n.

"Becky," she said, "weren't you listening to that story?"

"Yes, miss," confessed Becky, a little alarmed again. "I knowed I
hadn't orter, but it was that beautiful I--I couldn't help it."

"I liked you to listen to it," said Sara. "If you tell stories, you
like nothing so much as to tell them to people who want to listen. I
don't know why it is. Would you like to hear the rest?"

Becky lost her breath again.

"Me hear it?" she cried. "Like as if I was a pupil, miss! All about
the Prince--and the little white Mer-babies swimming about
laughing--with stars in their hair?"

Sara nodded.

"You haven't time to hear it now, I'm afraid," she said; "but if you
will tell me just what time you come to do my rooms, I will try to be
here and tell you a bit of it every day until it is finished. It's a
lovely long one--and I'm always putting new bits to it."

"Then," breathed Becky, devoutly, "I wouldn't mind HOW heavy the coal
boxes was--or WHAT the cook done to me, if--if I might have that to
think of."

"You may," said Sara. "I'll tell it ALL to you."

When Becky went downstairs, she was not the same Becky who had
staggered up, loaded down by the weight of the coal scuttle. She had an
extra piece of cake in her pocket, and she had been fed and warmed, but
not only by cake and fire. Something else had warmed and fed her, and
the something else was Sara.

When she was gone Sara sat on her favorite perch on the end of her
table. Her feet were on a chair, her elbows on her knees, and her chin
in her hands.

"If I WAS a princess--a REAL princess," she murmured, "I could scatter
largess to the populace. But even if I am only a pretend princess, I
can invent little things to do for people. Things like this. She was
just as happy as if it was largess. I'll pretend that to do things
people like is scattering largess. I've scattered largess."

6

The Diamond Mines

Not very long after this a very exciting thing happened. Not only Sara,
but the entire school, found it exciting, and made it the chief subject
of conversation for weeks after it occurred. In one of his letters
Captain Crewe told a most interesting story. A friend who had been at
school with him when he was a boy had unexpectedly come to see him in
India. He was the owner of a large tract of land upon which diamonds
had been found, and he was engaged in developing the mines. If all
went as was confidently expected, he would become poss