Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/227

Rh to know so well how to do everything, that each hour convinced them more and more that everything was possible to him. And he seemed to like so much to be with them. Day after day he took them to their City Beautiful, and enjoyed with them every treasure in it. And they had so much time before them, they could see it all at rapturous leisure and ease. No more hungry hours, no more straining of tired bodies and spurring of weary feet, because there was so much to see and so little time to see it in, since there was so little money to be spent. There was time to loiter through palaces and linger before pictures and marvellous things. And John Holt could explain them alL No more limited and vague imaginings. There was time to hear everything, and Meg could tell fairy stories by the hour if she was in the mood. She told them in tropical bowers, she told them as they floated on the lagoons, she read them in strange savage or Oriental faces.

“I shall have enough to last all my life, John Holt,” she would say. “I see a new one every half-hour. If you like I will tell them all to you and Robin when you have nothing else to do.”

“It will be like the Arabian Nights,” said Robin. “Meg, do you remember that old book