Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/159

Rh "We're much obliged to you," she said.

"It's all right," he said, with eager shyness. "Do you want some water to wash yourselves with? I can bring you up a tin basin and a jug. You can set it on the chair."

"Thank you," they said both at once, and Robin added, "We want washing pretty badly."

Ben turned about and went downstairs for the water, as if he felt a sort of excitement in doing the service. These two children, who looked as poor as himself, set stirring strange thoughts in his small unnourished brain.

He brought back the tin basin and water, a piece of yellow soap, and even a coarse, rather dingy towel. He had been so eager that he was out of breath when he returned; but he put the basin on the chair and the tin jug beside it with a sort of exultant look in his poor face.

"Thank you," said Meg again. "Thank you, Ben."

She could not help watching him as his mother prepared the rather wretched mattress for Robin. Once he caught the look of her big grey eyes, as it rested upon him with questioning sympathy, and he flushed up, so that even by the light of the little smoky lamp she saw it. When the woman had finished, she and the boy went away and left them,