They did not tell each other of the strange and bold thought which had leaped up in their minds that day. Each felt an unwonted shyness about it, perhaps because it had been so bold; but it had been in each mind, and hidden though it was, it remained furtively in both.

They went on exactly as they had begun. Each morning Meg went to her drudgery in the dairy and Robin followed Jones whithersoever duty led. If the elder people had imagined they would get tired and give up they found out their mistake. That they were often tired was true, but that in either there arose once the thought of giving up, never! And they worked hard. The things they did to earn their weekly stipend would have touched the heart of a mother of cared-for children, but on Mrs. Jennings’s model farm people knew how much work a human being could do when necessity drove. They were all driven by necessity, and it was nothing new to know that muscles ached and feet swelled and burned. In fact, they knew no one who did not suffer, as a rule, from these small inconveniences. And these children, with their set little faces and mature intelligence, were somehow so unsuggestive of the weakness and limitations of childhood that they were often given work which was usually intrusted only to elder people. Mrs. Macartney found that Meg never slighted anything, never failed in a task, and never forgot one, so she gave her plenty to do. Scrubbing and scouring that others were glad to shirk fell to her share. She lifted and dragged things about that grown-up girls grumbled over. What she lacked in muscle and size she made up in indomitable will power that made her small face set itself and her small body become rigid as iron. Her work ended by not confining itself to the dairy, but extended to the house, the kitchen – anywhere there were tiresome things to be done.

With Robin it was the same story. Jones was not afraid to give him any order. He was of use in all quarters – in the huge fields, in the barn, in the stables, and as a messenger to be trusted to trudge any distance when transport was not available.

They both grew thin but sinewy looking, and their faces had a rather strained look. Their always large black eyes seemed to grow bigger, and their little square jaws looked more square every day; but on Saturday nights they each were paid their dollar, and climbed to the Straw Parlor 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 labor 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 roll 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 established the habit of collecting every scrap of newspaper referring to it. He cut them out of Aunt Matilda’s old papers, he begged them from every one, neighbors, store-keepers, work hands. When he was sent on errands he cast an all-embracing glance ’round every place his orders took him to. The postmaster of the nearest village discovered his weakness and saved paragraphs and whole papers for him. Before very long there was buried near the Treasure a treasure even more valuable of newspaper cuttings, and on the wonderful Saturday nights they gave themselves up to revelling in them.

How they watched it and followed it and lived with it – this great human scheme which somehow seemed to their young minds more like the scheme of giants and genii! How they seized upon every new story of its wonders and felt that there could be no limit to them! They knew every purpose and plan connected with it – every arch and tower and hall and stone they pleased themselves by fancying. Newspapers were liberal with information, people talked of it, they heard of it on every side. To them it seemed that the whole world must be thinking of nothing else.

“While we are lying here,” Meg said – “while you are doing chores, and I am scouring pans and scrubbing things, it is all going on. People in France and in England and in Italy are doing work to send to it – artists are painting pictures, and machinery is whirling and making things, and everything is pouring into that one wonderful place. And men and women planned it, you know – just men and women. And if we live a few years we shall be men and women, and they were once children like us – only, if they had been quite like us they would never have known enough to do anything.”

“But when they were children like us,” said Robin, “they did not know what they would have learned by this time – and they never dreamed about this.”

“That shows how wonderful men and women are,” said Meg. “I believe they can do anything if they set their minds to it.” And she said it stubbornly.

“Perhaps they can,” said Robin, slowly. “Perhaps we could do anything we set our minds to.”

There was the suggestive tone in his voice which Meg had been thrilled by more than once before. She had been thrilled by it most strongly when he had said that if they saved their two dollars a week they might be able to go almost anywhere. Unconsciously she responded to it now.

“If I could do anything I set my mind to,” she said, “do you know what I would set my mind to first?”

“What?”

“I would set my mind to going to that wonderful place. I would set it to seeing everything there, and remembering all I could hold, and learning all there was to be learned – and I would set it hard.”

