Their feast seemed to become quite a royal thing. They never had felt so splendidly fed in their lives. It seemed as if they had never tasted such coffee.
When the meal was finished, they rose refreshed enough to feel ready for anything. They went up to the counter and thanked the German woman again. It was Meg who spoke to her.
“We want to say thank you again,” she said. “We are very much obliged to you for letting us eat our breakfast in here. It was so nice to sit down, and the coffee was so splendid. I dare say we do seem rather young to be by ourselves, but that makes us all the more thankful.”
“That’s all right,” said the woman. “I hope you don’t get lost by der Fair—and have good time!”
And then they went forth on their pilgrimage, into the glorious morning, into the rushing world that seemed so splendid and so gay—into the fairy-land that only themselves and those like them could see.
“Isn’t it nice when some one’s kind to you, Rob?” Meg exclaimed joyfully, when they got into the sunshine. “Doesn’t it make you feel happy, somehow, not because they’ve done something, but just because they’ve been kind?”
“Yes, it does,” answered Rob, stepping out bravely. “And I’ll tell you what I believe—I believe there are a lot of kind people in the world.”
“So do I,” said Meg. “I believe they’re in it even when we don’t see them.”
And all the more, with springing steps and brave young faces, they walked on their way to fairy-land.
They had talked it all over—how they would enter their City Beautiful. It would be no light thing to them, their entrance into it. They were innocently epicurean about it, and wanted to see it at the very first in all its loveliness. They knew that there were gates of entrance here and there, through which thousands poured each day; but Meg had a fancy of her own, founded, of course, upon that other progress of the Pilgrim’s.