The Diamond Mines Again

Sara's eleventh birthday. Miss Minchin leads her into the schoolroom in procession — housemaids carrying boxes, Becky carrying a third — and sets out the most elaborate party the seminary has seen. The Last Doll arrives: a large, dark-haired doll commissioned by Captain Crewe from a Paris shop, dressed in travelling clothes, with its own trunks and accessories. Sara sits at the head of the table. The younger children are delighted. Lavinia's envy has never been fiercer.

A letter arrives. Miss Minchin leaves the party to read it in private. She comes back white-faced and takes Sara out of the room. Captain Crewe is dead. Brain fever, contracted in India, coming on the back of the news — which turns out to be false, though neither Miss Minchin nor Sara knows this yet — that the diamond-mine speculation has failed catastrophically, taking his fortune with it. The investment was pressed on him by his old school friend. The school is owed money it will never receive.

Miss Minchin's calculation takes approximately the length of the walk back upstairs. Sara is not a charity case and not Miss Minchin's responsibility. But she is here, in the house, and she is capable of work. The cost of keeping her could be recouped in labor. Sara is moved to the attic. Her sitting room is cleared. Her ornaments and clothes are disposed of. By the time the chapter ends, Sara is standing in a bare room with a hard bed and a cracked basin, in the outgrown black frock she will wear for the next year.