4. Lottie
If Sara had been a different kind of child, the life she led at Miss Mins Select Seminary for the few years would not have been at all good for her. She was treated more as if she were a distinguished guest at the establishment than as if she were a mere little girl. If she had been a self-opinionated, domineering child, she might have bee disagreeable enough to be unbearable through being so mudulged and flattered. If she had been an i child, she would have learned nothing. Privately Miss Min disliked her, but she was far too worldly a woman to do or say anything which might make such a desirable pupil wish to leave her school. She knew quite well that if Sara wrote to her papa to tell him she was unfortable or unhappy, Captain Crewe would remove her at once. Miss Mins opinion was that if a child were tinually praised and never forbidden to do what she liked, she would be sure to be fond of the place where she was so treated. Accly, Sara raised for her quiess at her lessons, for her good manners, for her amiability to her fellow pupils, for her generosity if she gave sixpeo a beggar out of her full little purse; the simplest thing she did was treated as if it were a virtue, and if she had not had a disposition and a clever little brain, she might have been a very self-satisfied young person. But the clever little brain told her a great many sensible and true things about herself and her circumstances, and now and thealked these things over tarde as time went on.
"Things happen to people by act," she used to say. "A lot of nice acts have happeo me. It just happehat I always liked lessons and books, and could remember things when I learhem. It just happehat I was born with a father who was beautiful and nid clever, and could give me everything I liked. Perhaps I have not really a good temper at all, but if you have everything you want and everyone is kind to you, how you help but be good-tempered? I dont know"--looking quite serious--"how I shall ever find out whether I am really a nice child or a horrid one. Perhaps Im a hideous child, and no one will ever know, just because I never have any trials."
"Lavinia has no trials," said Ermengarde, stolidly, "and she is horrid enough."
Sara rubbed the end of her little nose reflectively, as she thought the matter over.
"Well," she said at last, "perhaps--perhaps that is because Lavinia is growing." This was the result of a charitable recolle of having heard Miss Amelia say that Lavinia was growing so fast that she believed it affected her health and temper.
Lavinia, in fact, iteful. She was inordinately jealous of Sara. Until the new pupils arrival, she had felt herself the leader in the school. She had led because she was capable of making herself extremely disagreeable if the others did not follow her. She domineered over the little children, and assumed grand airs with those big enough to be her panions. She was rather pretty, and had been the best-dressed pupil in the processiohe Select Seminary walked out two by two, until Saras velvet coats and sable muffs appeared, bined with drooping ostrich feathers, and were led by Miss Min at the head of the lihis, at the beginning, had been bitter enough; but as time went on it became apparent that Sara was a leader, too, and not because she could make herself disagreeable, but because she never did.
"Theres ohing about Sara Crewe," Jessie had enraged her "best friend" by saying holy, "shes