The Indian Gentleman
- It's dangerous for Ermengarde and Lottie to come visit Sara though, because they'll all get into a lot of trouble if they're ever found out.
- So Sara goes about her days and does all her errands alone, scurrying around like a little beggar.
- When she's walking home sometimes, she sees the Large Family, a family that lives near Miss Minchin's school.
- There are eight children in the house, and they should obviously have their own reality show.
- They're rich and happy. Sara makes up stories about them and gives them names. She calls them the Montmorencys.
- One evening, some of the Montmorencys are going to a children's party. Guy Clarence, the five-year-old, stops and sees Sara.
- He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a sixpence, and gives it to Sara because he thinks she's a beggar girl.
- She tries to give it back but Guy Clarence insists that she keeps it.
- She does, even though she feels proud and a little ashamed.
- The Large Family rides away in their carriage and the other children ask Donald (which is Guy Clarence's real name) why he offered Sara his sixpence.
- She may be a servant, but she doesn't seem much like a servant—she doesn't act or talk like one, anyway.
- Sara takes the sixpence and wears it around her neck.
- One night, she tells Emily that she can't take this anymore. Emily doesn't say anything. Obviously. Because she's a doll.
- If she did start speaking, this would be a totally different kind of story.
- Sara knocks Emily off the chair, says that she's nothing but a doll, and starts to cry.
- But then she feels bad and picks Emily back up again.
- One day, when coming home, she sees that someone is moving in to the house next door.
- The furniture being brought in is from India, which Sara is very excited about.
- As she's watching, she sees the father of the Large Family walk up to the house—and so she realizes that he must know whoever has moved in.
- Exciting times!
- That night, Becky says that an Indian gentleman has moved in and he's very rich and ill—and that the Large Family's father is his lawyer.
- (Brain snack: "Indian" here doesn't mean that he's actually Indian. He's English. He's just been living in India, and probably made his fortune there. Confusing? Yes. But that was a really common way of referring to English people living in India.)
- It turns out that the new next-door neighbor doesn't have a family, and one day he arrives with the father of the Large Family and a nurse and two men-servants.
- Lottie says the man is yellow, but Sara corrects her and says that he's just very ill.