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When Becky awoke in the left-hand attic the next morning, in the comfort of her two mattresses and layers of bedclothes, for a warm drowsy moment she thought to herself that she would go to see the princess in the other attic (for so she called Sara sometimes to herself). Then she recalled that Sara had left Miss Minchin's, and misery rushed over her. "She's gone!" she said to herself, half a sob, and then she remembered the rest. The note from Sara under her pillow—Ram Dass smiling kindly at her in the other attic, the attic where the Magic dwelt—and that she, poor humble Becky, was to be the Princess Sara's attendant, and live in the grand house next door, and never again work for Miss Minchin or her Cook. "Law!" she cried to the empty room; "Law! Me, to be her attendant!"
She pulled the note out, now rather crumpled, and read it again, to make certain she had not imagined this miracle. But there were the words in Sara's own hand, and when she pinched herself she was quite awake. This is what Becky read:
Dear Becky,
I scarcely know what to write, when my thoughts are all such a whirl! The Magic is so very, very wonderful and so very strong. It seems as if I am living in a fairy story more than ever. Becky, I have met the Magician, and he is the Indian Gentleman—he is our friend! His name is Mr. Tom Carrisford, and he is very ill but very good. It was he and Ram Dass who worked the Magic and brought us all of those beautiful things. And, Becky, he was my father's friend—he was my father's friend with the diamond mines—and he was not a liar or a coward or cruel, he was only mistaken and very sick and very sad, and all this time he has been searching for me for my poor papa's sake. And he was right next door.
I am to live with him. Becky, I want you to come live with us too. Uncle Tom (that is what dear, dear Mr. Carrisford wishes me to call him) says that you shall be my attendant, and if that is what you wish then certainly you shall, but what I want is that you be my friend always—always and always—and never be obliged to spend a single minute working for Miss Minchin and Cook, not ever again. You shall come live with me and have warm clothes and a lovely fire and good things to eat always. Come in the morning; I have asked Uncle Tom for a bedroom for you that is warm and full of friendly cheering things. Ram Dass says it will be ready in the morning, and then it shall be yours forever and ever.
Your loving friend,
The Prisoner Who Has Escaped the Other Attic
Becky read it over twice more. Everything was so wonderful and dreamlike that she felt she must be quite certain that none of the words had changed.
The sun had not yet risen. Although the sky through her high window was dark and leaden, already it was the hour at which Becky was accustomed to scurry downstairs to feed the kitchen fire and begin the thousand other backbreaking tasks expected of her. For some weeks now the poor child had enjoyed warmth and comfort beyond her wildest dreams, but neither her tasks nor the blows and scoldings she suffered had grown lighter. It was only that she had slept in comfort and eaten hot nourishing food before the day's work began—and that is a great deal.
With such a wonderful letter in hand, however, she could dare to imagine what she had never before been able to contemplate. "Never a minute more!" said Sara's pen. Poor Becky quaked at her own temerity, but the thought of Sara curled up, once again the Princess Sara in a rose-colored frock, writing her a note from a fairytale sitting room gave her strength.
With a sort of frenzied delight, she turned her back to the door and began to pack her things.
She did not have very many of them. All the marvelous comforts that the Magician had produced for Sara did not seem hers to bring like ordinary possessions. Either they would be brought to his house by the same mysterious means (Becky had hazy ideas of Ram Dass summoning chairs and rugs through the air like a flying carpet from one of Sara's stories) or they would simply melt away into thin air. Consequently, when she went down the attic stairs for the last time, she had only a very small bundle under her arm.
"Well!" said Cook. "Ain't you the lady of leisure! How kind of yer to stop in."
She was in a foul temper. When she had come down the fire had not been blazing as usual. On the contrary, the stove was quite cold; it would be a struggle to have breakfast ready on time, particularly as Miss Minchin liked to have her breakfast early in her rooms. Miss Minchin was sure to be in a foul temper herself, and whenever Cook suffered harsh words herself, she relieved her feelings by passing them on double to the unfortunate souls below her. On top of that, yesterday she had lost her errand-drudge, and she was not likely to get another so intelligent and quick for so little money.