“So would I,” said Robin.

It was a more suggestive voice than before that he said the words in; and suddenly he got up, and went and tore away the straw from the burying-place of the Treasure. He took out the old iron bank, and brought it back to their corner.

He did it so suddenly, and with such a determined air, that Meg rather lost her breath.

“What are you going to do with the Treasure?” she asked.

“I am going to count it.”

“Why?”

He was opening the box, using the blade of a stout pocket-knife as a screwdriver.

“A return ticket to Chicago costs fourteen dollars,” he said. “I asked at the dépôt. That would be twenty-eight dollars for two people. Any one who is careful can live on a very little for a while. I want to see if we shall have money enough to go.”

“To go!” Meg cried out. “To the Fair, Robin?”

She could not believe the evidence of her ears – it sounded so daring.

“Nobody would take us!” she said. “Even if we had money enough to pay for ourselves, nobody would take us.”

“Take!” answered Robin, working at his screws. “No, nobody would. What’s the matter with taking ourselves?”

Meg sat up in the straw, conscious of a sort of shock.

“To go by ourselves, like grown-up people! To buy our tickets ourselves, and get on the train, and go all the way – alone! And walk about the Fair alone, Robin?”

“Who takes care of us here?” answered Robin. “Who has looked after us ever since father and mother died? Ourselves! Just ourselves! Whose business are we but our own? Who thinks of us, or asks if we are happy or unhappy?”

“Nobody,” said Meg. And she hid her face in her arms on her knees.

Robin went on stubbornly.

“Nobody is ever going to do it,” he said, “if we live to be hundreds of years old. I’ve thought of it when I’ve been working in the fields with Jones, and I’ve thought of it when I’ve been lying awake at night. It’s kept me awake many and many a time.”

“So it has me,” said Meg.

“And since this thing began to be talked about everywhere, I’ve thought of it more and more,” said Rob. “It means more to people like us than it does to any one else. It’s the people who never see things, who have no chances, it means the most to. And the more I think of it, the more I – I won’t let it go by me!” And all at once he threw himself face downward on the straw, and hid his face in his arms.

Meg lifted hers. There was something in the woful desperation of his movement that struck her to the heart. She had never known him do such a thing in their lives before. That was not his way. Whatsoever hard thing had happened – howsoever lonely and desolate they had felt – he had never shown his feeling in this way. She put out her hand and touched his shoulder.

“Robin!” she said. “Oh, Robin!”

“I don’t care,” he said, from the refuge of his sleeves. “We are little when we are compared with grown-up people. They would call us children; and children usually have some one to help them and tell them what to do. I’m only like this because I’ve been thinking so much and working so hard – and it does seem like an Enchanted City – but no one ever thinks we could care about anything more than if we were cats and dogs. It was not like that at home, even if we were poor.”

Then he sat up with as little warning as he had thrown himself down, and gave his eyes a fierce rub. He returned to the Treasure again.

“I’ve been making up my mind to it for days,” he said. “If we have the money we can buy our tickets and go some night without saying anything to any one. We can leave a note for Aunt Matilda, and tell her we are all right and we are coming back. She’ll be too busy to mind.”

“Do you remember that book of father’s we read?” said Meg. “That one called ‘David Copperfield.’ David ran away from the bottle place when he was younger than we are, and he had to walk all the way to Dover.”

“We shall not have to walk; and we won’t let any one take our money away from us,” said Robin.

“Are we going, really?” said Meg. “You speak as if we were truly going; and it can’t be.”

“Do you know what you said just now about believing human beings could do anything, if they set their minds to it? Let’s set our minds to it.”

“Well,” Meg answered, rather slowly, as if weighing the matter, “let’s!”

And she fell to helping to count the Treasure.

VI

Afterwards, when they looked back upon that day, they knew that the thing had decided itself then, though neither of them had said so.

