Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/67

Rh faces had a rather strained look. Their always large, bright eyes seemed to grow bigger, and their little square jaws looked more square every day; but on Saturday nights they each were paid their fifty cents, and climbed to the Straw Parlour and unburied the Treasure, and added to it.

Those Saturday nights were wonderful things. To the end of life they would never forget them. Through all the tired hours of labour they were looked forward to. Then they lay in their nest of straw and talked things over. There it seemed that they could relax and rest their limbs as they could do it nowhere else. Mrs. Jennings was not given to sofas and easy-chairs, and it is not safe to change position often when one has a grown-up bedfellow. But in the straw they could loll at full length, curl up or stretch out just as they pleased, and there they could enlarge upon the one subject that filled their minds and fascinated and enraptured them.

Who could wonder that it was so! The City Beautiful was growing day by day, and the development of its glories was the one thing they heard talked of. Robin had continued his habit of collecting every scrap of newspaper referring to it. He still cut them out of Aunt Matilda's old papers; he begged them from everyone—neighbours, storekeepers, work