3. Ermengarde

A Little Princess

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

On that first morning, when Sara sat at Miss Minchin's side, aware
that the whole schoolroom was devoting itself to observing her, she
had noticed very soon one little girl, about her own age, who looked
at her very hard with a pair of light, rather dull, blue eyes. She
was a fat child who did not look as if she were in the least clever,
but she had a good-naturedly pouting mouth. Her flaxen hair was
braided in a tight pigtail, tied with a ribbon, and she had pulled
this pigtail around her neck, and was biting the end of the ribbon,
resting her elbows on the desk, as she stared wonderingly at the new
pupil. When Monsieur Dufarge began to speak to Sara, she looked a
little frightened; and when Sara stepped forward and, looking at him
with the innocent, appealing eyes, answered him, without any warning,
in French, the fat little girl gave a startled jump, and grew quite
red in her awed amazement. Having wept hopeless tears for weeks in
her efforts to remember that "la mere" meant "the mother," and "le
pere," "the father,"-- when one spoke sensible English--it was almost
too much for her suddenly to find herself listening to a child her
own age who seemed not only quite familiar with these words, but
apparently knew any number of others, and could mix them up with
verbs as if they were mere trifles.

She stared so hard and bit the ribbon on her pigtail so fast
that she attracted the attention of Miss Minchin, who, feeling
extremely cross at the moment, immediately pounced upon her.

"Miss St. John!" she exclaimed severely. "What do you mean by
such conduct? Remove your elbows! Take your ribbon out of your
mouth! Sit up at once!"

Upon which Miss St. John gave another jump, and when Lavinia and
Jessie tittered she became redder than ever--so red, indeed, that she
almost looked as if tears were coming into her poor, dull, childish
eyes; and Sara saw her and was so sorry for her that she began rather
to like her and want to be her friend. It was a way of hers always
to want to spring into any fray in which someone was made
uncomfortable or unhappy.

"If Sara had been a boy and lived a few centuries ago," her
father used to say, "she would have gone about the country with her
sword drawn, rescuing and defending everyone in distress. She always
wants to fight when she sees people in trouble."

So she took rather a fancy to fat, slow, little Miss St. John,
and kept glancing toward her through the morning. She saw that
lessons were no easy matter to her, and that there was no danger of
her ever being spoiled by being treated as a show pupil. Her French
lesson was a pathetic thing. Her pronunciation made even Monsieur
Dufarge smile in spite of himself, and Lavinia and Jessie and the
more fortunate girls either giggled or looked at her in wondering
disdain. But Sara did not laugh. She tried to look as if she did
not hear when Miss St. John called "le bon pain," "lee bong pang."
She had a fine, hot little temper of her own, and it made her feel
rather savage when she heard the titters and saw the poor, stupid,
distressed child's face.

"It isn't funny, really," she said between her teeth, as she
bent over her book. "They ought not to laugh."

When lessons were over and the pupils gathered together in
groups to talk, Sara looked for Miss St. John, and finding her
bundled rather disconsolately in a window-seat, she walked over to
her and spoke. She only said the kind of thing little girls always
say to each other by way of beginning an acquaintance, but there was
something friendly about Sara, and people always felt it.

"What is your name?" she said.

To explain Miss St. John's amazement one must recall that a new
pupil is, for a short time, a somewhat uncertain thing; and of this
new pupil the entire school had talked the night before until it fell
asleep quite exhausted by excitement and contradictory stories. A new
pupil with a carriage and a pony and a maid, and a voyage from India
to discuss, was not an ordinary acquaintance.

"My name's Ermengarde St. John," she answered.

"Mine is Sara Crewe," said Sara. "Yours is very pretty. It
sounds like a story book."

"Do you like it?" fluttered Ermengarde. "I--I like yours."

Miss St. John's chief trouble in life was that she had a clever
father. Sometimes this seemed to her a dreadful calamity. If you
have a father who knows everything, who speaks seven or eight
languages, and has thousands of volumes which he has apparently
learned by heart, he frequently expects you to be familiar with the
contents of your lesson books at least; and it is not improbable that
he will feel you ought to be able to remember a few incidents of
history and to write a French exercise. Ermengarde was a severe trial
to Mr. St. John. He could not understand how a child of his could be
a notably and unmistakably dull creature who never shone in
anything.

"Good heavens!" he had said more than once, as he stared at her,
"there are times when I think she is as stupid as her Aunt Eliza!"

If her Aunt Eliza had been slow to learn and quick to forget a
thing entirely when she had learned it, Ermengarde was strikingly
like her. She was the monumental dunce of the school, and it could
not be denied.

"She must be made to learn," her father said to Miss Minchin.

Consequently Ermengarde spent the greater part of her life in
disgrace or in tears. She learned things and forgot them; or, if she
remembered them, she did not understand them. So it was natural
that, having made Sara's acquaintance, she should sit and stare at
her with profound admiration.

"You can speak French, can't you?" she said respectfully.

Sara got on to the window-seat, which was a big, deep one, and,
tucking up her feet, sat with her hands clasped round her knees.

"I can speak it because I have heard it all my life," she
answered. "You could speak it if you had always heard it."

"Oh, no, I couldn't," said Ermengarde. "I never could speak
it!"

"Why?" inquired Sara, curiously.

Ermengarde shook her head so that the pigtail wobbled.

"You heard me just now," she said. "I'm always like that. I
can't say the words. They're so queer."

She paused a moment, and then added with a touch of awe in her
voice, "You are clever, aren't you?"

Sara looked out of the window into the dingy square, where the
sparrows were hopping and twittering on the wet, iron railings and
the sooty branches of the trees. She reflected a few moments. She
had heard it said very often that she was "clever," and she wondered
if she was--and if she was, how it had happened.

