Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/222

202 interesting. And as she looked at John Holt's face as they went on their way, Meg knew he was thinking the same thing. And it was a singular experience. Mrs. Jennings strode through the curious places rather as if she were following a plough down a furrow. She looked at Samoan beauties, Arab chiefs, and Persian Jersey Lilys with unmovedly scrutinising eyes. She did not waste time anywhere, but she took all in as if it were a matter of business. Camel drivers and donkey boys seemed to strike her merely as samples of slow travelling; she ascended, as it were, into mid-heaven on the Ferris Wheel with a grim air of determination. Being so lifted from earth and poised above in the clear air, Meg had thrilled with a strange exultant sense of being a bird, and felt that with a moment's flutter of wings she could soar higher and higher and lose herself in the pure sea of blue above. Aunt Matilda only looked below with cool interest.

"Pretty big power this," she said to John Holt "I guess it's made one man's fortune."

John Holt was a generous host. He took her from place to place to Lapland villages, cannibals' huts, and Moorish palaces. She tramped about and inspected them all with a sharp, unenthusiastic eye. She looked at the men and women and their strange costumes, plainly thinking them rather mad.