She was especially clear about this on the frequent occasions when she would come into the room where her mother was sitting, and plump down upon a chair with a heart-rending sigh, and say, "I wish I had somebody to play with!"
For then her dear but most contrary mother would glance up from her book or her darning and remark, with a calm smile,
"When I was a little girl—"
"Ah!"
"I used to go inside my head and play."
And Sara would answer with a poor, vindictive satisfaction, "There's nothing in my head to play with!"
And her kind-hearted mother would snip off her thread and say gently, in a tone of polite regret, "Poor little girl!"
Then Sara would gnash the little milk-teeth of her mind and have awful thoughts. The worst she ever had came one day when Mother, who had already filled about fourteen pages of paper with nothing in the world but words, acted that way again. And just as she said, "Poor little girl!" Sara thought, "I'd like to take that sharp green pencil and stick it into Mother's forehead, and watch a story run out of her head through the hole!"
But that was such an awful thought that she sent it scurrying away, as fast as she could. Just the same, she said to herself, if Mother ever acted that way again—
And, after all, Mother did. And that was the fatal time—the four-thousand-and-fourth. For, after Mother had suggested it four thousand and four times, it suddenly occurred to Sara that she might try it.