Her mother had died when she was born, so she had never known or missed her. It seemed to her many years since he had begun to prepare her mind for “the place,” as she always called it. We have reached it at last.” And though she was only seven years old, she knew that he felt sad when he said it. “Is this the place?” Sara whispered, cuddling still closer to him.

“What is it, darling?” Captain Crewe answered, holding her closer and looking down into her face. “Papa,” she said in a low, mysterious little voice which was almost a whisper, “papa.” She found this so puzzling that she moved closer to her father. Principally, she was thinking of what an odd thing it was that at one time one was in India in the blazing sun, and then in the middle of the ocean, and then driving in a strange vehicle through strange streets where the day was as dark as the night. She was thinking of the big ship, of the sailors passing silently to and fro on it, of the children playing about on the hot deck, and of some young officers’ wives who used to try to make her talk to them and laugh at the things she said. She felt as if she had lived a long, long time.Īt this moment she was remembering the voyage she had just made from Bombay with her father, Captain Crewe. The fact was, however, that she was always dreaming and thinking odd things, and could not herself remember any time when she had not been thinking things about grown-up people and the world they belonged to. It would have been an old look for a child of twelve, and Sara Crewe was only seven.

She was such a little girl that one did not expect to see such a look on her small face. She sat with her feet tucked under her, and leaned against her father, who held her in his arm, as she stared out of the window at the passing people with a strange old-fashioned thoughtfulness in her big eyes. Once on a dark winter’s day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father, and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares.

A little princess frances burnett