Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/234

214 As they had been carried away farther and farther, and the white wonder had begun to lose itself and fade into a white spirit of a strange and lovely thing, Meg had felt the familiar throb at her heart and the familiar lump in her throat, and she had broken into a piteous little cry.

“Oh, John Holt,” she said, it is going—it is going, and we shall never see it again! For it will vanish away—it will vanish away! And the tears rushed down her cheeks, and she hid her face on his arm,

But though he had langhed his short laugh. John Holt had made her lift up her head.

“No,” he said, “it won’t vanish away, It’s not one of the things that vanish. Things don’t vanish away, that a million or so of people have seen as they’ve seen this. They stay—where they’re not forgotten and time doesn’t change them. They’re put where they can be passed on—and passed on again. And thoughts that grew out of them bring other ones. And what things may grow out of it that never would have been—and where the end is the Lord only knows, for no human being can tell. It won’t vanish away.”

Dear little children and big ones, this is a Fairy Story. And why not? There are not many people who believe it, but fairy stories are happening every