cheek.

"Why," she said, "we are just the same--I am only a little girl like
you. It's just an accident that I am not you, and you are not me!"

Becky did not understand in the least. Her mind could not grasp such
amazing thoughts, and "an accident" meant to her a calamity in which
some one was run over or fell off a ladder and was carried to "the
'orspital."

"A' accident, miss," she fluttered respectfully. "Is it?"

"Yes," Sara answered, and she looked at her dreamily for a moment. But
the next she spoke in a different tone. She realized that Becky did
not know what she meant.

"Have you done your work?" she asked. "Dare you stay here a few
minutes?"

Becky lost her breath again.

"Here, miss? Me?"

Sara ran to the door, opened it, and looked out and listened.

"No one is anywhere about," she explained. "If your bedrooms are
finished, perhaps you might stay a tiny while. I thought--perhaps--you
might like a piece of cake."

The next ten minutes seemed to Becky like a sort of delirium. Sara
opened a cupboard, and gave her a thick slice of cake. She seemed to
rejoice when it was devoured in hungry bites. She talked and asked
questions, and laughed until Becky's fears actually began to calm
themselves, and she once or twice gathered boldness enough to ask a
question or so herself, daring as she felt it to be.

"Is that--" she ventured, looking longingly at the rose-colored frock.
And she asked it almost in a whisper. "Is that there your best?"

"It is one of my dancing-frocks," answered Sara. "I like it, don't
you?"

For a few seconds Becky was almost speechless with admiration. Then
she said in an awed voice, "Onct I see a princess. I was standin' in
the street with the crowd outside Covin' Garden, watchin' the swells go
inter the operer. An' there was one everyone stared at most. They ses
to each other, 'That's the princess.' She was a growed-up young lady,
but she was pink all over--gownd an' cloak, an' flowers an' all. I
called her to mind the minnit I see you, sittin' there on the table,
miss. You looked like her."

"I've often thought," said Sara, in her reflecting voice, "that I
should like to be a princess; I wonder what it feels like. I believe I
will begin pretending I am one."

Becky stared at her admiringly, and, as before, did not understand her
in the least. She watched her with a sort of adoration. Very soon Sara
left her reflections and turned to her with a new questio