Page:A Little Princess.djvu/247

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THE MAGIC
211

She threw it over her shoulders, and put her feet into the slippers.

"They are real, too. It 's all real!" she cried. "I am not—I am not dreaming!"

She almost staggered to the books and opened the one which lay upon the top. Something was written on the fly-leaf—just a few words, and they were these:

"To the little girl in the attic. From a friend."

When she saw that—was n't it a strange thing for her to do?—she put her face down upon the page and burst into tears.

"I don't know who it is," she said; "but somebody cares for me a little. I have a friend."

She took her candle and stole out of her own room and into Becky's, and stood by her bedside.

"Becky, Becky!" she whispered as loudly as she dared. "Wake up!"

When Becky wakened, and she sat upright staring aghast, her face still smudged with traces of tears, beside her stood a little figure in a luxurious wadded robe of crimson silk. The face she saw was a shining, wonderful thing. The Princess Sara—as she remembered her—stood at her very bedside, holding a candle in her hand.

"Come," she said. "Oh, Becky, come!"

Becky was too frightened to speak. She simply got up and followed her, with her mouth and eyes open, and without a word.

And when they crossed the threshold, Sara shut the door