The two children did not know exactly whether they were frightened or not. If it had not seemed impossible that anything should go entirely wrong while John Holt was near them, they would have felt rather queer. But John Holt was evidently not the least alarmed.

“Look here,” he said, “I’m glad of it. I want to see that woman.”

“Do you?” exclaimed Robin and Meg together.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “Come along, and let’s go and find her.” And he strode out towards the Agricultural Building as if he were going towards something interesting.

It is true that the Agricultural Building had been too nearly connected with Aunt Matilda’s world to hold the greatest attractions for the little Pilgrims. It had, indeed, gone rather hard with them to find a name for it with a beautiful sound.

“But it is something,” Meg had said, “and it’s a great, huge thing, whether we care for it or not. That it isn’t the thing we care for doesn’t make it any less. We should be fools if we thought that, of course. And you know we’re not fools, Rob.”

“No,” Rob had said, standing gazing at rakes and harrows with his brows knit and his legs pretty wide apart. “And if there’s one thing that shows human beings can do what they set their minds to, it’s this place. Why, they used to thresh wheat with flails – two pieces of wood hooked together. They banged the wheat on the barn floor with things like that! I’ll tell you what, as soon as a man gets any sense, he begins to make machines. He bangs at things with his brain, instead of with his arms and legs.”

And in the end they had called it the Palace of the Genius of the Garth, and the Seasons, and the Sun. They walked manfully by John Holt through the place, Robin leading the way, until they came to the particular exhibit where he had caught sight of Aunt Matilda. Being a business-like and thorough person, she was still there, though she had left the steam plough and directed her attention to a side-delivery hay rake, which she seemed to find very well worth study.

If the children and John Holt had not walked up and planted themselves immediately in her path, she would not have seen them. It gave Meg a little shudder to see how like her world she looked, with her hard, strong-featured face, her straight skirt, and her square shoulders. They waited until she moved, and then she looked up and saw them. She did not start or look nervous in the least. She stared at them.

“Well,” she said. “So this was the place you came to.”

“Yes, Aunt Matilda,” said Robin. “We couldn’t let it go by us – and we took our own money.”

“And we knew you wouldn’t be anxious about us,” said Meg, looking up at her with a shade of curiosity.

Aunt Matilda gave a dry laugh.

“No,” she said, “I’ve no time to be anxious about children. I took care of myself when I was your age; and I had a sort of notion you’d come here. Who are you with?”

John Holt lifted his hat, but without too much ceremony. He knew Mrs. Matilda Jennings’s principles were opposed to the ceremonious.

“I’m a sort of neighbor of yours, Mrs. Jennings,” he explained. “I have some land near your farm, though I don’t live on the place. My name is John Holt.”

Aunt Matilda glanced from him to Robin.

She knew all about John Holt, and was quite sufficiently business-like to realize that it would be considered good luck to have him for a friend.

“Well,” she said to them, “you’ve got into good hands.”

John Holt laughed.

“By this time we all three think we’ve got into good hands,” he said; “and we’re going to see this thing through.”

“They haven’t money enough to see much of it,” said Mrs. Jennings.

“No,” said John Holt, “but I have, and it’s to be my treat.”

“Well,” said Aunt Matilda, “I suppose you can afford it. I couldn’t. I’ve come here on business.”

“You’d better let us help you to combine a little pleasure with it,” said John Holt. “This won’t happen twice in your life or mine.”

“There’s been a lot of money wasted in decorations,” said Mrs. Jennings. “I don’t believe it will pay them.”

“Oh, yes; it will pay them,” said John Holt. “It would pay them if they didn’t make a cent out of it. It would have paid me, if I’d done it, and lost money.”

“Now, see here,” said Mrs. Matilda Jennings, with a shrewd air, “the people that built this didn’t do it for their health – they did it for what they’d make out of it.”

“Perhaps they did,” said John Holt, “and perhaps all of them didn’t. And even those that did have made a bigger thing than they knew, by Jupiter!”

