regarded as a goddess and a queen
by the entire alphabet class.

Lottie Legh worshipped her to such an extent that if Sara had not been
a motherly person, she would have found her tiresome. Lottie had been
sent to school by a rather flighty young papa who could not imagine
what else to do with her. Her young mother had died, and as the child
had been treated like a favorite doll or a very spoiled pet monkey or
lap dog ever since the first hour of her life, she was a very appalling
little creature. When she wanted anything or did not want anything she
wept and howled; and, as she always wanted the things she could not
have, and did not want the things that were best for her, her shrill
little voice was usually to be heard uplifted in wails in one part of
the house or another.

Her strongest weapon was that in some mysterious way she had found out
that a very small girl who had lost her mother was a person who ought
to be pitied and made much of. She had probably heard some grown-up
people talking her over in the early days, after her mother's death. So
it became her habit to make great use of this knowledge.

The first time Sara took her in charge was one morning when, on passing
a sitting room, she heard both Miss Minchin and Miss Amelia trying to
suppress the angry wails of some child who, evidently, refused to be
silenced. She refused so strenuous