Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe. Yonge Charlotte Mary
Читать онлайн книгу.
my dear, only look; paws off."
One would think Clare's curved fingers all in one piece, and Lonicera's blue leather hands had been very movable and mischievous, judging by the number of times this warning came; but of course it was Lucy herself who wanted it most, for her own little plump, pinky hands did almost tingle to handle and turn round those pretty shells. She wanted to know whether the amber tasted like barley-sugar as it looked, and there was a little musk deer, no bigger than Don, whom she longed to stroke, or still better to let Lonicera ride; but she was a good little girl, and had real sense of honour, which never betrays a trust, so she never laid a finger on anything but what Uncle Joe had once given all free leave to move.
This was a very big pair of globes—bigger than globes commonly are now, and with more frames round them—one great flat one, with odd names painted on it, and another brass one, nearly upright, going half-way round from top to bottom, and with the globe hung upon it by two pins, which Lucy's elder sisters called the poles, or the ends of the axis. The huge round balls went very easily with a slight touch, and there was something very charming in making them go whisk, whisk, whisk; now faster, now slower, now spinning so quickly that nothing on them could be seen, now turning slowly and gradually over and showing all that was on them.
The mere twirling was quite enough for Lucy at first, but soon she liked to look at what was on them. One she thought much more entertaining than the other. It was covered with wonderful creatures: one bear was fastened by his long tail to the pole; another bigger one was trotting round; a snake was coiling about anywhere; a lady stood disconsolate against a rock; another sat in a chair; a giant sprawled with a club in one hand and a lion's skin in the other; a big dog and a little dog stood on their hind legs; a lion seemed just about to spring on a young maiden's head; and all were thickly spotted over, just as if they had Lucy's rash, with stars big and little: and still more strange, her brothers declared these were the stars in the sky, and this was the way people found their road at sea; but if Lucy asked how, they always said she was not big enough to understand, and it had not occurred to Lucy to ask whether the truth was not that they were not big enough to explain.
The other globe was all in pale green, with pink and yellow outlines on it, and quantities of names. Lucy had had to learn some of these names for her geography, and she did not want to think of lessons now, so she rather kept out of the way of looking at it at first, till she had really grown tired of all the odd men and women and creatures upon the celestial sphere; but by and by she began to roll the other by way of variety.
CHAPTER II.
VISITORS FROM THE SOUTH SEAS
"Miss Lucy, you're as quiet as a mouse. Not in any mischief?" said Mrs. Bunker, looking into the museum; "why, what are you doing there?"
"I'm looking at the great big globe, that Uncle Joe said I might touch," said Lucy: "here are all the names just like my lesson book at home; Europe, Asia, Africa, and America."
"Why, bless the child! where else should they be? There be all the oceans and seas besides that I've crossed over, many's the time, with poor Ben Bunker, who was last seen off Cape Hatteras."
"What, all these great green places, with Atlantic and Pacific on them; you don't really mean that you've sailed over them! I should like to make a midge do it in a husk of hemp-seed! How could you, Mother Bunch? You are not small enough."
"Ho! ho!" said the housekeeper, laughing; "does the child think I sailed on that very globe there?"
"I know one learns names," said Lucy; "but is it real?"
"Real! Why, Missie, don't you see it's a sort of a picture? There's your photograph now, it's not as big as you, but it shows you; and so a chart, or a map, or a globe, is just a picture of the shapes of the coast-line of the land and the sea, and the rivers in them, and mountains, and the like. Look you here:" and she made Lucy stand on a chair and look at a map of her own town that was hanging against the wall, showing her all the chief buildings, the churches, streets, the town hall, and market cross, and at last helping her to find her own Papa's house.
When Lucy had traced all the corners she had to turn in going from home to Uncle Joe's, and had even found little frizzles for the five lime-trees before the Vicarage, she understood that the map was a small picture of the situation of the buildings in the town, and thought she could find her way to some new place, suppose she studied it well.
Then Mrs. Bunker showed her a big map of the whole country, and there Lucy found the river, and the roads, and the names of the villages near, as she had seen or heard of them; and she began to understand that a map or globe really brought distant places into an exceedingly small picture, and that where she saw a name and a spot she was to think of houses and churches; that a branching black line was a flowing river full of water; a curve in, a pretty bay shut in with rocks and hills; a point jutting out, generally a steep rock with a lighthouse on it.
"And all these places are countries, Bunchey, are they, with fields and houses like ours?"
"Houses, ay, and fields, but not always so very like ours, Miss Lucy."
"And are there little children, boys and girls, in them all?"
"To be sure there are, else how would the world go on? Why, I've seen 'em by swarms, white or brown or black, running down to the shore, as sure as the vessel cast anchor; and whatever colour they were, you might be sure of two things, Miss Lucy, that they were all alike in."
"Oh, what, Mrs. Bunker?"
"Do please sit down, there's a good Mother Bunch, and tell me all about them."
"Why, in plenty of noise for one, and the other for wanting all they could get to eat. But they were little darlings, some of them, if I only could have got at them to make them a bit nicer. Some of them looked for all the world like the little bronze images Master has got in the museum, brought from Italy, and hadn't a rag more clothing neither. They were in India. Dear, dear, to see them tumble about in the surf!"
"O, what fun! what fun! I wish I could see them. Suppose I could."
"You would be right glad, Missie, I can tell you, if you had been three or four months aboard with nothing but dry biscuits and salt junk, and may be a tin of preserved vegetables just to keep it wholesome, to see the black fellows come grinning alongside with their boats and canoes all full of oranges and limes and shaddocks and cocoa-nuts. Doesn't one's mouth fairly water for them?"
"Do please sit down, there's a good Mother Bunch, and tell me all about them? Come, suppose you do."
"Suppose I did, Miss Lucy, and where would your poor uncle's preserved ginger be, that no one knows from real West Indian?"
"Oh, let me come into your room, and you can tell me all the time you are doing the ginger."
"It is very hot there, Missie."
"That will be more like some of the places. I'll suppose I'm there! Look, Mrs. Bunker, here's a whole green sea, all over the tiniest little dots. There can't be people in them."
"Dots? You'd hardly see all over one of those dots if you were in one. That's the South Sea Miss Lucy, and those are the loveliest isles, except, may be, the West Indies, that ever I saw."
"Tell me about them, please," entreated Lucy "Here's one; its name is—is Ysabel—such a little wee one."
Lucy had a great sneezing fit, and when she looked again into the smoke, what did she see but two little black figures.
"I can't tell you much of those South Sea Isles, Missie, being that I only made one voyage among them, when Bunker chartered the Penguin for the sandal-wood trade; and we did not touch at many, being that the natives were fierce and savage, and made nothing of coming down with arrows and spears at a boat's crew. So we only went to such islands as the missionaries had been at, and got the people to be more civil and conformable."
"Tell me all about