Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/158

142 hunchback boy rose too, and went into the dark passage after them. He seemed to regard them with a kind of hunger in his look.

They went up a narrow, steep staircase. It was only lighted by a dim gleam from a room below, whose door was open. The balustrades were rickety, and some of them were broken out. It was a forlorn enough place. The hunchback boy came up the steps awkwardly behind them. It was as if he wanted to see what would happen.

They went up two flights of the crooked, crazy stairs, and at the top of the second flight the woman opened a door.

"That's all the place there is," she said. "It isn't anything more than a place to lie down in, you see. I can put a mattress on the floor for you, and your sister can sleep on the cot."

"That's all we want," replied Robin.

But it was a poor place. A room both small and bare, and with broken windows. There was nothing in it but the cot and a chair.

"Ben sleeps here," the woman said. "If I couldn't make him a place on the floor near me I couldn't let it to you."

Meg turned and looked at Ben. He was gazing at her with a nervous interest.