5. Becky
Of course the greatest power Sara possessed and the one which gained her even more followers than her luxuries and the fact that she was "the show pupil," the power that Lavinia aain irls were most envious of, and at the same time most fasated by in spite of themselves, was her power of telling stories and of making everything she talked about seem like a story, whether it was one or not.
Anyone who has been at school with a teller of stories knows what the wonder means--how he or she is followed about and besought in a whisper to relate romances; how groups gather round and hang oskirts of the favored party in the hope of being allowed to join in and listen. Sara not only could tell stories, but she adored telling them. Whe or stood in the midst of a circle and began to i wonderful things, her green eyes grew big and shining, her cheeks flushed, and, without knowing that she was doing it, she began to ad made what she told lovely or alarming by the raising or dropping of her voice, the bend and sway of her slim body, and the dramatient of her hands. She fot that she was talking to listening children; she saw and lived with the fairy folk, or the kings and queens aiful ladies, whose adventures she was narrating. Sometimes when she had finished her story, she was quite out of breath with excitement, and would lay her hand ohin, little, quick-rising chest, and half laugh as if at herself.
"When I am telling it," she would say, "it doesnt seem as if it was only made up. It seems more real than you are--more real than the schoolroom. I feel as if I were all the people iory--oer the other. It is queer."
She had been at Miss Mins school about two years when, one foggy winters afternoon, as she was getting out of her carriage, fortably ed up in her warmest velvets and furs and looking very much grahan she knew, she caught sight, as she crossed the pavement, of a dingy little figure standing on the area steps, and stretg its neck so that its wide-open eyes might peer at her through the railings. Something in the eagerness and timidity of the smudgy face made her look at it, and when she looked she smiled because it was her way to smile at people.
But the owner of the smudgy fad the wide-open eyes evidently was afraid that she ought not to have been caught looking at pupils of importance. She dodged out of sight like a ja-the-box and scurried bato the kit, disappearing so suddenly that if she had not been such a poor little forlorn thing, Sara would have laughed in spite of herself. That very evening, as Sara was sitting in the midst of a group of listeners in a er of the schoolroom telling one of her stories, the very same figure timidly ehe room, carrying a coal box much too heavy for her, and k down upon the hearth rug to replenish the fire and sweep up the ashes.
She was er than she had been when she peeped through the area railings, but she looked just as frightened. She was evidently afraid to look at the children or seem to be listening. She put on pieces of coal cautiously with her fingers so that she might make no disturbing noise, and she swept about the fire irons very softly. But Sara saw in two mihat she was deeply ied in what was going on, and that she was doing her work slowly in the hope of catg a word here and there. And realizing this, she raised her void spoke more clearly.
"The Mermaids swam softly about in the crystal-green water, and dragged after them a fishi woven of