Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/207

Rh Holt. He was in a pretty bad way—a pretty bad way."

As they became more and more intimate and spoke more to each other, Meg understood how bad a "way" he had been in. She was an observing, old-fashioned child, and she saw many things a less sympathetic creature might have passed by; and when John Holt discovered this—which he was quite shrewd enough to do rather soon—he gradually began to say things to her he would not have said to other people. She understood somehow that though the black look passed away from his face, and he laughed and made them laugh, there was a thing that was never quite out of his mind. She saw that pictures brought it back to him, that strains of music did, that pretty mothers with children hurt him when they passed, and that every now and then he would cast a broad glance over all the whiteness and blueness and beauty and grace, and draw a long, quick sigh, as if he was homesick for something.

"You know," he said once when he did this and looked round and found Meg's eyes resting yearningly upon him—"you know she was coming with me! We planned it all. Lord! how she liked to talk of it! She said it would be an enchanted city—just as you did, Meg. That was one of the first things that made