Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/27

Rh she would lead him through the streets of the City Beautiful in a different mood—a dreamy sort of mood.

"There were tall trees covered with white lilies," she would say. "They were on each side of the streets—and they swayed and the lilies swung like great white bells—and the sweetness shook out of them and was in all the air the people breathed, and there was a strange golden light—like the light in the morning—and the houses were as white as snow, and had slender pillars and archways, and courts with flowers and fountains. And you could see lovely people in delicate, soft-floating robes—not all white robes, but pale flower colours—and everybody had a little smile, and a look as if their eyes were stars." She would dream on in this way sometimes for a long time, and her own eyes would grow large and sometimes shine so that Robin knew that in a little while the brightness would fill them and brim over and fall in two large splendid drops on to the straw, which they would both pretend not to see.

This afternoon, when the light began to redden and then to die away, she and Christian were very near the gates. She longed so to go in with him, and was yearning towards him with breathless eagerness, when she heard Robin's cry below coming up from the barn floor.