They were all sauntering along together, as they spoke. Meg and Robin wondered what John Holt was going to do. It looked rather as if he wanted to see more of Aunt Matilda. And it proved that he did. He had a reason of his own, and, combined with this, a certain keen sense of humor made her entertaining to him. He wanted to see how the place affected her, as he had wanted to look on at its effect on Meg and Robin. But he knew that Aunt Matilda had come to accumulate new ideas on agriculture, and that she must be first allowed to satisfy herself on that point; and he knew the children were not specially happy in the society of ploughs and threshing-machines, and he did not think Aunt Matilda’s presence would add to their pleasure in the Palace of the Earth, the Seasons, and the Sun. Besides, he wanted to talk to Mrs. Jennings a little alone.

“You know where Ben and his mother are?” he said to Robin, after a few minutes.

“Yes,” Robin answered.

“Then take Meg and go to them for a while. Mrs. Jennings wants to stay here about an hour more, and I want to walk round with her. In an hour come back to the entrance here and I will meet you.”

Meg and Robin went away as he told them. It was in one sense rather a relief.

“I wonder what she’ll say to him,” said Meg.

“There’s no knowing,” Robin answered. “But whatever it is, he will make it all right. He’s one of those who have found out human beings can do things if they try hard enough. He was as lonely and poor as we are when he was twelve. He told me so.”

What Aunt Matilda said was very matter-of-fact.

“I must say,” she said, as the children walked off, “you seem to have been pretty good to them.”

“They’ve been pretty good to me,” said John Holt. “They’ve been pretty good for me, though they’re not old enough to know it.”

“They’re older than their age,” said Aunt Matilda. “If they’d been like other children the Lord knows what I should have done with them. They’ve been no trouble in particular.”

“I should imagine not,” said John Holt.

“It was pretty business-like of them,” said Mrs. Jennings, with another dry laugh, “to make up their minds without saying a word to any one, and just hustle around and make their money to come here. They both worked pretty steady, I can tell you, and it wasn’t easy work, either. Most young ones would have given in. But they were bound to get here.”

“They’ll be bound to get pretty much where they make up their minds to, as life goes on,” remarked John Holt. “That’s their build.”

“Thank goodness, they’re not like their father,” Mrs. Jennings commented. “Robert hadn’t any particular fault, but he never made anything.”

“He and his wife seem to have made a home that was a pretty good start for these children,” was what John Holt said.

“Well,” said Mrs. Jennings, “they’ve got to do the rest themselves. He left them nothing.”

“No other relations but you?” John Holt asked.

“Not a soul. I shall keep them and let them work on the farm, I suppose.”

“It would pay to educate them well and let them see the world,” said John Holt.

“I dare say it would pay them,” replied Aunt Matilda, “but I’ve got all I can do, and my husband’s family have a sort of claim on me. Half the farm belonged to him.”

They spent their remaining hours in the Agricultural Building very profitably. Mrs. Jennings found John Holt an excellent companion. He knew things very thoroughly, and had far-seeing ideas of how far things would work, and how much they would pay. He did not expect Mrs. Jennings to tell him fairy stories, and he told her none, but before they left the place they had talked a good deal. John Holt had found out all he wanted to know about the two children, and he had made a proposition which certainly gave Aunt Matilda something new to think of.

She was giving some thought to it when they went out to meet the party of four at the entrance. She looked as if she had been rather surprised by some occurrence, but she did not look displeased, and the glances she gave to Meg and Robin expressed a new sense of appreciation of their practical value.

“I’ve promised Mr. Holt that I’ll let him take me through the Midway Plaisance,” she said. “I’ve seen the things I came to see, and I may as well get my ticket’s worth.”

Meg and Robin regarded her with interest. Aunt Matilda and the Midway Plaisance, taken together, would be such a startling contrast that they must be 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 strange 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 Lilies with unmovedly scrutinizing 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 feeling of being a bird, and it had seemed to her 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 looked down 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, Cannibal 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.

“It’s a queer sight,” she said to John Holt; “but I don’t see what good all this is going to do any one.”

“It saves travelling expenses,” answered John Holt, laughing. His shrewd, humorous face was very full of expression all the time they were walking about together. She had only come for the day, and she was going back by a night train. When she left them, she gave them both one of those newly appreciative looks.

