Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/196

176 And to this Arabian Nights' Entertainment he took them all. They felt as if he was a prince. And oh! the exciting strangeness of it! To be in such a place and amid such marvels with a man who seemed to set no limit to the resources of his purse. They had never even been near a person who spent money as if it were made for spending, and the good things of life were made to be bought by it. What John Holt spent was only what other people with full purses spent in the Midway Plaisance, but to Meg and Robin and Ben it seemed that he poured forth money in torrents. They looked at him with timorous wonder and marvelling gratitude. It seemed that he meant them to see everything and to do everything. They rode on camels down a street in Cairo, they talked to chiefs of the desert, they listened to strange music, they heard strange tongues, and tasted strange confections. Robin and Ben went about like creatures in a delightful dream. Every few minutes during the first hour Robin would sidle close to Meg and clutch her dress or her hand with a grasp of rapture.

"Oh, Meg!" he would say, "and yesterday we were so poor! And now we are seeing everything!"

And when John Holt heard him, he would laugh half to himself, a laugh with a touch of pleasant