It did make it seem less lonely to be talking, and so they did not stop. And there was so much to say.
“Robin,” broke forth Meg once, giving his hand a sudden clutch, “we are on the way—we are going. Soon we shall be in the train and it will be carrying us nearer and nearer. Suppose it was a dream, and we should wake up!”
“It isn’t a dream!” said Rob, stoutly. “It’s real—it’s as real as Aunt Matilda!” He was always more practical-minded than Meg.
“We needn’t philander any more,” Meg said.
“It isn’t philandering to talk about a real thing.”
“Oh, 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 am 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 some people, perhaps, who have worked months and months making one single thing—just as we have worked to go to see it. And perhaps, at first they were afraid they couldn’t do it, and they set their minds to it as we did, and tried and tried, and then did it at last. I like to think of those men and women, Meg, because, when the City has melted away, the things won’t melt. They will last after the people. And we are people too. I’m a man, and you are a woman, you know, though we are only twelve, and it gives me a strong feeling to think of those others.”
“It makes you think that perhaps men and women can do anything if they set their minds to it,” said Meg, quite solemnly. “Oh, I do like that!”