“Well,” she said, “Mr. Holt’s going to look after you, he says. He’s got something to tell you when I’m gone. We’ve talked it over, and it’s all right. There’s one thing sure, you’re two of the luckiest young ones I’ve heard of.” And she marched away briskly.

Meg and Robin looked at each other and at John Holt. What was he going to tell them? But he told them nothing until they had all dined, and Ben and his mother had gone home, prepared to come again the next day.

By that time the City Beautiful was wreathed with its enchanted jewels of light again, and in the lagoon’s depths they trembled and blazed. John Holt called a gondola with a brilliant gondolier, and they got into it and shot out into the radiant night.

The sight was so unearthly in its beauty that for a few moments they were quite still. Meg sat in her Straw Parlor attitude, with her elbows on her knees, and her chin on her hands. Her eyes looked very big, and as lustrous as the jewels in the lagoon.

“I’m going to ask you something,” said John Holt, in a quiet sort of voice, at last.

“Yes,” said Meg, dreamily.

“Would you two like to belong to me?”

Meg’s hands dropped, and she turned her shining eyes.

“I’ve been talking to your Aunt Matilda about that big house of mine,” he went on. “It’s empty. There’s too much room in it. I want to take you two, and see if you can fill it up. Will you come?”

Meg and Robin turned their eyes upon each other in a dazed way.

“Will we come?” they stammered.

“Mrs. Jennings is willing,” said John Holt. “You two have things to do in the world. I’ll help you to learn to do them. You,” with the short laugh – “you shall tell me fairy stories.”

Fairy stories! What was this? Their hearts beat in their breasts like little hammers. The gondola moved smoothly over the scintillating water, and the jewel-strung towers and domes rose white against the lovely night. Meg looked around her, and uttered a little cry.

“Oh, Rob!” she said. “Oh, dear John Holt. We have got into the City Beautiful, and you are going to let us live there always.”

And John Holt knew that the big house would seem empty no more.

XX

It would have seemed that this was the climax of wonders and delights – to know that they had escaped forever from Aunt Matilda’s world, that they were not to be parted from John Holt, that they were to be like his children, living with him, sharing his great house, and learning all they could want to learn. All this, even when it was spoken of as possible, seemed more than could be believed, but it seemed almost more unbelievable day by day, as the truth began to realize itself in detail. What a marvellous thing it was to find out that they were not lonely, uncared-for creatures any more, but that they belonged to a man who seemed to hold all power in his hands! When John Holt took them to the big stores and bought them all they needed, new clothes and new trunks and new comforts, and luxuries such as they had never thought of as belonging to them, they felt almost aghast. He was so practical, and seemed 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, because 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 lagoon; 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 we had where all the leaves we wanted most were torn out, and we had to make the rest up ourselves?”

There was one story Meg found John Holt liked better than all the rest. It was the one about the City Beautiful, into which she used to follow Christian in the days when she and Robin lay in the Straw Parlor. It had grown so real to her that she made it very real and near in the telling. John Holt liked the way she had of filling it with people and things she knew quite well. Meg was very simple about it all, but she told that story well and often, when they were resting in some beautiful place alone. John Holt would lead her back to it, and sit beside her, listening, with a singular expression in his eyes. Ah, those were wonderful days!

Ben and his mother shared them, though they were not always with John Holt and Robin and Meg. John Holt made comfortable plans for them, and let them wander about and look their fill.

“It’s a great thing for him, Mr. Holt,” said the poor woman once, with a side glance at Ben. “Seems like he’s been born over again. The way he talks, when we go home at night, is as if he’d never be tired again as long as he lives. And a month ago I used to think he’d wear himself out, fretting. Seemed like I could see him getting thinner and peakeder every day. My, it’s a wonderful thing!”

And John Holt’s kindness did not end there, though it was some time before Meg and Robin heard all he had done. One day, when they had left the grounds earlier than usual, because they were tired, he spent the evening in searching out Ben’s disreputable father, and giving him what he called “a straight talk.”

“Look here,” he said, “I’m going to keep my eye on that boy of yours and your wife. I intend to make the house decent, and see that the boy has a chance to learn something, and take care they’re not too hard run. But I’m going to keep my eye on you too – at least, I shall see that some one else does – and if you make things uncomfortable you’ll be made pretty uncomfortable yourself, that’s all. I’d advise you to try the new recreation of going to work. It’ll be good for your health. Sort of athletics.”

