Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/44

32 Rob sat up and locked his hands together round his knees.

"How do you know?" he said.

"How do I know?" cried Meg desperately, and she lifted her head, turning her wet face sideways to look at him. He unlocked his hands to give his forehead a hard rub, as if he was trying either to rub some thought out of or into it.

"Just because we are lonely there is use in doing things," he said. "There's nobody to do them for us. At any rate, we've got as far on the way to the City as the bottom of the Hill of Difficulty."

And he gave his forehead another rub, and looked straight before him; and Meg drew a little closer to him in the straw, and the family of birds filled the silence with domestic twitters.