Old David was elated. "I tell ye, I never see anything like what he's got up there," he cried. "There's butterfly wings all sparklin' with jewels, and mosquito legs--"
Rachel taking his arm, guided him toward a car. Not an allusion to the real object of the call fell from the old man's lips. All memory of their purpose had apparently escaped him on the instant of his introduction into that sphere of ideal beauties. His face shone like a child's. Looking at him Rachel smiled a little sadly. How absolutely irresponsible he was, and how she had erred when she had withdrawn him from the simple duties which had acted as an anchor for his fantastic mind. Yet was not that which he expressed the highest poetry? The essence of an abstract delight was in him and shone through him, transforming his aged frame as an elixir transforms the delicate goblet that contains it. His eyes blazed, his lips were wreathed in smiles, and suddenly he no longer seemed to her an old man entering the drear regions of second childhood, but a seer, a bard, a singing poet, chanting a chant of Beauty, which is immortal. And because she was spirit of his spirit as well as flesh of his flesh, she nestled to him; and, seated side by side, they were conveyed rapidly through the city which resounded with the unparalleled bustle and confusion that precedes the subsidence and comparative silence of the night.
When they descended from the elevated station and turned into the "Street of Masts," as old David termed the alley in which they lived, he paused, "Jest--look a there!" he said, and extended a finger.
The sun shone on the muddy pools beside the road and into the inexpressibly weary eyes of horses. It glinted on the hair of the ragged children swarming in the doorways and put an added blush on the cheeks of apples swinging by the stems at the doors of tiny fruit shops and on stands. It made the outlines of factory stacks indistinct, enveloped in a haze. The sun, shining through streaks and trails and plumes of smoke, made the city appear to be waving flags of glory--the glory of a dream.
"And the ships--let's go and see what they've brought in," whispered the old man, and, in a kind of awe, the two approached the wharf where were ranged those patient, graceful visitors from foreign ports.