“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.”