as long as he could. And then, finding the hot climate was making her
very delicate, he had brought her to England and left her with Miss
Minchin, to be part of the Select Seminary for Young Ladies. Sara, who
had always been a sharp little child, who remembered things, recollected
hearing him say that he had not a relative in the world whom he knew
of, and so he was obliged to place her at a boarding-school, and he had
heard Miss Minchin's establishment spoken of very highly. The same day,
he took Sara out and bought her a great many beautiful clothes--clothes
so grand and rich that only a very young and inexperienced man would
have bought them for a mite of a child who was to be brought up in a
boarding-school. But the fact was that he was a rash, innocent young
man, and very sad at the thought of parting with his little girl, who
was all he had left to remind him of her beautiful mother, whom he had
dearly loved. And he wished her to have everything the most fortunate
little girl could have; and so, when the polite saleswomen in the shops
said, "Here is our very latest thing in hats, the plumes are exactly the
same as those we sold to Lady Diana Sinclair yesterday," he immediately
bought what was offered to him, and paid whatever was asked. The
consequence was that Sara had a most extraordinary wardrobe. Her dresses
were silk and velvet and India cashmere, her hats and bonnets were
covered with bows and plumes, her small undergarments were adorned with
real lace, and she returned in the cab to Miss Minchin's with a doll
almost as large as herself, dressed quite as grandly as herself, too.

Then her papa gave Miss Minchin some money and went away, and for
several days Sara would neither touch the doll, nor her breakfast, nor
her dinner, nor her tea, and would do nothing but crouch in a small
corner by the window and cry. She cried so much, indeed, that she made
herself ill. She was a queer little child, with old-fashioned ways and
strong feelings, and she had adored her papa, and could not be made to