Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/88

76 should boil their supply of eggs very hard, and roll them up in pieces of paper, and tuck them away carefully in the one small bag which was to carry all their necessary belongings. These belongings would be very few—just enough to keep them decent and clean, and a brush and comb between them. They used to lie in bed at night with beating hearts, thinking it all over, sometimes awakening in a cold perspiration from a dreadful dream, in which Aunt Matilda, or Jones or some of the hands, had discovered their secret and confronted them with it in all its daring. They were so full of it night and day that Meg used to wonder that people about them did not see it in their faces.

"They are not thinking of us," said Robin. "They are thinking about crops. I daresay Aunt Matilda would like to see the agricultural building, but she couldn't waste the time to go through the others."

Ah, what a day it was! what a thrilling, almost unbearably joyful day, when Robin gathered sticks and dried bits of branches, and piled them in a corner of a field far enough from the house and out-buildings to be quite safe. He did it in the noon hour, and as he passed Meg on his way back to his work, he whispered—

"I have got the sticks for the fire all ready."