Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/108

96 If they had been less young, or if they had been less tired, they might have found themselves awake a good many times during the night. But they were such children! and now that the great step was taken were so happy, and the soft, deep sleepiness of youth descended upon and overpowered them. Once or twice during the night they stirred, wakened for a dreamy blissful moment by some sound of a door shutting or a conductor passing through. But they were only conscious of a delicious sense of strangeness, of the stillness of the car full of sleepers, of the half-realised delight of feeling themselves carried along through the unknown country, and of the rattle of the wheels which never ceased saying rhythmically, "We're going—we're going—we're going!" Oh, what a night of dreams, and new vague sensations to be remembered always! Oh, that heavenly sense of joy to come, and adventure and young hopefulness and imaginings! Were there many others carried towards the City Beautiful that night who bore with them the same rapture of longing and belief—who saw with such innocent clearness only the fair and splendid thought which had created it—and were so innocently blind to any shadow of sordidness or mere worldly interest touching its white walls? And after the passing of this wonderful night, what a wakening in