had had serious plans. He had decided that he would be a great inventor. He had also decided – a little later – that he would not be poor, like his father, but would be very rich. He had begun by having a savings bank, into which he put rigorously every penny that was given to him. He had been so quaintly systematic about it that people were amused, and gave him pennies instead of candy and toys. He kept a little banking book of his own. If he had been stingy he would have been a very unpleasant little boy, but he was only strict with himself. He was capable of taking from his capital to do the gentlemanly thing by Meg at Christmas.
“He has the spirit of the financier, that is all,” said his father.
Since he had been with Aunt Matilda he had found opportunities to earn a trifle rather frequently. On the big place there were small, troublesome duties the farm hands found he could be relied on to do, which they were willing to pay for. They found out that he never failed them.
“Smart little chap,” they said; “always up to time when he undertakes a thing.”
To-day he had been steadily at work under the head man. Aunt Matilda had no objection to his odd jobs.
“He has his living to earn, and he may as well begin,” she said.
So Meg had been alone since morning. She had only one duty to perform, and then she was free. The first spring they had been with Aunt Matilda Robin had invested in a few chickens, and their rigorous care of them had resulted in such success that the chickens had become a sort of centre of existence to them. They could always have any dreams of the future upon the fortune to be gained by chickens. You could calculate on bits of paper about chickens and eggs until your head whirled at the magnitude of your prospects. Meg’s duty was to feed them, and show them scrupulous attentions when Robin was away.
After she had attended to them she went to the barn, and, finding it empty, climbed up to the Straw Parlor with an old “Pilgrim’s Progress,” to spend the day.
This afternoon, when the light began to redden and then to die away, she and Christian were very near the gates. She longed so to go in with him, and was yearning towards them with breathless eagerness, when she heard Robin’s cry below, coming up from the barn floor.
She sprang up with a start, feeling bewildered a second, before she answered. The City Beautiful was such millions – such millions of miles away from Aunt Matilda’s barn. She found herself breathing quickly and rubbing her eyes, as she heard Robin hurrying up the ladder.
Somehow she felt as if he was rather in a hurry, and when his small, black shock head and wide-awake black eyes appeared above the straw she had a vague feeling that he was excited, and that he had come from another world. He clambered on to the stack and made his way to her, and threw himself full length on the straw at her side.
“Meg!” he said – “Hallo, you look as if you were in a dream! Wake up! – Jones and Jerry are coming to the barn – I hurried to get here before them; they’re talking about something I want you to hear – something new! Wake up!”
“Oh, Robin!” said Meg, clutching her book and coming back to earth with a sigh, “I don’t want to hear Jones and Jerry. I don’t want to hear any of the people down there. I’ve been reading the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ and I do wish – I do so wish there was a City Beautiful.”
Robin gave a queer little laugh. He really was excited.
“There is going to be one,” he said. “Jones and Jerry don’t really know it, but it is something like that they are talking about; a City Beautiful – a real one – on this earth, and not a hundred miles away. Let’s get near the edge and listen.”
II
They drew as near to the edge as they could without being seen. They did not understand in the least. Robin was not given to practical jokes, but what he had said sounded rather as if there was a joke somewhere. But she saw Jones and Jerry enter the barn, and saw, before they entered, that they were deep in talk. It was Jones who was speaking. Jones was Aunt Matilda’s head man, and was an authority on many things.
“There’s been exhibitions and fairs all over the world,” he was saying, “but there’s been nothing like what this will be. It will be a city, that’s what it will be, and all the world is going to be in it. They are going to build it fronting on the water, and bank the water up into lakes and canals, and build places like white palaces beside them, and decorate the grounds with statues and palms and flowers and fountains, and there’s not a country on earth that won’t send things to fill the buildings. And there won’t be anything a man can’t see by going through ’em. It’ll be as good as a college course to spend a week there.”
Meg drew a little closer to Robin in the straw.
“What are they talking about?” she whispered.
“Listen,” said Bob.
Jerry, who was moving about at some work below, gave a chuckling laugh.
“Trust ’em to do the biggest thing yet, or bust, them Chicago people,” he said. “It’s got to be the biggest thing – a Chicago Fair.”
“It’s not goin’ to be the Chicago Fair,” Jones said. “They’re not goin’ to put up with no such idea as that; it’s the World’s Fair. They’re going to ring in the universe.”
“That’s Chicago out an’ out,” said Jerry. “Buildin’s twenty stories high, an’ the thermometer twenty-five degrees below zero, an’ a World’s Fair. Christopher Columbus! I’d like to see it!”
“I bet Christopher Columbus would like to see it,” said Jones. “It’s out of compliment to him they’re getting it up – for discovering Chicago.”
“Well, I didn’t know he made his name that way partic’lar,” said Jerry. “Thought what he prided hisself on was discoverin’ America.”
“Same thing,” said Jones, “same thing! Wouldn’t have had much to blow about, and have statues set up, and comic operas written about him, if it had only been America he’d discovered. Chicago does him full credit, and she’s goin’ to give him a send-off that’ll be a credit to her.”
Robin smothered a little laugh in his coat-sleeve. He was quite used to hearing jokes about Chicago. The people in the country round it were enormously proud of it, and its great schemes and great buildings and multi-millionaires, but those who were given to jokes had the habit of being jocular about it, just as they had the habit of proclaiming and dwelling upon its rush and wealth and enterprise. But Meg was not a jocular person. She was too intense and easily excited. She gave Robin an impatient nudge with her elbow, not in reproof, but as a sort of irrepressible ejaculation.
“I wish they wouldn’t be funny,” she exclaimed. “I want them to tell more about it. I wish they’d go on.”
But they did not go on; at least, not in any way that was satisfactory. They only remained in the barn a short time longer, and they were busy with the work they had come to do. Meg craned her neck and listened, but they did not tell more, and she was glad when they went away, so that she could turn to Robin.
“Don’t you know more than that?” she said. “Is it true? What have you heard? Tell me yourself.”
“I’ve heard a lot to-day,” said Robin. “They were all talking about it all the time, and I meant to tell you myself, only I saw Jones and Jerry coming, and thought, perhaps, we should hear something more if we listened.”
