Frances Burnett: Two Little Pilgrims' Progress

She reached the scene of action in the midst of a rush of work, and after their first rather exasperated surprise at so immature and inexperienced a creature being supposed to be able to help them, the women found plenty for her to do. She said so few words and looked so little afraid that she made a sort of impression on them.

“See,” she said to the head woman, “Aunt Matilda didn’t send me to do things that need teaching. Just tell me the little things, it does not matter what, and I’ll do them. I can.”

How she worked that morning – how she ran on errands – how she carried this and that – how she washed and scrubbed milk-pans – and how all her tasks were menial and apparently trivial, though entirely necessary, and how the activity and rapidity and unceasingness of them tried her unaccustomed young body, and finally made her limbs ache and her back feel as if it might break at some unexpected moment, Meg never forgot. But such was the desperation of her indomitable little spirit and the unconquerable will she had been born with, that when it was over she was no more in the mood for giving up than she had been when she walked in among the workers after her interview with Aunt Matilda.

When dinner-time came she walked up to Mrs. Macartney, the manager of the dairy work, and asked her a question.

“Have I helped you?” she said.

“Yes, you have,” said the woman, who was by no means an ill-natured creature for a hard-driven woman. “You’ve done first-rate.”

“Will you tell Aunt Matilda that?” said Meg.

“Yes,” was the answer.

Meg was standing with her hands clasped tightly behind her back, and she looked at Mrs. Macartney very straight and hard from under her black brows.

“Mrs. Macartney,” she said, “if I’m worth it, Aunt Matilda will give me a dollar a week; and it’s time I began to work for my living. Am I worth that much?”

“Yes, you are,” said Mrs. Macartney, “if you go on as you’ve begun.”

“I shall go on as I’ve begun,” said Meg. “Thank you, ma’am,” and she walked back to the house.

After dinner she waited to speak to Aunt Matilda again.

“I went to the dairy,” she said.

“I know you did,” Aunt Matilda answered. “Mrs. Macartney told me about it. You can go on. I’ll give you the dollar a week.”

She looked the child over again, as she had done in the morning, but with a shade of expression which might have meant a touch of added interest. Perhaps her mind paused just long enough to bring back to her the time when she had been a worker at twelve years old, and also had belonged to no one.

“She’ll make her living,” she said, as she watched Meg out of the room. “She’s more like me than she is like her father. Robert wasn’t worthless, but he had no push.”

Having made quite sure that she was not wanted in the dairy for the time being, Meg made her way to the barn. She was glad to find it empty, so that she could climb the ladder without waiting. When she reached the top and clambered over the straw the scent of it seemed delightful to her. It was like something welcoming her home. She threw herself down full length in the Straw Parlor. Robin had not been at dinner. He had gone out early and had not returned. As she lay, stretching her tired limbs, and staring up at the nest in the dark, tent-like roof above her, she hoped he would come. And he did. In about ten minutes she heard the signal from the barn floor, and answered it. Robin came up the ladder rather slowly. When he made his way over the straw to her corner, and threw himself down beside her, she saw that he was tired too. They talked a few minutes about ordinary things, and then Meg thought she would tell him about the dairy. But it appeared that he had something to tell himself, and he began first.

“I’ve been making a plan, Meg,” he said.

“Have you?” said Meg. “What is it?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for two or three days,” he went on, “but I thought I wouldn’t say anything about it until – till I tried how it would work.”

Meg raised herself on her elbow and looked at him curiously. It seemed so queer that he should have had a plan too.

“Have you – tried?” she said.

“Yes,” he answered, “I have been working for Jones this morning, and I did quite a lot. I worked hard. I wanted him to see what I could do. And then, Meg, I asked him if he would take me on – like the rest of the hands – and pay me what I was worth.”

“And what did he say?” breathlessly.

“He looked at me a minute – all over – and half laughed, and I thought he was going to say I wasn’t worth anything. It wouldn’t have been true, but I thought he might, because I’m only twelve years old. It’s pretty hard to be only twelve when you want to get work. But he didn’t, he said, ‘Well, I’m darned if I won’t give you a show;’ and I’m to have a dollar a week.”

“Robin,” Meg cried, with a little gasp of excitement, “so am I!”

“So are you!” cried Robin, and sat bolt upright. “ You! ”

“It’s – it’s because we are twins,” said Meg, her eyes shining like lamps. “I told you twins did things alike because they couldn’t help it. We have both thought of the same thing. I went to Aunt Matilda, asked her to let me work somewhere and pay me, and she let me go into the dairy and try, and Mrs. Macartney said I was a help, and I am to have a dollar a week, if I go on as I’ve begun.”

Robin’s hand gave hers a clutch, just as it had done before, that day when he had not known why.

“Meg, I believe,” he said, “I believe that we two will always go on as we begin. I believe we were born that way. We have to, we can’t help it. And two dollars a week, if they keep us, and we save it all – we could go almost anywhere – sometime.”

Meg’s eyes were fixed on him with a searching, but half frightened expression.

“Almost anywhere,” she said, quite in a whisper. “Anywhere not more than a hundred miles away.”

They did not tell each other of the strange and bold thought which had leaped up in their minds that day. Each felt an unwonted shyness about it, perhaps because it had been so bold; but it had been in each mind, and hidden though it was, it remained furtively in both.

They went on exactly as they had begun. Each morning Meg went to her drudgery in the dairy and Robin followed Jones whithersoever duty led. If the elder people had imagined they would get tired and give up they found out their mistake. That they were often tired was true, but that in either there arose once the thought of giving up, never! And they worked hard. The things they did to earn their weekly stipend would have touched the heart of a mother of cared-for children, but on Mrs. Jennings’s model farm people knew how much work a human being could do when necessity drove. They were all driven by necessity, and it was nothing new to know that muscles ached and feet swelled and burned. In fact, they knew no one who did not suffer, as a rule, from these small inconveniences. And these children, with their set little faces and mature intelligence, were somehow so unsuggestive of the weakness and limitations of childhood that they were often given work which was usually intrusted only to elder people. Mrs. Macartney found that Meg never slighted anything, never failed in a task, and never forgot one, so she gave her plenty to do. Scrubbing and scouring that others were glad to shirk fell to her share. She lifted and dragged things about that grown-up girls grumbled over. What she lacked in muscle and size she made up in indomitable will power that made her small face set itself and her small body become rigid as iron. Her work ended by not confining itself to the dairy, but extended to the house, the kitchen – anywhere there were tiresome things to be done.