Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/96

84 Rob, just think of it! waiting for us under the stars this very moment—the City Beautiful!"

And then walking close to each other in the dimness, they told each other how they saw it in imagination, and what its wonders would be to them, and which they would see first, and how they would remember it all their lives afterwards, and have things to talk of and think of. Very few people would see it as they would, but they did not know that. It was not a gigantic enterprise to them, a great scheme, fought for and struggled over for the divers reasons poor humanity makes for itself. That it would either make or lose money was not a side of the question that reached them. They only dwelt on the beauty and wonder of it, which made it seem like an enchanted thing.

"I keep thinking of the white palaces, and that it is like a fairy story," Meg said; "and that it will melt away like those cities travellers sometimes see in the desert; and I wish it wouldn't. But it will have been real for a while, and everybody will remember it. I am so glad it is beautiful—and white. I'm so glad it is white, Robin!"

"And I keep thinking," said Robin, "of all the people who have made the things to go in it, and how they have worked and invented. There have been