“The truth was,” Robin used to say, “we had both been thinking the same thing, as we always do, but we had been thinking it in the back part of our minds. We were afraid to let it come to the front at first, because it seemed such a big thing. But it went on thinking by itself. That time, when you said ‘We shall never see it,’ and I said, ‘How do you know?’ we were both thinking about it in one way; and I know I was thinking about it when I said, ‘We are not going to stay here always. That is the first step up the Hill of Difficulty.’”

“And that day when you said you would not let it go by you,” Meg would answer, “that was the day we reached the Wicket Gate.”

It seemed very like it, for from that day their strange, unchildish purpose grew and ripened, and never for an hour was absent from the mind of either. If they had been like other children, living happy lives, full of young interests and pleasures, it might have been crossed out by other and newer things; if they had been of a slighter mental build, and less strong, they might have forgotten it; but they never did. When they had counted the Treasure, and had realized how small it was after all, they had sat and gazed at each other for a while with grave eyes, but they had only been grave, and not despairing.

“Twenty-five dollars,” said Robin. “Well, that’s not much after nearly six years; but we saved it nearly all by cents, you know, Meg.”

“And it takes a hundred cents to make a dollar,” said Meg; “and we were poor people’s children.”

“And we bought the chickens,” said Robin.

“And you have always given me a present at Christmas, Robin, even if it was only a little one. That’s six Christmases.”

“We have eight months to work in,” said Robin, calculating. “If you get four dollars a month, and I get four, that will be sixty-four dollars by next June. Twenty-five dollars and sixty-four dollars make eighty-nine. Eighty-nine dollars for us to live on and go to see all the things; because we must see them all, if we go. And I suppose we shall have to come back” – with a long breath.

“Oh, dear!” cried Meg, “how can we come back?”

“I don’t know,” said Robin. “We shall hate it, but we have nowhere else to go.”

“Perhaps we are going to seek our fortunes, and perhaps we shall find them,” said Meg; “or perhaps Aunt Matilda won’t let us come back. Rob,” with some awe, “do you think she will be angry?”

“I’ve thought about that,” Robin answered contemplatively, “and I don’t think she will. She would be too busy to care much even if we ran away and said nothing. But I shall leave a letter, and tell her we have saved our money and gone somewhere for a holiday, and we’re all right, and she need not bother.”

“She won’t bother even if she is angry,” Meg said, with mournful eyes. “She doesn’t care about us enough.”

“If she loved us,” Rob said, “and was too poor to take us herself, we couldn’t go at all. We couldn’t run away, because it would worry her so. You can’t do a thing, however much you want to do it, if it is going to hurt somebody who is good to you, and cares.”

“Well, then, we needn’t stay here because of Aunt Matilda,” said Meggy. “That’s one sure thing. It wouldn’t interfere with her ploughing if we were both to die at once.”

“No,” said Rob, deliberately, “that’s just what it would not.” And he threw himself back on the straw and clasped his hands under his head, gazing up into the dark roof above him with very reflective eyes.

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 the first until the last.

The days went by, full of work, which left them little time to lie and talk in the Straw Parlor. They could only see each other in the leisure hours, which were so few, and only came when the day was waning. Finding them faithful and ready, those about them fell into the natural, easy, human unworthiness of imposing by no means infrequently on their inexperienced willingness and youth. So they were hard enough worked, but each felt that every day that passed brought them nearer to the end in view; and there was always something to think of, some detail to be worked out mentally, or to be discussed, in the valuable moments when they were together.

“It’s a great deal better than it used to be,” Meg said, “at all events. It’s better to feel tired by working than to be tired of doing nothing but think and think dreary things.”

As the weather grew colder it was hard enough to keep warm in their hiding-place. They used to sit and talk, huddled close together, bundled in their heaviest clothing, and with the straw heaped close around them and over them.

There were so many things to be thought of and talked over! Robin collected facts more sedulously than ever – facts about entrance fees, facts about prices of things to eat, facts about places to sleep.

