"You don't know that you are saying these things to a princess, and that
if I chose I could wave my hand and order you to execution. I only spare
you because I am a princess, and you are a poor, stupid, old, vulgar
thing, and don't know any better."

This used to please and amuse her more than anything else; and queer and
fanciful as it was, she found comfort in it, and it was not a bad thing
for her. It really kept her from being made rude and malicious by the
rudeness and malice of those about her.

"A princess must be polite," she said to herself. And so when the
servants, who took their tone from their mistress, were insolent and
ordered her about, she would hold her head erect, and reply to them
sometimes in a way which made them stare at her, it was so quaintly
civil.

"I am a princess in rags and tatters," she would think, "but I am a
princess, inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed
in cloth-of-gold; it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the
time when no one knows it. There was Marie Antoinette; when she was in
prison, and her throne was gone, and she had only a black gown on,
and her hair was white, and they insulted her and called her the Widow
Capet,--she was a great deal more like a queen then than when she was so
gay and had everything grand. I like her best then. Those howling mobs
of people did not frighten her. She was stronger than they were even
when they cut her head off."

Once when such thoughts were passing through her mind the look in her
eyes so enraged Miss Minchin that she flew at Sara and boxed her ears.