“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.”
VII
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.