All her life, Becky would have cringed and apologized and scurried miserably to her chores, meekly bearing whatever blows rained down on her. Even yesterday she would have.
Today, everything was different. She lifted her chin and met Cook's eyes, although a hectic flush rose to her cheeks. "I ain't stopping long," she said.
Cook actually fell back a step. She was amazed. "What!" was all she could say, and her voice had lost some of its usual thunder.
"I'm leaving," said Becky stoutly, though her hands trembled on her bundle. "Yer can find a new scullery maid, an'—an' I hope you treat her better. If you tell the missus she's been stealing food when it was you give it to your p'liceman I'll—I'll—well, you won't like it, that's all. I'm to be the attendant to the Princess Sara next door an' I start today. This instant. So there!"
She marched out, her chin high, leaving Cook gurgling incoherent protests behind her. Like many cruel people, Cook did not know what to do when her victim suddenly turned on her. She had never prepared for such a turn of events. And from timid, cowed, quiet little Becky!
Several of the Seminary's pupils watched through their windows as Becky marched boldly out the front door. Whispers flew, and that morning there was a great deal of clamor over the breakfast table despite Miss Minchin's calls for silence.
Becky intended to go round to the kitchen door of Mr. Carrisford's house, but she did not get the chance. A slim figure wrapped in a richly colored robe came flying out the front and down the stairs, and seized her hand.
Sara, too, had been watching through her bedroom window. "Becky!" she cried now. Her cheeks were pink and her large green eyes were positively sparkling.
"Oh, miss! Oh, miss!"
Sara drew her in the front door by the hand. Becky was too overwhelmed to protest.
She was brought into a perfectly normal parlor of a perfectly normal house, of rugs and draperies and bright new furniture. In some distant corner of her mind she was faintly disappointed by this. Becky had pictured to herself the Indian Gentleman's house as a colorful wonderland, a sort of mishmash of several of Sara's most exciting stories from her Indian childhood and The Arabian Nights, with any manner of hazily imagined foreign objects strewn about every surface. The astonishing revelation that he was the Magician behind all their happiness had only strengthened this idea. The warmth of the tropics and a whole troupe of elephants would not have surprised her as much as Mr. Carrisford's ordinary English sofa and armchair and tea set did.
Sara pulled her along toward the stairs. Becky, who had lived her young life trotting up and down servants' stairs, had never walked up the main stairway of a house except to clean it.
"Oh!" she whispered to herself, in ecstasy. "There is elephants!" For there on a little shelf sat four figurines of elephants, gaily painted and as unmistakably foreign as one might wish.
Becky did not have a very good idea of what a young lady's attendant really did. In the old days when Sara had been the show pupil with a French maid, Becky had been too lowly and too timid to dare speak to Mariette. She certainly had not known what Mariette's duties were in any detail. Besides, an attendant might be something quite different. Perhaps she was to walk behind Sara when she went out, like the slaves in ancient Egypt, and hold a parasol over her head.
Still, she thought an attendant was probably a sort of maid. Perhaps she was to learn to dress hair, and select becoming frocks, and whatever else a lady's maid did. Perhaps she was only to be an undermaid, but allowed to spend her free time with her friend. She would have done it gladly. She would have done anything, to stay in this house with Sara.
Sara was no help. She had no very clear idea herself, except that she wanted Becky to be with her, and share in her miraculous good fortune. She was, in truth, still somewhat overwhelmed by all the revelations of the past day.
She was a whirl as she showed Becky around the room that was to be her own, pointing out every good thing, asking if there was anything else she might like, planning aloud about little comforts and improvements.
Though she did not know it, Ram Dass would have smiled to hear her. Mr. Carrisford had sounded rather like her when planning new delights to surprise the little girl in the attic. (In fact, upstairs, Mr. Carrisford and Ram Dass were having a remarkably similar conversation over his morning porridge, in which Ram Dass was being obliged to supply certain gentle reminders that Sara might be quite bewildered by too expansive an outpouring of presents all on her first day, no matter how much she might deserve them in her new guardian's eyes.)
