Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/78

66 they were never unfair to Aunt Matilda, and used to try to render her what was her due when they talked her over.

"She doesn't beat us or scold us or ill-treat us in any particular way," Meg would say; "she gives me plenty to eat, and buys us respectable clothes. If you notice, Robin, we never wear broken shoes. We were obliged to wear them now and then when we were at home, because there was no money to buy new ones until father was paid, or something like that. Our toes never come out now."

And this particular day, after looking up at the roof, Robin said, "I should like to be a bird, I believe. Wouldn't you, Meg? Then we should have a nest."

But they had reached the Wicket Gate, and from the hour they passed it there was no looking back. That in their utter friendlessness and loneliness they should take their twelve-year-old fates in their own strong little hands was perhaps a pathetic thing; that, once having done so, they moved towards their object as steadily as if they had been of the maturest years, was remarkable; but no one ever knew or even suspected, from the first until the last.

The days went by full of work, which left them little time to lie and talk in the Straw Parlour. They could only see each other in the leisure hours which