Lottie

Three years into Sara's life at Miss Minchin's. She has been praised for everything from her quick lessons to her generosity with pennies to beggars. Miss Minchin requires a star pupil; Sara is the star. But Sara, with the analytical mind Burnett has been showing us, notices that this tells her almost nothing about herself. The easiest people to be good-tempered around are the ones who treat you well. She has not been tested.

She tells Ermengarde that Lavinia's unkindness might be explained by the fact that Lavinia is growing and it's affecting her temper — a charitable explanation Burnett allows Sara to hold without asking the reader to accept it. What the chapter shows us, alongside Sara's charity, is that Sara is also quite clear-eyed about what she does not yet know about herself. She wonders if she would be as generous with her kindness if she had less.

The princess idea emerges not as a fantasy but as a standard. A real princess, Sara decides, is not a princess because of what she has; she is a princess because of how she behaves when she has nothing. This is the test she begins, privately, to set herself — not against Lavinia's unkindness, which she can manage, but against the harder question of what she would be if the luxury were taken away.