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It was like a sort of dream. It was all over, and it could never come back.
真像是一场梦。一切都一去不复返了。
It certainly seemed that there was no way in which any change could take place.
看来肯定没有什么转机了。
She knew what Miss Minchin intended that her future should be.
她知道铭钦女士存心要给地安排什么样的未来。
So long as she was too young to be used as a regular teacher,
只要她还太小，不能当正规教师使用，
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.
就可以拿她当跑腿丫头和仆人使唤，然而还要指望她牢记所学过的功课，并且以某种秘密方式学到更多的知识。
The greater number of her evenings she was supposed to spend at study,
大多数夜晚她都得用在学习上，
and at various indefinite intervals she was examined and knew she would have been severely admonished if she had not advanced as was expected of her.
还要不定期地接受检查，如果没有获得预期的进步，就会受到严厉的警告。
The truth, indeed, was that Miss Minchin knew that she was too anxious to learn to require teachers.
实际上铭钦女士明知道她那种如饥似渴的学习是无需老师教的。
Give her books, and she would devour them and end by knowing them by heart.
给了她书本，她就会拼命读，直到牢记在心中。
She might be trusted to be equal to teaching a good deal in the course of a few years.
只消几年工夫，她无疑便能胜任教很多课程。
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;
未来的前景是：等她长大了一些，就可以指望她完成教室里的艰苦任务，一如她现在在干家中的各项苦差事一样;
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.
他们将不得不给她穿较体面的衣服，但必须是朴素、难看的，使她看起来多少像个仆人。
That was all there seemed to be to look forward to, and Sara stood quite still for several minutes and thought it over.
这似乎就是她能盼望的一切，于是萨拉一动不动地站住了几分钟，反复思索着。
Then a thought came back to her which made the color rise in her cheek and a spark light itself in her eyes.
接着一种想法在她心中复萌，使她双颊泛红、双目生辉。
She straightened her thin little body and lifted her head.
她挺直了瘦小的身子，昂起头来。
"Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside.
“不论发生什么事，”她说，“都改变不了有一点情况。如果我是个穿破衣烂衫的公主，那就只能在内心中做个公主。
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 to be one all the time when no one knows it.
如果穿着金线编织的料子衣服，当个公主是容易的，但是，如果在无人知晓的情况下，始终做个公主，那才是更大的成功呢。
There was Marie Antoinette when she was in prison and her throne was gone and she had only a black gown on,
有个玛丽·安托瓦内特，当时在坐牢，王位也丢了，只有件黑袍子穿，
and her hair was white, and they insulted her and called her Widow Capet.
她的头发是白的，人们羞辱她，叫她寡妇卡佩。
