Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/42

30 we didn't know when we came here. If we had been with father and mother, we should have been learning things all the time. We haven't one thing of our own, Rob, but the chickens and the Straw Parlour, and the Straw Parlour might be taken away from us."

Rob's square jaw relaxed just sufficiently to allow of a grim little grin.

"We've got the Treasure, Meg," he said.

Meg's laugh had rather a hysterical sound. That she should not have mentioned the Treasure among their belongings was queer. They talked so much about the Treasure. At this moment it was buried, in an iron bank, deep in the straw, about four feet from where they sat. It was the very bank Robin had hoarded his savings in when he had begun at six years old with pennies, and a ten cent blank-book to keep his accounts in. Everything they had owned since then had been pushed or dropped into it; all the chicken and egg money, and all Robin had earned by doing odd jobs for anyone who would give him one. Nobody knew about the old iron bank, any more than they knew about the Straw Parlour, and the children having buried it in the straw, called it the Treasure. Meg's stories about it were numerous and wonderful. Magicians came and multiplied it a hundredfold; sometimes robbers stole it, and they