A Little Princess / Маленькая принцесса. Книга для чтения на английском языке

He killed the one in the skin Sara has in her room. That’s why she likes it so. She lies on it and strokes its head, and talks to it as if it was a cat.”

“She’s always doing something silly,” snapped Lavinia. “My mamma says that way of hers of pretending things is silly. She says she will grow up eccentric.”

It was quite true that Sara was never “grand.” She was a friendly little soul, and shared her privileges and belongings with a free hand. The little ones, who were accustomed to being disdained and ordered out of the way by mature ladies aged ten and twelve[73 - who were accustomed to being disdained and ordered out of the way by mature ladies aged ten and twelve – которые привыкли к тому, что старшие девочки 10–12 лет презирают их и велят не путаться под ногами], were never made to cry by this most envied of them all.

She was a motherly young person, and when people fell down and scraped their knees, she ran and helped them up and patted them, or found in her pocket a bonbon or some other article of a soothing nature. She never pushed them out of her way or alluded to their years as a humiliation and a blot upon their small characters.

“If you are four you are four,” she said severely to Lavinia on an occasion of her having – it must be confessed – slapped Lottie and called her “a brat;” “but you will be five next year, and six the year after that.

And,” opening large, convicting eyes, “it takes sixteen years to make you twenty.”

“Dear me,” said Lavinia, “how we can calculate!” In fact, it was not to be denied that sixteen and four made twenty – and twenty was an age the most daring were scarcely bold enough to dream of[74 - twenty was an age the most daring were scarcely bold enough to dream of – двадцать – это тот возраст, о котором даже самые отважные девочки едва осмеливались мечтать].

So the younger children adored Sara. More than once she had been known to have a tea party, made up of these despised ones, in her own room. And Emily had been played with, and Emily’s own tea service used – the one with cups which held quite a lot of much-sweetened weak tea and had blue flowers on them. No one had seen such a very real doll’s tea set before.