Sara would not have asked for the least thing for herself, for she indeed had already received far more than she could ever have dreamed, but her generous young heart wanted to give Becky all she might wish.
Becky, for her part, wished nothing more. She would have been happy with another attic, if it were warm and comfortable and had Sara in a room below. To have a room of her very own on the same floor as Sara, and indeed right next door to Sara's was unimaginable luxury. To have that room contain a bedstead heaped with warm bedclothes over a soft mattress, and a crackling fire, and a full coal-scuttle, and a little table, and a shelf for books, and a comfortable armchair all her own! She was dazed with joy. "Oh, law!" she exclaimed, over and over, and "Oh, miss!"
Then Sara showed Becky her own room, next door, which was larger and more luxurious yet. She sank onto a soft footstool by the fire, watching with a dreamy contentment as Becky explored. Next to her sat Emily, in pride of place on a small chair of her own with a velvet cushion.
"It's that beautiful, miss," she sighed, brushing reverent fingers over the gleaming wood of the dressing-table. "Yer a princess again and no mistake. I allus knew you was."
Sara sat in silence with her chin on her folded hands.
"Becky," she said, in her old thoughtful way. "I should like it very much if you would call me ‘Sara,' rather than miss."
"What, miss!" Becky faltered. "Me, miss?"
Sara shook back her black locks with a soft, queer laugh. She had spoken on impulse, and did not know exactly how to explain. "You see, nobody else will remember the Prisoner in the Attic any more. Only you and I. Even Ermengarde and Lottie never really knew what it was like. I took care that they should not—I didn't want them to—but you did. We were just poor girls together."
"You didn't orter have ever been a prisoner, miss," cried out Becky, hot with feeling, and her cheeks flushed quite red. "You allus was like a princess. I was that glad it was you with me, and you allus made the worst days better—but you didn't orter have ever been a prisoner, all the same. Not you."
"But I was. I am not the same Sara I should have been if I had always lived in nice rooms and had nice things, and never known what it was to lose very nearly everything I had. I have learned things about myself. I have been in the Bastille, and you are never again quite the same when you emerge."
Becky listened to this in respectful incomprehension. She had never known anything but cold beds and harsh words, except from Sara. She could understand being changed by joy—she felt herself that she was not at all the same Becky she would have been if she had never met Sara—but she could not remember a time when she had not known suffering. She could not understand being changed by it.
Sara continued, rather slowly. "I should not like most people to know about the attic, I think. But I should not like you to forget. You are the Prisoner in the Other Attic. I am not above you—I am not!" Her voice had risen, and her hot little hands clenched on themselves.
"But mi—but I'm to be your maid. The Indian Gentleman, he said I might. I dasn't put on airs, miss. Your maid hadn't orter be impertinent. What'll people will think? They'll say I don't know my place."
Sara reflected on this. "Yes," she said at last, "you're right. People won't understand. I don't want anyone to think poorly of you, Becky, not ever. They haven't the slightest idea how good you are! They should know! It makes me want to box the ears of anyone who looks slightingly at you."
"I allus wanted to when anyone was cruel to you. Even Miss Minchin. I couldn't, but I allus wanted to. I still do."
Sara pressed Becky's hand with her slim, brown, work roughened little paw. "You are the Prisoner in the Other Attic! But we are neither of us in the attic now. When it's just us, Becky, and no one else is about—could you call me Sara then?"
Becky sat very still, her brows drawn ferociously together. Sara waited, as coaxingly patient as when she had lured sparrows to her on the rooftop.
"If it's what you wish, miss," she said at length, and doubtfully. "If it's what you wish then I guess I could. But I don't understand it. I'm just Becky."
"And I am just Sara," said Sara, and smiled at her. Helplessly, warmer and more fed in her starved young soul than she had ever been, Becky smiled back.