And John Holt was getting almost as much out of it as they were. He wandered about alone no more; he did not feel as if he were only a ghost, with nothing in common with the human beings passing by. In the interest and excitement of generalship and management, and the amusement of seeing this unspoiled freshness of his charges’ delight in all things, the gloomy look faded out of his face, and he looked like a different man. Once they came upon two men who seemed to know him, and the first one who spoke to him glanced at the children in some surprise.
“Hallo, John!” he said, “set up a family?”
“Just what I’ve done,” answered John Holt. “Set up a family. A man’s no right to be going around a place like this without one.”
“How do you get on with it?” asked the other. “Find it pay?”
“Pay!” said John Holt, with a big laugh. “Great Scott! I should say so! It’s worth twice the price of admission!”
“Glad of it,” said his friend, giving him a curious look.
And as he went away Meg heard him say to his companion,
“It was time he found something that paid—John Holt. He was in a pretty bad way—a pretty bad way.”
As they became more and more intimate, and spoke more to each other, Meg understood how bad a “way” he had been in. She was an observing, old-fashioned child, and she saw many things a less sympathetic creature might have passed by; and when John Holt discovered this—which he was quite shrewd enough to do rather soon—he gradually began to say things to her he would not have said to other people. She understood, somehow, that, though the black look passed away from his face, and he laughed and made them laugh, there was a thing that was never quite out of his mind. She saw that pictures brought it back to him, that strains of music did, that pretty mothers with children hurt him when they passed, and that every now and then he would cast a broad glance over all the whiteness and blueness and beauty and grace, and draw a long, quick sigh—as if he were homesick for something.
“You know,” he said once, when he did this and looked round, and found Meg’s eyes resting yearningly upon him, “you know She was coming with me! We planned it all. Lord! how She liked to talk of it! She said it would be an Enchanted City—just as you did, Meg. That was one of the first things that made me stop to listen—when I heard you say that. An Enchanted City!” he repeated, pondering. “Lord, Lord!”