“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.