hen talk and read; and then suppose there was a
soft, warm bed in the corner, and when we were tired we could go to
sleep, and sleep as long as we liked."

Sometimes, after she had supposed things like these for half an hour,
she would feel almost warm, and would creep into bed with Emily and fall
asleep with a smile on her face.

"What large, downy pillows!" she would whisper. "What white sheets and
fleecy blankets!" And she almost forgot that her real pillows had
scarcely any feathers in them at all, and smelled musty, and that her
blankets and coverlid were thin and full of holes.

At another time she would "suppose" she was a princess, and then she
would go about the house with an expression on her face which was a
source of great secret annoyance to Miss Minchin, because it seemed as
if the child scarcely heard the spiteful, insulting things said to her,
or, if she heard them, did not care for them at all. Sometimes, while
she was in the midst of some harsh and cruel speech, Miss Minchin would
find the odd, unchildish eyes fixed upon her with something like a proud
smile in them. At such times she did not know that Sara was saying to
herself:

"You don't know that you are saying these things to a princess, and that
if I chose I could wave my hand and order you to execution. I only spare
you because I _am_ a princess, and you are a poor, stupid, old, vulgar
thing, and don't know any better."

This used to please and amuse her more than anything else; and queer and
fanciful as it was, she found comfort in it, and it was not a bad thing
for her. It really kept her from being made rude and malicious by the
rudeness and malice of those about her.

"A princess must be polite," she said to herself. And so when the
servants, who took their tone from their mistress, were insolent and
ordered her about, she would hold her head erect, and reply to them
sometimes in a way which made them stare at her, it was so quaintly
civil.

"I am a princess in rags and tatters," she would think, "but I am a
princess, inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in
cloth-of-gold; it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the
time when no one knows it. There was Marie Antoinette: when she was in
prison, and her throne was gone, and she had only a black gown on, and
her hair was white, and they insulted her and called her the Widow
Capet,--she was a great deal more like a queen then than when she was so
gay an