t
Emily was a kind of good witch and could protect her. Poor little Sara!
everything was "pretend" with her. She had a strong imagination; there
was almost more imagination than there was Sara, and her whole forlorn,
uncared-for child-life was made up of imaginings. She imagined and
pretended things until she almost believed them, and she would scarcely
have been surprised at any remarkable thing that could have happened. So
she insisted to herself that Emily understood all about her troubles and
was really her friend.

"As to answering," she used to say, "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, so do the girls. They 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, Sara 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; and, when she came in wet and hungry, had been sent out again
because nobody chose to remember that she was only a child, and that her
thin little legs might be tired, and her small body, clad in its
forlorn, too small finery, all too short and too tight, 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 moods, and when she had seen the girls
sneering at her among themselves and making fun of her poor, outgrown
clothes--then Sara did not find Emily quite all that her sore, proud,
desolate little heart needed as the doll sat in her little old chair and
stared.

One of these nights, when she came up to the garret cold, hungry, tired,
and with a tempest raging in her small breast, Emily's stare seemed so
vacant, her sawdust legs and arms so limp and inexpressive, that Sara
lost all control