A Little Princess

Sara enjoys viewing sunsets from her attic window, as their splendor makes her feel as if something strange is going to happen. She hears a chattering monkey and sees an Indian servant holding the animal at the attic window next door. Sara smiles at the man. Suddenly, the monkey escapes his arms and runs into Sara’s room. Recalling the language she learned in India, Sara asks the man in his own language if the monkey will let her catch him. The man, Ram Dass, is astonished by her communication and profoundly thanks her, requesting permission to cross the roof and retrieve the monkey. When Ram Dass captures his ill master’s pet, he notices the shabbiness of Sara’s room, but he still speaks as respectfully to her as if she were a rajah’s daughter. Ram Dass’s polite manner and his way of dressing stir Sara’s memories of her previous life with her father. She knows that Miss Minchin plans to exploit her as a teaching “drudge” in the future after Sara studies enough on her own.

Sara consoles herself by thinking: “Whatever comes […] cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside” (146). Miss Minchin is often annoyed by the sense that Sara is “mentally living a life which held her above the rest of the world” (146). No matter how Sara is insulted and ordered about by the school staff, she maintains her courteous manners.

The next morning, while Sara is working on French exercise books in the schoolroom, she remembers stories about things royalty in disguise had to do, such as Alfred the Great, who accidentally burned cakes and had his ears boxed. Miss Minchin does not like the look in Sara’s eyes and suddenly boxes her ears! Sara will not beg Miss Minchin’s pardon simply for thinking, although the schoolmistress demands it. Sara reveals she was thinking how surprised and frightened Miss Minchin would be if she found out that Sara really is a princess and can do anything she likes. Enraged, Miss Minchin tells Sara to leave the room. Jessie says she will not be surprised if the strange-looking Sara does “turn out to be something” (150).

Sara amuses herself by trying to imagine what is happening in the gentleman’s study on the other side of the wall from the schoolroom. Although she has never met him, Sara has adopted him as a friend and feels concerned about his illness. She is fond of the Large Family because they seem so happy, and she is fond of the gentleman because he seems so unhappy. The kitchen staff learn that the man is an Englishman who lived in India but nearly died from brain fever after the shock of believing he lost his fortune connected with diamond mines. Although he recovered the fortune, he did not recover his health. Sara feels even more sympathetic to him, imagining that he feels similar to the way her papa felt. When she passes his house, she tries to send kind thoughts to the troubled man, imagining that he can feel sympathy through the windows.

The gentleman’s name is Mr. Carrisford. When Ram Dass tells him about the desolate attic room of the-little-girl-who-was-not-a-beggar, the gentleman worries that the child he is looking for may be reduced to the condition of the poor girl next door. Mr. Carrisford was the beloved school friend of Ralph Crewe, and he knows only that Crewe had a child whose mother was French. Mr. Carmichael—the real name of the father of the Large Family—leads the search for the captain’s child. He is in pursuit of a child whom well-to-do Russians adopted from a school in Paris, as the men assume Crewe’s child was sent to a Parisian school. Mr. Carrisford agonizes that Captain Crewe died believing that his friend ruined him. However, Mr. Carrisford was ill in the hospital when his friend died, and the fortune from the diamond mines was restored. A dream in which Crewe asks him the location of “the Little Missus” haunts him, and he needs to find Crewe’s daughter so he can restore her fortune. Meanwhile, on the other side of the wall, Sara is having a harder time trying to maintain her manners as an imaginary princess while the weather is getting colder.

During this wretched winter, Sara sometimes has to tramp through snow or slush on her errands. On these days, the Large Family’s home interior looks cozy to Sara, and the Indian gentleman’s study next door glows with warmth. The school staff is more ill-tempered than ever. Becky tells Sara that she would die without Sara’s Bastille prisoner stories. Sara invents a warmer story for Becky about the tropical forest where the Indian gentleman’s monkey used to live. When Sara’s body is miserable, she uses her mind to think of something else, such as being a fairy princess.

One day, Sara experiences the most difficult test. She is wet and muddy from the continuous rain. Miss Minchin also deprives her of dinner. It is harder than ever for Sara to “pretend” or “suppose” that she has on dry clothes or good shoes. She tries to imagine finding a sixpence in front of a bakery and buying six hot buns to eat. Sara suddenly sees a fourpence in the mud and finds herself in front of a bakery. She gasps, “It is true!” (166). Then, Sara sees a starving girl begging and discovers that the child has not eaten all day. Although Sara feels faint with hunger, she tells herself that a princess always shares with someone poorer and hungrier than herself. When Sara enters the shop, she first asks the bakery woman if she has lost a fourpence. The shopkeeper recognizes Sara’s desperate need and thinks that few people would ask before using the lost coin. Sara gives her the fourpence for four buns, but the baker adds two more buns out of sympathy.

After Sara exits the shop, she gives five buns to the crying girl, telling herself that the child is starving. The bakery woman sees Sara’s action, and the girl tells her that Sara gave her five buns. The woman is disturbed and wishes that Sara had not left so quickly, because she would have given her a dozen buns. The shopkeeper decides to invite the girl into the shop to get warm by the fire and offers to give her bread in the future for Sara’s sake.

Sara tries to eat her bun slowly, imagining that each bite equals an entire dinner. When she passes the Large Family’s home, she sees the father preparing for a journey and the children kissing him goodbye. She overhears that the father is traveling to Moscow to look for a little girl, and Sara wonders for whom he is searching. Sara does not know that he seeks Captain Crewe’s lost daughter.

While Sara is out of the attic, the rat Melchisedec hears and sees something unusual in her room. Ram Dass and a young man who is the Indian gentleman’s secretary enter the attic from the roof, through the skylight. When the young man is shocked by the sight of Melchisedec scurrying back to his hole in the wall, Ram Dass explains that Sara is not like other children: Sara “is the little friend of all things . . . The sparrows come at her call. The rat she has fed and tamed in her loneliness” (177). Ram Dass often watches Sara from a distance to make sure she is safe. He has seen how Becky, Lottie, and Ermengarde secretly come to visit her for comfort. He knows that Miss Minchin is evil and that she treats Sara “like a pariah; but she has the bearing of a child who is of the blood of kings!” (177).

The secretary writes notes on a tablet as he surveys the miserable room where the fire is never lit. Ram Dass reveals that he overheard Sara telling her vision to her friends about how the room could be made comfortable. When Ram Dass shared the child’s dream with his master, Mr. Carrisford, he thought of how to make Sara’s vision come true. Ram Dass plans to have items handed to him through the window while Sara is asleep, so when she awakens, she will imagine that a magician has been at work in her room. Ram Dass already placed some nails in the wall for hanging things. The men discuss how Mr. Carrisford’s strength would be restored if he could find the lost child for whom he searches. They leave the attic as silently as they arrived.