Miss
Minchin knew everything on earth, which she doesn't, and if she was like
what she is now, she'd still be a detestable thing, and everybody would
hate her. Lots of clever people have done harm and been wicked. Look at
Robespierre----"

She stopped again and examined her companion's countenance.

"Do you remember about him?" she demanded. "I believe you've forgotten."

"Well, I don't remember _all_ of it," admitted Ermengarde.

"Well," said Sara, with courage and determination, "I'll tell it to you
over again."

And she plunged once more into the gory records of the French
Revolution, and told such stories of it, and made such vivid pictures of
its horrors, that Miss St. John was afraid to go to bed afterward, and
hid her head under the blankets when she did go, and shivered until she
fell asleep. But afterward she preserved lively recollections of the
character of Robespierre, and did not even forget Marie Antoinette and
the Princess de Lamballe.

"You know they put her head on a pike and danced around it," Sara had
said; "and she had beautiful blonde hair; and when I think of her, I
never see her head on her body, but always on a pike, with those furious
people dancing and howling."

Yes, it was true; to this imaginative child everything was a story; and
the more books she read, the more imaginative she became. One of her
chief entertainments was to sit in her garret, or walk about it, and
"suppose" things. On a cold night, when she had not had enough to eat,
she would draw the red footstool up before the empty grate, and say in
the most intense voice:

"Suppose there was a great, wide steel grate here, and a great glowing
fire--a _glowing_ fire--with beds of red-hot coal and lots of little
dancing, flickering flames. Suppose there was a soft, deep rug, and this
was a comfortable chair, all cushions and crimson velvet; and suppose I
had a crimson velvet frock on, and a deep lace collar, like a child in a
picture; and suppose all the rest of the room was furnished in lovely
colors, and there were book-shelves full of books, which changed by
magic as soon as you had read them; and suppose there was a little table
here, with a snow-white cover on it, and little silver dishes, and in
one there was hot, hot soup, and in another a roast chicken, and in
another some raspberry-jam tarts with criss-cross on them, and in
another some grapes; and suppose Emily could speak, and we could sit and
eat our supper, and t