The air seemed to be made up of the scent of everything she liked best—ripe strawberries and vanilla-cream, with a touch of pine-apples and peach. All at once there came a great puff of chocolate perfume.
“Lo—ove—ly!” sighed Kitty, shutting her eyes and sniffing.
“Ex—cel—lent!” chuckled the naughty sprite, opening its nose.
“Shut your nose,” whispered the guardian child anxiously.
Kitty laughed. She thought it was just a little exacting of the guardian child to advise her to shut her nose. What harm could there be in a perfume, especially if in smelling it she kept her eyes fixed upon the star, and she did not stray from the path?
The odor grew more and more enticing. She took in deeper and deeper breaths of that smell of ripe sunlighty fruit with an entrancing suggestion of burnt almonds stealing upon the breeze.
“It is dangerous! it is dangerous! Think of the Christmas blessing for Johnnie! Think of the fog picture of the greedy children!” murmured the guardian child restlessly.
“Oh! what harm can there be in smelling a taste?” laughed Kitty, with a confident glance first at the glistening little figure standing erect and watchful on her right shoulder, then giving a peep round to the sprite, who was sniffing with a look of expectation.
“You are not hungry! you are not thirsty!” whispered the guardian child.
The naughty sprite jogged Kitty’s cheek in a friendly fashion, and pointed with its furry paw. She gave a sidelong look in the direction it indicated. Then she paused in amazement. Was it fruit-country they were going through? No wonder it smelled so sweet! Hot-house fruit and garden fruit grew together in glowing profusion. There were fields of strawberry-beds, where the red berries shone like elfin lanterns through the fresh green leaves. There were plantations of bananas, and each banana was like a hatchet of gold. There were martial-looking pine-apples burnished like copper helmets, guarded by pale-green swords of spiky leaves. Enormous bunches of grapes hung down, each grape big as a plum; purple grapes, grapes blue on one side, redly transparent on the other; white grapes golden and gleaming. And oh! the peaches and the nectarines were as plentiful as blackberries.