sound were no longer rare things. The days grew warmer, and the men threw off their coats and began to draw their shirt sleeves across their foreheads when they were at work.
One evening when Robin came up into the Straw Parlour he brought something with him. It was a battered old tin coffee-pot.
"What is that for?" asked Meg; for he seemed to carry it as if it was of some value.
"It's old and rusty, but there are no holes in it," Robin answered. "I saw it lying in a fence corner where someone had thrown it—perhaps a tramp—and it put a new thought into my head. It will do to boil eggs in."
"Eggs?" said Meg.
"There's nothing much nicer than hard-boiled eggs," said Robin; "and you can carry them about with you. It just came into my mind that we could take some of our eggs, and go somewhere where no one would be likely to see us, and build a fire of sticks and boil some eggs and carry them with us to eat."
"Robin," cried Meg, with admiring ecstasy, "I wish I had thought of that."
"It doesn't matter which of us thought of it," said Rob; "it's all the same."
So it was decided that, when the time came, they
