Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/152

136 answer, "We're taking care of ourselves,' never failed to waken as much friendly interest as surprise.

They kept up their fairy story of the Great Genie, and called things by fairy story names, and talked to each other of their fairy story fancies about them. It was so much more delightful to say, "Let us go to the Palace of the Genie of the Sea," than to say, "Let us go to the Fisheries Buildings." And once in the palace standing among great rocks and pools and fountains, with water plashing and trickling over strange sea plants, and strange sea monsters swimming beneath their eyes in green sea water, it was easy to believe in the Genie who had brought them all together.

"He was very huge," Meg said, making a picture of him. "He had monstrous eyes that looked like the sea when it is blue; he had great white coral teeth, and he had silver scaly fish skin wound round him, and his hair was long sea grass and green and brown weeds."

They stood in grottos, and looked down into clear pools at swift darting things of gold and silver and strange prismatic colours. Meg made up stories of tropical rivers with palms and jungle cane fringing them, and tigers and lions coming to lap at the brink. She invented rushing mountain streams and lakes