Sara

A dark winter's day. Yellow fog so thick the lamps are lit at midday. Sara Crewe, seven years old, sits in a cab with Captain Crewe, pressed against his arm, looking out at London with old-fashioned thoughtfulness. She has come from Bombay, where she was born, and the strangeness of the crossing — India to ocean to this — is still with her. She asks her father if this is the place. He says yes. She is quiet.

Miss Minchin's Select Seminary for Young Ladies on Great Russell Street. Miss Minchin herself receives them: a tall woman, dour, thin-lipped, with a smile Sara notices is not reflected in her eyes. Sara makes this observation to herself without saying it aloud — she is already, at seven, a careful reader of people. Captain Crewe pays for everything money can buy: Sara's own room, her own French maid Mariette, her own carriage, French and German lessons beyond the standard curriculum. Miss Minchin's smile grows warmer with each item on the invoice.

Before he goes, Captain Crewe takes Sara to a doll shop and lets her choose. The one she chooses is large, expensive, and dark-haired. She names her Emily. On the ship she had planned what she would say to Emily; now, in her new room at the seminary, she sits Emily in a chair, looks at her seriously, and tells her that her job is to be a companion and listener, and that the test of a good companion is whether she can be imagined as alive. Captain Crewe leaves the next morning. Sara talks to Emily about missing him.