Aunt Matilda would let us go to school if we asked her. It wouldn't cost her anything if we went to the public school."
"She wouldn't if we didn't ask her," said Meg. "She would never think of it herself. Do you know what I was thinking yesterday. I was looking at the pigs in their sty. Some of them were eating, and one was full and was lying down going to sleep. And I said to myself, 'Robin and I are just like you. We live just like you. We eat our food and go to bed, and get up again and eat some more food. We don't learn anything more than you do, and we are not worth so much to anybody—we are not even worth killing at Christmas' "
If they had never known any other life, or if Nature had not given them the big, questioning eyes, and square little jaws and strong nervous little fists, they might have been content to sink into careless idleness and apathy. No one was actively unkind to them—they had their Straw Parlour and were free to amuse themselves as they chose. But they had been made of the material of which the world's workers are built, and their young hearts were full of a restlessness and longing whose full significance they themselves did not comprehend.
And the wonder working in the world beyond them,