“Going to the Fair yourself, sonny?” Jones said to him one day. Jones was fond of his joke. “You’re right to be inquirin’ round. Them hotel-keepers is given to tot up bills several stories higher than their hotels is themselves.”

“But I suppose a person needn’t go to a hotel,” said Robin. “There must be plenty of poor people who can’t go to hotels, and they’ll have to sleep somewhere.”

“Ah, there’s plenty of poor people,” responded Jones, cheerfully, “plenty of ’em. Always is. But they won’t go to Chicago while the Fair’s on. They’ll sleep at home – that’s where they’ll sleep.”

“That’s the worst of it,” Rob said to Meg afterwards; “you see, we have to sleep somewhere. We could live on bread and milk or crackers and cheese – or oatmeal – but we have to sleep somewhere.”

“It will be warm weather,” Meg said, reflectively. “Perhaps we could sleep out of doors. Beggars do. We don’t mind.”

“I don’t think the police would let us,” Robin answered. “If they would – perhaps we might have to, some night; but we are going to that place, Meg – we are going.”

Yes, they believed they were going, and lived on the belief. This being decided, howsoever difficult to attain, it was like them both that they should dwell upon the dream, and revel in it in a way peculiarly their own. It was Meg whose imagination was the stronger, and it is true that it was always she who made pictures in words and told stories. But Robin was always as ready to enter into the spirit of her imaginings as she was to talk about them. There was a word he had once heard his father use which had caught his fancy, in fact, it had attracted them both, and they applied it to this favorite pleasure of theirs of romancing with everyday things. The word was “philander.”

“Now we have finished adding up and making plans,” he would say, putting his ten-cent account-book into his pocket, “let us philander about it.”

And then Meg would begin to talk about the City Beautiful – a City Beautiful which was a wonderful and curious mixture of the enchanted one the whole world was pouring its treasures into, one hundred miles away, and that City Beautiful of her own which she had founded upon the one towards which Christian had toiled through the Slough of Despond and up the Hill of Difficulty and past Doubting Castle. Somehow one could scarcely tell where one ended and the others began, they were so much alike, these three cities – Christian’s, Meg’s, and the fair, ephemeral one the ending of the nineteenth century had built upon the blue lake’s side.

“They must look alike,” said Meg. “I am sure they must. See what it says in the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ ‘Now just as the gates were opened to let in the men, I looked in after them, and behold, the City shone like the sun’ – and then it says, ‘The talk they had with the Shining Ones was about the glory of the place; who told them that the beauty and glory of it were inexpressible.’ I always think of it, Robin, when I read about those places like white palaces and temples and towers that are being built. I am so glad they are white. Think how the City will ‘shine like the sun’ when it stands under the blue sky and by the blue water, on a sunshiny day.”

They had never read the dear old worn “Pilgrim’s Progress” as they did in those days. They kept it in the straw near the Treasure, and always had it at hand to refer to. In it they seemed to find parallels for everything.

“Aunt Matilda’s world is the City of Destruction,” they would say. “And our loneliness and poorness are like Christian’s ‘burden.’ We have to carry it like a heavy weight, and it holds us back.”

“What was it that Goodwill said to Christian about it?” Robin asked.

Meg turned over the pages. She knew all the places by heart. It was easy enough to find and read how “At last there came a grave person to the gate, named Goodwill,” and in the end he said, “As to thy burden, be content to bear it until thou comest to the place of deliverance; for there it will fall from thy back itself.”

“But out of the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’” Robin said, with his reflecting air, “burdens don’t fall off by themselves. If you are content with them they stick on and get bigger. Ours would, I know. You have to do something yourself to get them off. But – ” with a little pause for thought, “I like that part, Meg. And I like Goodwill, because he told it to him. It encouraged him, you know. You see it says next, ‘Then Christian began to gird up his loins and address himself to his journey.’”

“Robin,” said Meg, suddenly shutting the book and giving it a little thump on the back, “it’s not only Christian’s City that is like our City. We are like Christian. We are pilgrims, and our way to that place is our Pilgrims’ Progress.”