SARA CREWE OR WHAT HAPPENED AT MISS MINCHIN'S BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
Published by Seltzer Books
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Children's Books by Frances Hodgson Burnett available from Seltzer Books:
The Secret Garden
A Little Princess
Little Lord Fauntleroy
Emily Fox-Seton
Robin
A Fair Barbarian
The Head of the House of Coombe
His Grace of Osmonde
In the Closed Room
A Lady of Quality
The Land of the Blue Flower
The Little Hunchback Zia
Little Saint Elizabeth
The Lost Prince
Racketty-Packetty House
Sarah Crewe
The Shuttle
T. Tembarom
The White People
In the first place, Miss Minchin lived in London. Her home was a large, dull, tall one, in a large, dull square, where all the houses were alike, and all the sparrows were alike, and where all the door-knockers made the same heavy sound, and on still days--and nearly all the days were still-- seemed to resound through the entire row in which the knock was knocked. On Miss Minchin's door there was a brass plate. On the brass plate there was inscribed in black letters,
MISS MINCHIN'S SELECT SEMINARY FOR YOUNG LADIES
Little Sara Crewe never went in or out of the house without reading that door-plate and reflecting upon it. By the time she was twelve, she had decided that all her trouble arose because, in the first place, she was not"Select," and in the second she was not a"Young Lady." When she was eight years old, she had been brought to Miss Minchin as a pupil, and left with her. Her papa had brought her all the way from India. Her mamma had died when she was a baby, and her papa had kept her with him as long as he could. And then, finding the hot climate was making her very delicate, he had brought her to England and left her with Miss Minchin, to be part of the Select Seminary for Young Ladies. Sara, who had always been a sharp little child, who remembered things, recollected hearing him say that he had not a relative in the world whom he knew of, and so he was obliged to place her at a boarding-school, and he had heard Miss Minchin's establishment spoken of very highly. The same day, he took Sara out and bought her a great many beautiful clothes-- clothes so grand and rich that only a very young and inexperienced man would have bought them for a mite of a child who was to be brought up in a boarding-school. But the fact was that he was a rash, innocent young man, and very sad at the thought of parting with his little girl, who was all he had left to remind him of her beautiful mother, who