Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/218

198 would pay them if they didn't make a cent out of it. It would have paid me, if I'd done it, and lost money."

"Now, see here," said Mrs. Matilda Jennings, with a shrewd air, "the people that built this didn't do it for their health—they did it for what they'd make out of it."

"Perhaps they did," said John Holt, "and perhaps all of them didn't. And even those that did have made a bigger thing than they knew—by Jupiter!"

They were all sauntering along together as they spoke. Meg and Robin wondered what John Holt was going to do. It looked rather as if he wanted to see more of Aunt Matilda. And it proved that he did. He had a reason of his own, and combined with this a certain keen sense of humour made her entertaining to him. He wanted to see how the place affected her, as he had wanted to look on at its effect on Meg and Robin. But he knew that Aunt Matilda had come to accumulate new ideas on agriculture, and that she must be first allowed to satisfy herself on that point, and he knew the children were not specially happy in the society of ploughs and threshing-machines, and he did not think Aunt Matilda's presence would add to their pleasure in the Palace of the Earth, the Seasons, and the Sun; besides, he wanted to talk to Mrs. Jennings a little alone.