And he kept his word.

It was a marvel of a holiday. It is not possible that among all the holiday-makers there were two others who were nearer the rapture of Paradise than these two little Pilgrims.

When it was at an end they went home with John Holt. It was a wonderful home-going. The house was a wonderful house. It was one of the remarkable places that some self-made western men have built and furnished, with the aid of unlimited fortunes and the unlimited shrewd good sense which has taught most of those of them whose lives have been spent in work and bold ventures that it is more practical to buy taste and experience than to spend money without it. John Holt had also had the aid and taste of a wonderful little woman, whose life had been easier and whose world had been broader than his own. Together they had built a beautiful and lovable home to live in. It contained things from many countries, and its charm and luxury might well have been the result of a far older civilization.

“Don’t you think, Robin,” said Meg, in a low voice, the first evening, as they sat in a deep-cushioned window-seat in the library together, “don’t you think you know what She was like?”

They had spoken together of her often, and somehow it was always in a rather low voice, and they always called her “She.”

Robin looked up from the book he held on his knee. It was a beautiful volume She had been fond of.

“I know why you say that,” he said. “You mean that somehow the house is like her. Yes, I’m sure it is, just as Aunt Matilda’s house is like her. People’s houses are always like them.”

“This one is full of her,” said Meg. “I should think John Holt would feel as if she must be in it, and she might speak to him any moment. I feel as if she might speak to me. And it isn’t only the pictures of her everywhere, with her eyes laughing at you from the wall and the tables and the mantels. It’s herself. Perhaps it is because she helped John Holt to choose things, and was so happy here.”

“Perhaps it is,” said Robin; and he added, softly, “this was her book.”

They went once more to Aunt Matilda’s world. They did it because John Holt wanted to see the Straw Parlor, and they wanted to show it to him and bid it good-by.

Aunt Matilda treated them with curious consideration. It almost seemed as if she had begun to regard them with respect. It seemed to her that any business-like person would respect two penniless children who had made themselves attractive to a man with the biggest farm in Illinois, and other resources still larger. They went out to the barn in their old way, when no one knew where they were going, and when no one was about to see them place their ladder against the stack, and climb up to the top. The roof seemed more like a dark tent than ever, and they saw the old birds’ nests, which by this time were empty.

“Meg,” said Robin, “do you remember the day we lay in the straw and told each other we had got work? And do you remember the afternoon I climbed up with the old coffee-pot, to boil the eggs in?”

“And when we counted the Treasure?” said Meg.

“And when we talked about miracles?” said Robin.

“And when it made me think human beings could do anything if they tried hard enough?” said Meg.

“And when you read the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’?” said John Holt.

“And the first afternoon when we listened to Jones and Jerry, and you said there was a City Beautiful?” said Meg.

“And there was,” said Robin, “and we’ve been there.”

“It was just this time in the afternoon,” said Meg, looking about her; “the red light was dying away, for I could not see to read any more.”

And for a little while they sat in the Straw Parlor, while the red light waned; and afterwards, when they spoke of it, they found they were all thinking of the same thing, and it was of the last day they had spent at the Enchanted City, when they had gone about together in a strange, tender, half-sad mood, loitering through the white palaces, lingering about the clear pools of green sea water, where strange creatures swam lazily or darted to and fro, looking their last at pictures and stories in marble, and listening to the tinkle of water plashing under great tropical leaves and over strange mosses, strolling through temples and past savage huts, and gazing in final questioning at mysterious, barbarous faces; and at last passing through the stately archway and being borne away on the waters of the great lake.

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 laughed 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 grow 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 day. There are beautiful things in the world; there are many people with kind and generous hearts; there are those who do their work well, giving what is theirs to give, and being glad in the giving; there are birds in the skies, and flowers and leaves in the woods – and Spring comes every year. These make the fairy stories. Every fairy story has a moral, and this one has two. They are these:

The human creature is a strong thing – when it is a brave one.

Nature never made a human hand without putting into it something to give.