“Where did you eat your lunch yesterday?” he asked.
Meg flushed a little, feeling that hospitality demanded that they should share the remaining eggs with such a companion, and she was afraid there would be very few to offer, when Ben was taken into consideration.
“We went to a quiet place on the Wooded Island,” she said, “and ate it with the roses. We pretended they invited us. We had only hard-boiled eggs and a sandwich each; but a kind woman gave us something of her own.”
“We brought the eggs from home,” explained Rob. “We have some chickens of our own, who laid them. We thought that would be cheaper than buying things.”
“Oh!” said John Holt. “So you’ve been living on hard-boiled eggs. Got any left?”
“A few,” Meg answered. “They’re in the satchel. We shall have to go and get it.”
“Come along, then,” said John Holt. “Pretty hungry by this time, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Meg, with heartfelt frankness, “we are!”
It was astonishing how much John Holt had found out about them during this one morning. They did not know themselves how much their answers to his occasional questions had told him. He had not known himself, when he asked the questions, how much their straightforward, practical replies would reveal. They had not sentimentalized over their friendless loneliness, but he had found himself realizing what desolate, unnoticed, and uncared-for things their lives were. They had not told him how they had tired their young bodies with work too heavy for them, but he had realized it. In his mind there had risen a picture of the Straw Parlor, under the tent-like roof of the barn, with these two huddled together in the cold, buried in the straw, while they talked over their desperate plans. They had never thought of calling themselves strong and determined, and clear of wit, but he knew how strong and firm of purpose and endurance two creatures so young and unfriended, and so poor, must have been to form a plan so bold, and carry it out in the face of the obstacles of youth and inexperience, and empty pockets and hands. He had laughed at the story of the Treasure saved in pennies, and hidden deep in the straw; but as he had laughed he had thought, with a quick, soft throb of his heart, that the woman he had loved and lost would have laughed with him, with tears in the eyes which Meg’s reminded him of. He somehow felt as if she might be wandering about with them in their City Beautiful this morning, they were so entirely creatures she would have been drawn to, and longed to make happier.
He liked their fancy of making their poor little feast within scent of the roses. It was just such a fancy as She might have had herself. And he wanted to see what they had to depend on. He knew it must be little, and it touched him to know that, little as they had, they meant to share it with their poorer friend.