Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/133

Rh flowers and palms, her child eyes filled with a deep, strange glow of joy and dreaming.

She leaned upon the balustrade in her favourite fashion, her chin upon her hands.

"We need not pretend it is a fairy story, Robin," she said. "It is a fairy story—but it is real. Who ever thought a fairy story could come true. I've made up how it came to be like this."

"Tell us how?" said Robin, looking over the jewelled water almost as she did.

"It was like this," she said: "There was a great Genie who was the ruler of all the other Genii in all the world. They were all powerful and rich and wonderful magicians, but he could make them all obey him, and give him what they stored away. And he said, 'I will build a splendid city that all the world shall flock to, and wonder at, and remember for ever. And in it some of all the things in the world shall be seen, so that the people who see it shall learn what the world is like—how huge it is, and what wisdom it has in it, and what wonders. And it will make them know what they are like themselves, because the wonders will be made by hands and feet and brains just like their own. And so they will understand how strong they are, if they only knew it, and it will give them courage and fill them with thoughts.'"