And the cold days of hard work kept going by, and the City Beautiful
grew, and, huddled close together in the straw, the children planned and
dreamed, and read and re-read the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” following
Christian step by step. And Aunt Matilda became busier every day, it
seemed, and did not remember that they were alive except when she saw
them. And nobody guessed and nobody knew.
Days so quickly grow to weeks, and weeks slip by so easily until they
are months, and at last there came a time when Meg, going out in the
morning, felt a softer air, and stopped a moment by a bare tree to
breathe it in and feel its lovely touch upon her cheek. She turned her
face upward with a half-involuntary movement, and found herself looking
at such a limitless vault of tender blueness that her heart gave a quick
throb, seemed to spring up to it, and carry her with it. For a moment it
seemed as if she had left the earth far below, and was soaring in the
soft depths of blueness themselves. And suddenly, even as she felt it,
she heard on the topmost branch of the bare tree a brief little
rapturous trill, and her heart gave a leap again, and she felt her
cheeks grow warm.
“It is a bluebird,” she said; “it is a bluebird. And it is the spring,
and that means that the time is quite near.”
She had a queer little smile on her face all day as she worked. She did
not know it was there herself, but Mrs. Macartney saw it.
“What’s pleasing you so, Meggy, my girl?” she asked.
Meg wakened up with a sort of start.
“I don’t know—exactly,” she said.
“You don’t know,” said the woman, good-naturedly. “You look as if you
were thinking over a secret, and it was a pleasant one.”
That evening it was not cold when they sat in the Straw Parlor, and Meg
told Robin about the bluebird.
“It gave me a strange feeling to hear it,” she said. “It seemed as if it
was speaking to me. It said, ‘You must get ready. It is quite near.’”
They had made up their minds that they would go in June, before the
weather became so hot that they might suffer from it.
“Because we have to consider everything,” was Robin’s idea. “We shall be
walking about all the time, and we have no cool clothes, and we shall
have no money to buy cool things; and if we should be ill, it would be
worse for us than for children who have some one with them.”
In the little account-book they had calculated all they should own on
the day their pilgrimage began. They had apportioned it all out: so much
for the price of the railroad tickets, so much for entrance fees,
and—not so much, but so little—oh, so little!—for their food and
lodging.
“I have listened when Jones and the others were talking,” said Robin;
“and they say that everybody who has room to spare, and wants to make
money, is going to let every corner they have. So you see there will be
sure to be people who have quite poor places that they would be obliged
to rent cheap to people who are poor, like themselves. We will go
through the small side streets and look.”
The first bluebird came again, day after day, and others came with it,
until the swift dart of blue wings through the air and the delicious
ripple of joyous sound were no longer rare things. The days grew warmer,
and the men threw off their coats, and began to draw their shirt-sleeves
across their foreheads when they were at work.
One evening when Robin came up into the Straw Parlor he brought
something with him. It was a battered old tin coffee-pot.
“What is that for?” asked Meg; for he seemed to carry it as if it was of
some value.
“It’s old and rusty, but there are no holes in it,” Robin answered. “I
saw it lying in a fence corner, where some one had thrown it—perhaps a
tramp. And it put a new thought into my head. It will do to boil eggs
in.”
“Eggs!” said Meg.
“There’s nothing much nicer than hard-boiled eggs,” said Robin, “and you
can carry them about with you. It just came into my mind that we could
take some of our eggs, and go somewhere where no one would be likely to
see us, and build a fire of sticks, and boil some eggs, and carry them
with us to eat.”
“Robin,” cried Meg, with admiring ecstasy, “I wish I had thought of
that!”
“It doesn’t matter which of us thought of it,” said Rob, “it’s all the
same.”
So it was decided that when the time came they 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 the people about them
did not see it in their faces.
“They are not thinking of us,” said Robin. “They are thinking about
crops. I dare say Aunt Matilda would like to see the Agricultural
Building, but she couldn’t waste the time to go through the others.”
Oh, what a day it was, what a thrilling, exciting, 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
outbuildings to be quite safe! He did it one 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.”
And after supper they crept out to the place, with matches, and the
battered old coffee-pot, and the eggs.
As they made their preparations, they found themselves talking in
whispers, though there was not the least chance of any one’s hearing
them. Meg looked rather like a little witch as she stood over the
bubbling old pot, with her strange, little dark face and shining eyes
and black elf locks.
“It’s like making a kind of sacrifice on an altar,” she said.
“You always think queer things about everything, don’t you?” said Robin.
“But they’re all right; I don’t think of them myself, but I like them.”
When the eggs were boiled hard enough they carried them to the barn and
hid them in the Straw Parlor, near the Treasure. Then they sat and
talked, in whispers still, almost trembling with joy.
“Somehow, do you know,” Meg said, “it feels as if we were going to do
something more than just go to the Fair. When people in stories go to
seek their fortunes, I’m sure they feel like this. Does it give you a
kind of creeping in your stomach whenever you think of it, Rob?”
“Yes, it does,” Robin whispered back; “and when it comes into my mind
suddenly something gives a queer jump inside me.”
“That’s your heart,” said Meg. “Robin, if anything should stop us, I
believe I should drop _dead_.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” was Rob’s answer, “but it’s better not to let
ourselves think about it. And I don’t believe anything as bad as that
_could_ happen. We’ve worked so hard, and we have nobody but ourselves,
and it can’t do any one any harm—and we don’t _want_ to do any one any
harm. No, there must be _something_ that wouldn’t let it be.”
[Illustration: MEG LOOKED RATHER LIKE A LITTLE WITCH.]
“I believe that too,” said Meg, and this time it was she who clutched at
Robin’s hand; but he seemed glad she did, and held as close as she.
And then, after the bluebirds had sung a few times more, there came a
night when Meg crept out of her cot after she was sure that the woman in
the other bed was sleeping heavily enough. Every one went to bed early,
and every one slept through the night in heavy, tired sleep. Too much
work was done on the place to allow people to waste time in
sleeplessness. Meg knew no one would waken as she crept down stairs to
the lower part of the house and softly opened the back door.
Robin was standing outside, with the little leather satchel in his hand.
It was a soft, warm night, and the dark blue sky was full of the glitter
of stars.
Both he and Meg stood still a moment, and looked up. “I’m glad it’s like
this,” Meg said; “it doesn’t seem so lonely. Is your heart thumping,
Robin?”
“Yes, rather,” whispered Robin. “I left the letter in a place where Aunt
Matilda will be likely to find it some time to-morrow.”
“What did you say?” Meg whispered back.
“What I told you I was going to. There wasn’t much to say. Just told her
we had saved our money, and gone away for a few days; and we were all
right, and she needn’t worry.”
Everything was very still about them. There was no moon, and, but for
the stars, it would have been very dark. As it was, the stillness of
night and sleep, and the sombreness of the hour, might have made less
strong little creatures feel timid and alone.
“Let us take hold of each other’s hands as we walk along,” said Meg. “It
will make us feel nearer, and—and _twinner_.”
And so, hand in hand, they went out on the road together.