Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/18

10 determination to seize on as much as was possible. It was like running a desperate race with the darkness.

She was a determined child, and no one could have failed to guess as much who could have watched her for a few moments as she sat on her curious perch, her cheeks supported by her hands, her shock of straight black hair tumbled over her forehead.

The Straw Parlour was the top of a straw stack in Aunt Matilda's barn. Robin had discovered it one day by climbing a ladder which had been left leaning against the stack, and when he had found himself on the top of it he had been enchanted by the feeling it gave him of being so high above the world, and had called Meg up to share it with him.

She had been even more enchanted than he.

They both hated the world down below—Aunt Matilda's world, which seemed hideous and exasperating and sordid to them in its contrast to the world they had lived in before their father and mother had died and they had been sent to their sole relation, who did not want them, and only took them in from respect to public opinion. Three years they had been with Aunt Matilda, and each week had seemed more unpleasant than the last. Mrs. Matilda Jennings was a renowned female farmer of Illinois, and she was far too energetic a manager and business woman to have