Melbourne House Part 64

"I am afraid you are tired, Dr. Sandford," said Daisy, very gently.

"What then?"

"Then it might tire you more to talk to me."

"You have seen something wonderful, have you?" said he doctor, glancing at her.

"Two or three things, sir."

"One at a time," said the doctor. "I am tired. I have ridden nearly seventy miles to-day, one way and another. Have you got a cup of milk for me, Mrs. Benoit?"

Daisy eagerly beckoned Juanita, and whispered to her, and the result was that with the cup of milk came a plate of the magnificent raspberries. The doctor opened his grave eyes at Daisy, and stood at the foot of her couch, picking up raspberries with his finger and thumb, as he had taken that one in the morning.

"Now what are the wonderful things?" said he.

"You are too tired to-night, Dr. Sandford."

"Let us have number one. Promises must be kept, Daisy.

Business is business. Have you got such hard work for me? What was the first thing?"

"The first wonderful thing that I saw ? or at least that I thought of ?" said Daisy, "was the sun."

The doctor eat half a dozen raspberries without speaking, giving an odd little smile first in one corner of his mouth, and then in the other.

"Do you expect me to tell you about that?" said he.

"You said business was business," Daisy replied, with equal gravity to his own.

"I am glad the idea of the universe did not occur to you,"

said the doctor. "That might have been rather inconvenient for one evening's handling. What would you like me to tell you about the sun?"

"I do not know anything at all about it," said Daisy. "I would like to know everything you can tell me."

"The thought that first comes to me," said the doctor, "is, that it ripened these raspberries."

"I know _that_," said Daisy. "But I want to know what it is."

"The sun! Well," said the doctor, "it is a dark, round thing, something like this earth, only considerably bigger."

"_Dark!_" said Daisy. "Certainly. I have no reason to believe it anything else."

"But you are laughing at me, Dr. Sandford," said Daisy, feeling very much disappointed and a little aggrieved.

"Am I? No, Daisy ? if you had ridden seventy miles to-day, you might be tempted, but you would not feel like laughing.

Business is business, I must remind you again."

"But you do not mean that the sun is dark?" said Daisy.

"I mean precisely what I say, I a.s.sure you."

"But it is so bright we cannot look at it," said Daisy.

"Something is so bright you cannot look at it. The something is not the body of the sun."

"Then it is the light that comes from it."

"No light comes from it, that I know. I told you, the sun is a dark body."

"Not laughing?"

"No," said Dr. Sandford, though he did laugh now; "the sun, you see, is a more wonderful thing than you imagined."

"But sir, may I ask any question I have a mind to ask?"

"Certainly! All in the course of business."

"How do you know that it is dark, sir?"

"Perfectly fair. Suppose that Mrs. Benoit stood behind your curtain there, and that you had never seen her; how could you know that she has a dark skin?"

"Why, I could not."

"Yes, you could ? if there were rents in the curtain."

"But what are you talking of, sir?"

"Only telling you, in answer to your question, how I know the sun to be a dark body."

"But there is no curtain over the sun."

"That proves you are no philosopher, Daisy. If you were a philosopher, you would not be so certain of anything. There is a curtain over the sun; and there are rents or holes in the curtain sometimes, ? so large that we can see the dark body of the sun through them."

"What is the curtain? Is _that_ the light?"

"Now you are coming pretty near it, Daisy," said the doctor.

"The curtain, as I call it, is not light, but it is what the light comes from."

"Then what _is_ it, Dr. Sandford?"

"That has puzzled people wiser than you and I, Daisy. However, I think I may venture to say, that it is something like an ocean of flame, surrounding the dark body of the sun."

"And there are holes in it?"

"Sometimes."

"But they must be very large holes to be seen from this distance?"

"Very," said the doctor. "A great many times bigger than our whole earth."