“We’ve got the Treasure, Meg,” he said.
Meg’s laugh had rather a hysterical sound. That she should not have mentioned the Treasure among their belongings was queer. They talked so much about the Treasure. At this moment it was buried in an iron bank, deep in the straw, about four feet from where they sat. It was the very bank Robin had hoarded his savings in when he had begun at six years old with pennies, and a ten-cent blank-book to keep his accounts in. Everything they had owned since then had been pushed and dropped into it—all the chicken and egg money, and all Robin had earned by doing odd jobs for any one who would give him one. Nobody knew about the old iron bank any more than they knew about the Straw Parlor, and the children, having buried it in the straw, called it the Treasure. Meg’s stories about it were numerous and wonderful. Sometimes magicians came, and multiplied it a hundred-fold. Sometimes robbers stole it, and they themselves gave chase, and sought it with wild adventure; but perhaps the most satisfactory thing was to invent ways to spend it when it had grown to enormous proportions. Sometimes they bought a house in New York, and lived there together. Sometimes they traded in foreign lands with it. Sometimes they bought land, which increased in value to such an extent that they were millionaires in a month. Ah! it was a treasure indeed.
After the little, low, over-strained laugh, Meg folded her arms on the straw and hid her face in them. Robin looked at her with a troubled air for about a minute. Then he spoke to her.
“It’s no use doing that,” he said.
“It’s no use doing anything,” Meg answered, her voice muffled in her arms. “I don’t want to do this any more than you do. We’re so lonely!”
“Yes, we’re lonely,” said Robin, “that’s a fact.” And he stared up at the dark rafters above him, and at some birds who were clinging to them and twittering about a nest.
“I said I wished there was a City Beautiful,” Meg said, “but it seems to make it worse that there is going to be something like it so near, and that we should never get any nearer to it than a hundred miles.”
Rob sat up, and locked his hands together round his knees.
“How do you know?” he said.
“How do I know?” cried Meg, desperately, and she lifted her head, turning her wet face sideways to look at him. He unlocked his hands to give his forehead a hard rub, as if he were trying either to rub some thought out of or into it.