“Oh, Robin!” said Meg, clutching her book and coming back to earth with a sigh, “I don’t want to hear Jones and Jerry. I don’t want to hear any of the people down there. I’ve been reading the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ and I do wish—I do so wish there was a City Beautiful.”
Robin gave a queer little laugh. He really was excited.
“There is going to be one,” he said. “Jones and Jerry don’t really know it, but it is something like that they are talking about; a City Beautiful—a real one—on this earth, and not a hundred miles away. Let’s get near the edge and listen.”
II
They drew as near to the edge as they could without being seen. They did not understand in the least. Robin was not given to practical jokes, but what he had said sounded rather as if there was a joke somewhere. But she saw Jones and Jerry enter the barn, and saw, before they entered, that they were deep in talk. It was Jones who was speaking. Jones was Aunt Matilda’s head man, and was an authority on many things.
“There’s been exhibitions and fairs all over the world,” he was saying, “but there’s been nothing like what this will be. It will be a city, that’s what it will be, and all the world is going to be in it. They are going to build it fronting on the water, and bank the water up into lakes and canals, and build places like white palaces beside them, and decorate the grounds with statues and palms and flowers and fountains, and there’s not a country on earth that won’t send things to fill the buildings. And there won’t be anything a man can’t see by going through ’em. It’ll be as good as a college course to spend a week there.”
Meg drew a little closer to Robin in the straw.
“What are they talking about?” she whispered.
“Listen,” said Bob.
Jerry, who was moving about at some work below, gave a chuckling laugh.