Miss Minchin was out of breath between temper and mounting the stairs. The meat-pie had been intended for her special late supper. It became apparent that she boxed Becky’s ears.
“Don’t tell falsehoods,” she said. “Go to your room this instant.”
Both Sara and Ermengarde heard the slap, and then heard Becky run in her slipshod shoes up the stairs and into her attic. They heard her door shut, and knew that she threw herself upon her bed.
“I could ’ave e’t two of ’em,” they heard her cry into her pillow. “An’ I never took a bite. ’Twas cook give it to her policeman.”
Sara stood in the middle of the room in the darkness. She was clenching her little teeth and opening and shutting fiercely her outstretched hands. She could scarcely stand still, but she dared not move until Miss Minchin had gone down the stairs and all was still.
“The wicked, cruel thing!” she burst forth. “The cook takes things herself and then says Becky steals them. She doesn’t! She doesn’t! She’s so hungry sometimes that she eats crusts out of the ash barrel!” She pressed her hands hard against her face and burst into passionate little sobs, and Ermengarde, hearing this unusual thing, was overawed by it. Sara was crying! The unconquerable Sara! It seemed to denote something new—some mood she had never known. Suppose—! Suppose—! A new dread possibility presented itself to her kind, slow, little mind all at once. She crept off the bed in the dark and found her way to the table where the candle stood. She struck a match and lit the candle. When she had lighted it, she bent forward and looked at Sara, with her new thought growing to definite fear in her eyes.
“Sara,” she said in a timid, almost awestricken voice, “are—are—you never told me—I don’t want to be rude, but—are you ever hungry?”
It was too much just at that moment. The barrier broke down. Sara lifted her face from her hands.
“Yes,” she said in a new passionate way. “Yes, I am. I’m so hungry now that I could almost eat you. And it makes it worse to hear poor Becky. She’s hungrier than I am.”
Ermengarde gasped.
“Oh! Oh!” she cried woefully; “and I never knew!”
“I didn’t want you to know,” Sara said. “It would have made me feel like a street beggar. I know I look like a street beggar.”
“No, you don’t—you don’t!” Ermengarde broke in. “Your clothes are a little queer—but you couldn’t look like a street beggar. You haven’t a street-beggar face.”
“A little boy once gave me a sixpence for charity,” said Sara, with a short little laugh in spite of herself. “Here it is.” And she pulled out the thin ribbon from her neck. “He wouldn’t have given me his Christmas sixpence if I hadn’t looked as if I needed it.”
Somehow the sight of the dear little sixpence was good for both of them. It made them laugh a little, though they both had tears in their eyes.
“Who was he?” asked Ermengarde, looking at it quite as if it had not been a mere ordinary silver sixpence.
“He was a darling little thing going to a party,” said Sara. “He was one of the Large Family, the little one with the round legs—the one I call Guy Clarence. I suppose his nursery was crammed with Christmas presents and hampers full of cakes and things, and he could see I had had nothing.”
Ermengarde gave a little jump backward. The last sentences had recalled something to her troubled mind and given her a sudden inspiration.
“Oh, Sara!” she cried. “What a silly thing I am not to have thought of it!”
“Of what?”
“Something splendid!” said Ermengarde, in an excited hurry. “This very afternoon my nicest aunt sent me a box. It is full of good things. I never touched it, I had so much pudding at dinner, and I was so bothered about papa’s books.” Her words began to tumble over each other. “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.
“I know I could,” answered Ermengarde, and she ran to the door—opened it softly—put her head out into the darkness, and listened. Then she went back to Sara. “The lights are out. Everybody’s in bed. I can creep—and creep—and no one will hear.”
It was so delightful that they caught each other’s hands and a sudden light sprang into Sara’s eyes.
“Ermie!” she said. “Let us pretend! Let us pretend it’s a party! And oh, won’t you invite the prisoner in the next cell?”
“Yes! Yes! Let us knock on the wall now. The jailer won’t hear.”
Sara went to the wall. Through it she could hear poor Becky crying more softly. She knocked four times.
“That means, ‘Come to me through the secret passage under the wall,’ ” she explained. “ ‘I have something to communicate.’ ”
Five quick knocks answered her.
“She is coming,” she said.
Almost immediately the door of the attic opened and Becky appeared. Her eyes were red and her cap was sliding off, and when she caught sight of Ermengarde she began to rub her face nervously with her apron.
“Don’t mind me a bit, Becky!” cried Ermengarde.
“Miss Ermengarde has asked you to come in,” said Sara, “because she is going to bring a box of good things up here to us.”
Becky’s cap almost fell off entirely, she broke in with such excitement.
“To eat, miss?” she said. “Things that’s good to eat?”
“Yes,” answered Sara, “and we are going to pretend a party.”
“And you shall have as much as you want to eat,” put in Ermengarde. “I’ll go this minute!”
She was in such haste that as she tiptoed out of the attic she dropped
