Meg’s eyes fixed themselves on a glimpse of blue water she saw through the trees. She looked as if she were thinking the matter over.
“How do I know?” she said; “I couldn’t. But, somehow, he has a dreary face, as if he had been thinking of dreary things. I don’t know why I thought that all in a minute, but I did, and I believe it’s true.”
“Well, if we should see him again,” Robin said, “I’ll look and see.”
“I believe we shall see him again,” said Meg. “How many eggs have we left, Robin?”
“We only brought three dozen,” he answered, looking into the satchel; “and we ate seven this morning.”
“When you have nothing but eggs, you eat a good many,” said Meg, reflectively. “They won’t last very long. But we couldn’t have carried a thousand eggs, even if we had had them”—which was a sage remark.
“We shall have to buy some cheap things,” was Robin’s calculation. “They’ll have to be very cheap, though. We have to pay a dollar, you know, every day, to come in; and if we have no money we can’t go into the places that are not free; and we want to go into everything.”
“I’d rather go in hungry than stay outside and have real dinners, wouldn’t you?” Meg put it to him.
“Yes, I would,” he answered, “though it’s pretty hard to be hungry.”
They had chosen a secluded corner to sit in, but it was not so secluded that they had it entirely to themselves. At a short distance from them, in the nearest bowery nook, a young man and woman were eating something out of a basket. They looked like a young country pair, plain and awkward, and enjoying themselves immensely. Their clothes were common and their faces were tanned, as if from working out of doors. But their basket evidently contained good, home-made things to eat. Meg caught glimpses of ham and chicken, and something that looked like cake. Just at that moment they looked so desperately good that she turned away her eyes, because she did not want to stare at them rudely. And as she averted them, she saw that Robin had seen, too.