"I don't know," she said. "I can't tell." Then, seeing a
mournful look on the round, chubby face, she gave a little laugh and
changed the subject.

"Would you like to see Emily?" she inquired.

"Who is Emily?" Ermengarde asked, just as Miss Minchin had
done.

"Come up to my room and see," said Sara, holding out her
hand.

They jumped down from the window-seat together, and went
upstairs.

"Is it true," Ermengarde whispered, as they went through the
hall- -"is it true that you have a playroom all to yourself?"

"Yes," Sara answered. "Papa asked Miss Minchin to let me have
one, because--well, it was because when I play I make up stories and
tell them to myself, and I don't like people to hear me. It spoils it
if I think people listen."

They had reached the passage leading to Sara's room by this
time, and Ermengarde stopped short, staring, and quite losing her
breath.

"You make up stories!" she gasped. "Can you do that--as well as
speak French? Can you?"

Sara looked at her in simple surprise.

"Why, anyone can make up things," she said. "Have you never
tried?"

She put her hand warningly on Ermengarde's.

"Let us go very quietly to the door," she whispered, "and then I
will open it quite suddenly; perhaps we may catch her."

She was half laughing, but there was a touch of mysterious hope
in her eyes which fascinated Ermengarde, though she had not the
remotest idea what it meant, or whom it was she wanted to "catch," or
why she wanted to catch her. Whatsoever she meant, Ermengarde was
sure it was something delightfully exciting. So, quite thrilled with
expectation, she followed her on tiptoe along the passage. They made
not the least noise until they reached the door. Then Sara suddenly
turned the handle, and threw it wide open. Its opening revealed the
room quite neat and quiet, a fire gently burning in the grate, and a
wonderful doll sitting in a chair by it, apparently reading a
book.

"Oh, she got back to her seat before we could see her!" Sara
explained. "Of course they always do. They are as quick as
lightning."

Ermengarde looked from her to the doll and back again.

"Can she--walk?" she asked breathlessly.

"Yes," answered Sara. "At least I believe she can. At least I
pretend I believe she can. And that makes it seem as if it were
true. Have you never pretended things?"

"No," said Ermengarde. "Never. I--tell me about it."

She was so bewitched by this odd, new companion that she
actually stared at Sara instead of at Emily--notwithstanding that
Emily was the most attractive doll person she had ever seen.

"Let us sit down," said Sara, "and I will tell you. It's so
easy that when you begin you can't stop. You just go on and on doing
it always. And it's beautiful. Emily, you must listen. This is
Ermengarde St. John, Emily. Ermengarde, this is Emily. Would you
like to hold her?"

"Oh, may I?" said Ermengarde. "May I, really? She is
beautiful!" And Emily was put into her arms.

Never in her dull, short life had Miss St. John dreamed of such
an hour as the one she spent with the queer new pupil before they
heard the lunch-bell ring and were obliged to go downstairs.

Sara sat upon the hearth-rug and told her strange things. She
sat rather huddled up, and her green eyes shone and her cheeks
flushed. She told stories of the voyage, and stories of India; but
what fascinated Ermengarde the most was her fancy about the dolls who
walked and talked, and who could do anything they chose when the
human beings were out of the room, but who must keep their powers a
secret and so flew back to their places "like lightning" when people
returned to the room.

"We couldn't do it," said Sara, seriously. "You see, it's a
kind of magic."

Once, when she was relating the story of the search for Emily,
Ermengarde saw her face suddenly change. A cloud seemed to pass over
it and put out the light in her shining eyes. She drew her breath in
so sharply that it made a funny, sad little sound, and then she shut
her lips and held them tightly closed, as if she was determined
either to do or not to do something. Ermengarde had an idea that if
she had been like any other little girl, she might have suddenly
burst out sobbing and crying. But she did not.

"Have you a--a pain?" Ermengarde ventured.

"Yes," Sara answered, after a moment's silence. "But it is not
in my body." Then she added something in a low voice which she tried
to keep quite steady, and it was this: "Do you love your father more
than anything else in all the whole world?"

Ermengarde's mouth fell open a little. She knew that it would
be far from behaving like a respectable child at a select seminary to
say that it had never occurred to you that you could love your
father, that you would do anything desperate to avoid being left
alone in his society for ten minutes. She was, indeed, greatly
embarrassed.

"I--I scarcely ever see him," she stammered. "He is always in
the library--reading things."

"I love mine more than all the world ten times over," Sara said.
"That is what my pain is. He has gone away."

She put her head quietly down on her little, huddled-up knees,
and sat very still for a few minutes.

"She's going to cry out loud," thought Ermengarde, fearfully.

But she did not. Her short, black locks tumbled about her ears,
and she sat still. Then she spoke without lifting her head.

"I promised him I would bear it," she said. "And I will. You
have to bear things. Think what soldiers bear! Papa is a soldier.
If there was a war he would have to bear marching and thirstiness
and, perhaps, deep wounds. And he would never say a word--not one
word."

Ermengarde could only gaze at her, but she felt that she was
beginning to adore her. She was so wonderful and different from
anyone else.

Presently, she lifted her face and shook back her black locks,
with a queer little smile.

"If I go on talking and talking," she said, "and telling you
things about pretending, I shall bear it better. You don't forget,
but you bear it better."

Ermengarde did not know why a lump came into her throat and her
eyes felt as if tears were in them.

"Lavinia and Jessie are `best friends,'" she said rather
huskily. "I wish we could be `best friends.' Would you have me for
yours? You're clever, and I'm the stupidest child in the school, but
I-- oh, I do so like you!"

"I'm glad of that," said Sara. "It makes you thankful when you
are liked. Yes. We will be friends. And I'll tell you what"-- a
sudden gleam lighting her face--"I can help you with your French
lessons."