Ram Dass slipped through his attic window and crossed to hers as steadily and lightly as if he had walked on roofs all his life.
He slipped through the skylight and dropped upon his feet without a sound.
Then he turned to Sara and salaamed (行额手礼) again. The monkey saw him and uttered a little scream.
Ram Dass hastily took the precaution (预防措施) of shutting the skylight, and then went in chase (追逐) of him. It was not a very long chase.
The monkey prolonged it a few minutes evidently for the mere fun of it, but presently he sprang chattering on to Ram Dass's shoulder and sat there chattering and clinging to his neck with a weird little skinny arm.
Ram Dass thanked Sara profoundly. She had seen that his quick native eyes had taken in at a glance all the bare shabbiness of the room, but he spoke to her as if he were speaking to the little daughter of a rajah (王侯) , and pretended that he observed nothing.
He did not presume (假定) to remain more than a few moments after he had caught the monkey, and those moments were given to further deep and grateful obeisance (敬礼) to her in return for her indulgence (纵容).
This little evil one, he said, stroking the monkey, was, in truth, not so evil as he seemed, and his master, who was ill, was sometimes amused by him.
He would have been made sad if his favorite had run away and been lost.
Then he salaamed once more and got through the skylight and across the slates again with as much agility (敏捷) as the monkey himself had displayed.
When he had gone Sara stood in the middle of her attic and thought of many things his face and his manner had brought back to her.
The sight of his native costume and the profound reverence (敬礼) of his manner stirred (引发) all her past memories.
It seemed a strange thing to remember that she-the drudge whom the cook had said insulting things to an hour ago-had only a few years ago been surrounded by people who all treated her as Ram Dass had treated her; who salaamed when she went by, whose foreheads almost touched the ground when she spoke to them, who were her servants and her slaves. {1}
It was like a sort of dream. It was all over, and it could never come back.
It certainly seemed that there was no way in which any change could take place.
She knew what Miss Minchin intended that her future should be.
So long as she was too young to be used as a regular teacher, she would be used as an errand girl and servant and yet expected to remember what she had learned and in some mysterious way to learn more.
The greater number of her evenings she was supposed to spend at study, and at various indefinite intervals (间隔) she was examined and knew she would have been severely admonished if she had not advanced as was expected of her.
The truth, indeed, was that Miss Minchin knew that she was too anxious to learn to require teachers.
Give her books, and she would devour them and end by knowing them by heart.
She might be trusted to be equal to teaching a good deal in the course of a few years.
This was what would happen: when she was older she would be expected to drudge in the schoolroom as she drudged now in various parts of the house; they would be obliged to give her more respectable clothes, but they would be sure to be plain and ugly and to make her look somehow like a servant.{2}
That was all there seemed to be to look forward to, and Sara stood quite still for several minutes and thought it over.
Then a thought came back to her which made the color rise in her cheek and a spark light itself in her eyes.
She straightened her thin little body and lifted her head.
"Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside.
It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph (胜利) to be one all the time when no one knows it.
There was Marie Antoinette when she was in prison and her throne (王权) was gone and she had only a black gown on, and her hair was white, and they insulted her and called her Widow Capet. {3}
She was a great deal more like a queen then than when she was so gay (快乐的) and everything was so grand.
I like her best then. Those howling mobs of people did not frighten her. She was stronger than they were, even when they cut her head off."
This was not a new thought, but quite an old one, by this time.
It had consoled her through many a bitter day, and she had gone about the house with an expression in her face which Miss Minchin could not understand and which was a source of great annoyance to her, as it seemed as if the child were mentally living a life which held her above the rest of the world. {4}
It was as if she scarcely heard the rude and acid things said to her; or, if she heard them, did not care for them at all.
Sometimes, when she was in the midst of some harsh, domineering speech, Miss Minchin would find the still, unchildish eyes fixed upon her with something like a proud smile in them.
At such times she did not know that Sara was saying to herself:
"You don't know that you are saying these things to a princess, and that if I chose I could wave my hand and order you to execution (死刑). I only spare (饶恕) you because I am a princess, and you are a poor, stupid, unkind, vulgar old thing, and don't know any better."
This used to interest and amuse her more than anything else; and queer and fanciful as it was, she found comfort in it and it was a good thing for her.{5}
While the thought held possession of her, she could not be made rude and malicious (怀恨的) by the rudeness and malice of those about her.
"A princess must be polite," she said to herself.
And so when the servants, taking their tone from their mistress, were insolent and ordered her about, she would hold her head erect and reply to them with a quaint civility (端庄) which often made them stare at her.
"She's got more airs and graces than if she come from Buckingham Palace (白金汉宫) , that young one," said the cook, chuckling a little sometimes.
"I lose my temper with her often enough, but I will say she never forgets her manners. 'If you please, cook'; 'Will you be so kind, cook?' 'I beg your pardon, cook'; 'May I trouble you, cook?' She drops 'em about the kitchen as if they was nothing."
