4

Lottie


If Sara had been a different kind of child, the life she led at
Miss Minchin's Select Seminary for the next 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 become disagreeable enough to
be unbearable through being so much indulged and flattered. If
she had been an indolent child, she would have learned nothing.
Privately Miss Minchin 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 uncomfortable or unhappy,
Captain Crewe would remove her at once. Miss Minchin's opinion
was that if a child were continually praised and never forbidden
to do what she liked, she would be sure to be fond of the place
where she was so treated. Accordingly, Sara was praised for her
quickness at her lessons, for her good manners, for her
amiability to her fellow pupils, for her generosity if she gave
sixpence to 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 then she talked these
things over to Ermengarde as time went on.