Two Little Pilgrims' Progress

Frances Hodgson Burnett

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9783849649067
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

In "Two Little Pilgrims' Progress " Mrs. Burnett is at her best. It is the story of two children - a little boy and girl - brought up on a Western farm, where they have been neglected by their aunt with whom they live, and who find their chief happiness in reading Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress " in a corner of the barn. Just then they hear of what must have been a glimpse of fairyland to so many Western children, the White City of the Chicago Exhibition, and they make up their minds to take their small savings and go to see the wonder. This is their pilgrims' progress, and their adventures, which in the end result most happily, are told by Mrs. Burnett in her well-known delightful manner. A book that has the potential to rival even "Fauntleroy " in popularity.

XIV

It would have been a loud sound which would have awakened them during those deep sleeping hours of the night. They did not even stir on their poor pillows when, long after midnight, there was the noise of heavy drunken footsteps and heavy drunken stumbling in the passage below, and then the raising of a man’s rough voice, and the upsetting of chairs and the slamming of doors, mingled with the expostulations of the woman, whose husband had come home in something worse than his frequent ill-fashion. They slept sweetly through it all, but when the morning came, and hours of unbroken rest had made their slumbers lighter, and the sunshine streamed in through the broken windows, they were called back to the world by loud and angry sounds.

“What is it?” said Meg, sitting bolt upright and rubbing her eyes; “somebody’s shouting.”

“And somebody’s crying,” said Robin, sitting up too, but more slowly.

It was quite clear to them, as soon as they were fully awake, that both these things were happening. A man seemed to be quarrelling below. They could hear him stamping about and swearing savagely. And they could hear the woman’s voice, which sounded as if she were trying to persuade him to do or leave undone something. They could not hear her words, but she was crying, and somebody else was crying, too, and they knew it was the boy with the little old face and the hump-back.

“I suppose it’s the woman’s husband,” said Meg. “I’m glad he wasn’t here last night.”

“I wonder if he knows we are here,” said Robin, listening anxiously.

It was plain that he did know. They heard him stumbling up the staircase, grumbling and swearing as he came, and he was coming up to their room, it was evident.

“What shall we do?” exclaimed Meg, in a whisper.

“Wait,” Robin answered, breathlessly. “We can’t do anything.”

The heavy feet blundered up the short second flight and blundered to their door. It seemed that the man had not slept off his drunken fit. He struck the door with his fist.

“Hand out that dollar,” he shouted. “When my wife takes roomers I’m going to be paid. Hand it out.”

They heard the woman hurrying up the stairs after him. She was out of breath with crying, and there was a choking sound in her voice when she spoke to them through the door.

“You’d better let him have it,” she said.

“I guess they’d better,” said the man, roughly. “Who’d’ they suppose owns the house?”

Robin got up and took a dollar from their very small store, which was hidden in the lining of his trousers. He went to the door and opened it a little, and held the money out.

“Here it is,” he said.

The man snatched it out of his hand and turned away, and went stumbling down stairs, still growling. The woman stood a minute on the landing, and they heard her make a pitiful sort of sound, half sob, half sniff.

Meg sat up in bed, with her chin on her hands, and glared like a little lioness.

“What do you think of that?” she said.

“He’s a devil!” said Robin, with terseness. And he was conscious of no impropriety. “I wanted that boy to have it, and go.” It was not necessary to say where.

“So did I,” answered Meg. “And I believe his mother would have given it to him, too.”

They heard the man leave the house a few minutes later, and then it did not take them long to dress and go down the narrow, broken-balustraded stairs again. As they descended the first flight they saw the woman cooking something over the stove in her kitchen, and as she moved about they saw her brush her apron across her eyes.

The squalid street was golden with the early morning sunshine, which is such a joyful thing, and, in the full, happy flood of it, a miserable little figure sat crouched on the steps. It was the boy Ben, and they saw that he looked paler than he had looked the night before, and his little face looked older. His elbow was on his knee and his cheek on his hand, and there were wet marks on his cheeks.

A large lump rose up in Meg’s throat.

“I know what’s the matter,” she whispered to Robin.

“So—so do I,” Robin answered, rather unsteadily. “And he’s poorer than anybody else. It ought not to go by him.”

“No, no,” said Meg. “It oughtn’t.”

She walked straight to the threshold and sat down on the step beside him. She was a straightforward child, and she was too much moved to stand on ceremony. She sat down quite close by the poor little fellow, and put her hand on his arm.

“Never you mind,” she said. “Never you mind.” And her throat felt so full that for a few seconds she could say nothing more.

Robin stood against the door post. The effect of this was to make his small jaw square itself.

“Don’t mind us at all,” he said. “We—we know.”

The little fellow looked at Meg and then up at him. In that look he saw that they did know.

“Mother was going to give that dollar to me,” he said, brokenly. “I was going to the Fair on it. Everybody is going, everybody is talking about it, and thinking about it! Nobody’s been talking of nothing else for months and months! The streets are full of people on their way! And they all pass me by.”

He rubbed his sleeve across his forlorn face and swallowed hard.

“There’s pictures in the shops,” he went on, “and flags flying. And everything’s going that way, and me staying behind!”

Two of the large, splendid drops, which had sometimes gathered on Meg’s eyelashes and fallen on the straw, when she had been telling stories in the barn, fell now upon her lap.

“Robin!” she said.

Robin stood and stared very straight before him for a minute, and then his eyes turned and met hers.

“We’re very poor,” he said to her, “but everybody has—has something.”

“We couldn’t leave him behind,” Meg said, “we couldn’t! Let’s think.” And she put her head down, resting her elbows on her knee and clutching her forehead with her supple, strong little hands.

“What can we do without?” said Robin. “Let’s do without something.”

Meg lifted her head.

“We will eat nothing but the eggs for breakfast,” she said, “and go without lunch—if we can. Perhaps we can’t—but we’ll try. And we will not go into some of the places we have to pay to go into. I will make up stories about them for you. And, Robin, it is true—everybody has something to give. That’s what I have—the stories I make up. It’s something—just a little.”

“It isn’t so little,” Robin answered; “it fills in the empty place, Meg?” with a question in his voice.

She answered with a little nod, and then put her hand on Ben’s arm again. During their rapid interchange of words he had been gazing at them in a dazed, uncomprehending way. To his poor little starved nature they seemed so strong and different from himself that there was something wonderful about them. Meg’s glowing, dark little face quite made his weak heart beat as she turned it upon him.

“We are not much better off than you are,” she said, “but we think we’ve got enough to take you into the grounds. You let us have your bed. Come along with us.”

“To—to—the Fair?” he said, tremulously.

“Yes,” she answered, “and when we get in I’ll try and think up things to tell you and Robin, about the places we can’t afford to go into. We can go into the Palaces for nothing.”

“Palaces!” he gasped, his wide eyes on her face.

She laughed.

“That’s what we call them,” she said; “that’s what they are. It’s part of a story. I’ll tell it to you as we go.”

“Oh!” he brea...

Table of contents

• I
• II
• III
• IV
• V
• VI
• VII
• VIII
• IX
• X
• XI
• XII
• XIII
• XIV
• XVI
• XVIII
• XIX