“It’s such a bare place,” Robin used to say, and he would drive his hands into the depths of his pockets and set his square little jaw, and stare before him.
Both the twins had that square little jaw. Neither of them looked like their father and mother, except that from their mother they inherited black hair. Robin’s eyes were black, but Meg’s were gray, with thick black lashes. They were handsome little creatures, but their shocks of straight black hair, their straight black brows and square little jaws, made them look curiously unlike other children. They both remembered one winter evening, when, as they sat on their seat by the fire, their father, after looking at them with a half smile for a moment or so, began to laugh.
“Margaret,” he said to their mother, “do you know who those two are like? You have heard me speak of Matilda often enough.”
“Oh, Robert!” she exclaimed, “surely they are not like Matilda?”
“Well, perhaps it is too much to say they are like her,” he answered, “but there is something in their faces that reminds me of her strongly. I don’t know what it is exactly, but it is there. It is a good thing, perhaps,” with a queer tone in his voice. “Matilda always did what she made up her mind to do. Matilda was a success. I was always a failure.”
“Ah, no, Bob,” she said, “not a failure!”
She had put her hand on his shoulder, and he lifted it and pressed it against his thin cheek.
“Wasn’t I, Maggie?” he said, gently, “wasn’t I? Well, I think these two will be like Matilda in making up their minds and getting what they want.”
Before the winter was over Robin and Meg were orphans, and were with Aunt Matilda, and there they had been ever since.
Until the day they found the Straw Parlor it had seemed as if no corner in the earth belonged to them. Meg slept on a cot in a woman servant’s room, Robin shared a room with some one else. Nobody took any notice of them.