Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/171

Rh "I don't want it to be gradual," she said anxiously.

"I want it to be sudden! It can be gradual after."

She was an artist and an epicure in embryo, this child. She tasted her joys with a delicate palate, and lost no flavour of them. The rapture of yesterday was intensified tenfold to-day, because she felt it throbbing anew in this frail body beside her, in which Nature had imprisoned a soul as full of longings as her own, but not so full of power.

They took Ben by either hand and led him with the greatest care. He shut his eyes tight, and walked between them. People who glanced at them, smiled, recognising the time-honoured and familiar child-trick. They did not know that this time it was something more than that.

"The trouble is," Meg said in a low voice to Robin, "I don't know which is the most heavenly place to stand. Sometimes I think it is at one end, and sometimes at the other, and sometimes at the side."

They led their charge for some minutes indefinitely. Sometimes they paused and looked about them, speaking in undertones. Ben was rigidly faithful, and kept his eyes shut. As they hesitated for a moment near one of the buildings, a man who was descending the steps looked in their direction, and his look was one of recognition. It was the man who had watched them