Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/166

150 gathered in Meg's eyelashes and fallen on the straw when she had been telling stories in the barn, fell now upon her lap.

"Robin!" she said.

Robin stood and stared very straight before him for a minute, and then his eyes turned and met hers.

"We're very poor," he said to her, "but everybody has—has something."

"We couldn't leave him behind," Meg said. "We couldn't! Let's think." And she put her head down, resting her elbows on her knee, and clutching her forehead with her supple, strong little hands.

"What can we do without?" said Robin. "Let's do without something."

Meg lifted her head.

"We will eat nothing but the eggs for breakfast," she said, "and go without lunch—if we can; perhaps we can't, but we'll try. And we will not go into some of the places we have to pay to go into. And I will make up stories about them for you—Robin, it is true. Everybody has something to give. That's what I have—the stories I make up. It's something—just a little."

"It isn't so little," Robin answered. "It fills in the empty places. Meg?" with a questioning tone in his voice.