Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/39

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Two Little Pilgrims' Progress
27

"Just as they do in Venice?" Meg gasped.

"Just as they do in Venice. And it will be the same with all the other countries. It will be as if they were all brought there—Spanish places and Egyptian places and German places, and French and Italian and Irish and Scotch and English, and all the others."

"To go there would be like travelling all over the world," cried Meg.

"Yes," said Rob excitedly; "and all the trades will be there, and all the machines, and inventions, and books, and statues, and scientific things, and wonderful things, and everything anyone wants to learn about in all the world!"

In his excitement his words had become so rapid that they almost tumbled over each other, and he said the last sentence in a rush. There were red spots on his cheeks, and a queer look in his black eyes. He had been listening to descriptions of this thing all day. A new hand, hot from the excitement in Chicago, had been among the workers. Apparently he had heard of nothing else, thought of nothing else, talked of nothing else, and dreamed of nothing else but the World's Fair for weeks. Finding himself among people who had only bucolic and vague ideas about it, he had poured forth all he knew, and, being