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Sara at School 2 Miss Minchin
Miss Minchin called the school a Seminary. This made it sound very posh but it was not really a very good school.
If anyone wants to start up a school today they have to get permission and Inspectors will come and see that the school is going to be a good one and they will come back later and see that it really is a good school. In those days, anyone who could afford to buy a big house could set up a school and no one came to see that they were doing a good job.
Miss Minchin's school was not a very good one and Miss Minchin was not really a very nice person.
Sara's father took her into the school and Miss Minchin came to meet her. She smiled but Sara could see that the smile was false. She thought that Miss Minchin was trying to look kind but really she was not. She had been told that Sara was very clever and that her father was very rich. She thought that before long she would charge him a great deal of money.
"I am so pleased that I shall have so beautiful and so clever a girl in my school." she said. "But I am not very beautiful." thought Sara. She later discovered later that Miss Minchin said this to every parent that brought a child to her school.
Captain Crewe had arranged that Sara would have her own sitting room and her own bed room. She was also to have her own pony and be allowed to ride it. This suited Miss Minchin who charged a great deal of money for these extras.
Sara went into a room and sat quietly reading a book. She did not come down at tea time so Miss Minchin sent her sister Miss Amelia Minchin to see if she was all right .
"I am sorry. I will come now,"said Sara, I just wanted a little time to myself."
Miss Amelia went back and said, " She seems to be a very quiet girl. I hope she will get on all right here."
"It's much better than if she cried like some girls do on their first day," said Miss Minchin. "I can see that Sara has always been given her own way. She has been spoiled. When I get a child like that for the first time she almost always cries and makes a fuss."
"I have just been opening her bags and putting away her clothes and I have never seen anything like them, said Miss Amelia. "They are very expensive. What do YOU think of them?"
"They are perfectly ridiculous," said Miss Minchin."She is dressed up as if she were a little princess. Now when the whole school walk down to Church on Sunday, Sara can walk at the front. That will make everyone think this is a very posh school."
Unfortunately, one of the school girls called Lavinia passed Sara's room when the door was open. She looked in and saw a box containing some of Sara's clothes. She saw that they were very frilly and expensive. Now Lavinia was sometimes very spiteful. She told her friend Jessie about what she had seen. "I heard Miss Minchin say to Miss Amelia that her clothes were very grand and that it was silly that a school girl should wear them." "And she has silk stockings on!" whispered Jessie.
Now Sara did not hear this. She was sitting quietly at her desk, waiting to be told what to do. She looked at the children who were looking back at her. She wondered what they were thinking of , and if they liked Miss Minchin. She also wondered if they liked their lessons and if they were very good at them.
After Sara had been sitting there for a few minutes, Miss Minchin rapped on the desk and said, "Young ladies,"Let me introduce Sara who has just come to our school today. She has travelled al the way from India. I hope you will all be nice to her. Sara smiled at the other girls and most of them smiled back.
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