YOUNG READERS / FICTION AND LITERATURE / Children /
Summary: Sara Crewe, a pupil at Miss Minchin’s London school, is left in poverty when her father dies, but is later rescued by a mysterious benefactor.
Free English Story eBook: A Little Princess
Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
The novel tells of the troubles of a wealthy young girl, Sara Crewe, who is sent to an oppressive London boarding school during her father’s campaign in India. Thanks to Capt. Crewe’s money, Sara is treated as a little princess until, one day, word comes of her father’s tragic death. Miss Minchin, the school’s greedy headmistress, wastes no time in putting the now-penniless Sara to work for her room and board. It is only through the friendship of two other girls, her own resolute nature, and some astonishing luck that Sara eventually finds her way back to happiness. (Summary from wikipedia.org)
Book Excerpt / CHAPTER I
Sara
Once on a dark winter’s day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares.
She sat with her feet tucked under her, and leaned against her father, who held her in his arm, as she stared out of the window at the passing people with a queer old-fashioned thoughtfulness in her big eyes.
She was such a little girl that one did not expect to see such a look on her small face. It would have been an old look for a child of twelve, and Sara Crewe was only seven. The fact was, however, that she was always dreaming and
thinking odd things and could not herself remember any time when she had not been thinking things about grown-up people and the world they belonged to. She felt as if she had lived a long, long time.
PUBLISHED: 1903 / 194 Pages
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