Becky

Sara's most notable power, Burnett tells us, is not her French or her books but her stories. She can make anything sound like a story, and people follow her about begging to hear them. She tells them with her whole body — voice rising and falling, hands moving, cheeks flushed — so entirely inside the narrative that she forgets she is speaking to children in a schoolroom.

One foggy afternoon she catches a glimpse of a smudged little face peering through the basement railings, alive with curiosity and immediately frightened at being seen. That evening the same face appears in the schoolroom doorway: Becky, the scullery maid, carrying a coal box. She kneels at the fire and tries to listen to Sara's story without appearing to. Sara, noticing, raises her voice and addresses the whole room more clearly, including Becky in the audience without naming her.

Becky falls asleep by the fire, exhausted from the day's work. Sara covers her with a shawl and tells the other girls to be quiet. When Miss Minchin discovers her, she wakes Becky roughly and threatens punishment. Sara speaks up — quietly, carefully — in Becky's defense. After Becky has gone, Sara sits with Emily and thinks about the shape of the life below her own: the same house, but a different world, and Becky in it, tired every day.