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To be kind is worth a great deal to other people. If Miss Minchin knew everything on earth and was like what she is now, she'd still be a detestable thing, and everybody would hate her. Lots of clever people have done harm and have been wicked. Look at Robespierre " She stopped and examined Ermengarde's countenance, which was beginning to look bewildered. "Don't you remember?" she demanded.
Yet he who had thus deemed of her would have done therein much injustice to a venerable Christian matron, who had given many a hide of land to holy church, in honour of God and Saint Dunstan. Ermengarde's reception of Eveline was of the same antiquated and formal cast with her mansion and her exterior.
You can dress people fastest." It seemed to Betty, as she hurried down-stairs and over to the Belden, that she had toiled along the same route, laden with screens, rugs and couch-covers, at least a hundred times that afternoon. She was tired and exasperated at this final hitch, and she burst into the room of the fat freshman who had Ermengarde's part with scant ceremony.
"Yes," Sara answered, after a moment's silence. "But it is not in my body." Then she added something in a low voice which she tried to keep quite steady, and it was this: "Do you love your father more than anything else in all the whole world?" Ermengarde's mouth fell open a little.
"It's got cake in it, and little meat pies, and jam tarts and buns, and oranges and red-currant wine, and figs and chocolate. I'll creep back to my room and get it this minute, and we'll eat it now." Sara almost reeled. When one is faint with hunger the mention of food has sometimes a curious effect. She clutched Ermengarde's arm. "Do you think you COULD?" she ejaculated.
"Miss Amelia has gone out to spend the night with her old aunt," she explained. "No one else ever comes and looks into the bedrooms after we are in bed. I could stay here until morning if I wanted to." She pointed toward the table under the skylight. Sara had not looked toward it as she came in. A number of books were piled upon it. Ermengarde's gesture was a dejected one.
That moment she saw something and pounced upon it. It was Ermengarde's red shawl which lay upon the floor. "Here's the shawl," she cried. "I know she won't mind it. It will make such a nice red tablecloth." They pulled the old table forward, and threw the shawl over it. Red is a wonderfully kind and comfortable color. It began to make the room look furnished directly.
Then she jumped on the bed, and drawing the coverlet about her shoulders, sat with her arms round her knees. "Now, listen," she said. She plunged into the gory records of the French Revolution, and told such stories of it that Ermengarde's eyes grew round with alarm and she held her breath.
Ermengarde's chance comes in the second act, where, half in pity and half in admiration for the queer little Sara Crewe, she comes up to make friends with her, and, finding to her horror that Sara is actually hungry, decides to bring her "spread" up to Sara's attic. There, later, the terrible Miss Minchen finds her select pupils gathered, and wrathfully puts an end to their merry-making.
She realized what she had done when a burst of applause greeted her exit, and actors and committee alike forgot the proprieties of a last rehearsal to make a united assault upon her. "Roberta Lewis," cried Betty accusingly, "why didn't you tell me that you knew Ermengarde's part?" "Oh, I don't know it," protested Roberta. "I only know snatches of it here and there. Polly can learn it in no time."
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