“No—­o.  I didn’t know I was.”

“Indeed?  Nor in the Bay of Palermo?  The Italians call it the Golden Shell.”

“I don’t s’pose I ever,” replied Dotty, with a faint effort to keep up appearances; “but I went to Quoddy Bay once!”

“So you haven’t seen the loory?  It is a beautiful bird, and talks better than a parrot.  I have one at home.”

“O, have you?” said Dotty, in a tone of the deepest respect.

“Yes; then there is the mina, a brown bird, larger than a crow; converses quite fluently.  You have heard of a mina, I dare say.”

Dotty shook her head in despair.  She was so overwhelmed by this time, that, if Adolphus had told of going with Captain Lally to the moon in a balloon, she would not have been greatly surprised.

A humorous smile played around the boy’s mouth.  Observing his little companion’s extreme simplicity, he was tempted to invent some marvellous stories for the sake of seeing her eyes shine.

“I can explain it to her afterwards,” said he to his conscience.

“Did you ever hear of the Great Dipper, Dotty?”

“I don’t know’s I did.  No.”

“You don’t say so!  Never heard of the Great Dipper!  Your sister Prudy has, I’m sure.  It is tied to the north pole, and you can dip water with it.”

“Is it big?”

“No, not very.  About the size of a tub.”

“A dipper as big as a tub?” repeated Dotty, slowly.

“Yes, with the longest kind of handle.”

“I couldn’t lift it?”

“No, I should judge not.”

“Who tied it to the north pole?”

“I don’t know.  Columbus, perhaps.  You remember he discovered the world?”

Dotty brightened.

“O, yes, I’ve heard about that!  Susy read it in a book.”

“Well, I’ll tell you how it was.  There had been a world, you see; but people had lost the run of it, and didn’t know where it was, after the flood.  And then Columbus went in a ship and discovered it.”

“He did?”

Dotty looked keenly at the captain’s son.  He was certainly in earnest; but there was something about it she did not exactly understand.

“Why, if there wasn’t any world all the time, where did C’lumbus come from?” faltered she, at last.

“It is not generally known,” replied Adolphus, taking off his hat, and hiding his face in it.

Dolly sat for some time lost in thought.

“O, I forgot to say,” resumed Adolphus, “the north pole isn’t driven in so hard as it ought to be.  It is so cold up there that the frost ‘heaves’ it.  You know what ‘heaves’ means?  The ground freezes and then thaws, and that loosens the pole.  Somebody has to pound it down, and that makes the noise we call thunder.”

Dotty said nothing to this; but her youthful face expressed surprise, largely mingled with doubt.

“You have heard of the axes of the earth?  That is what they pound the pole with.  Queer—­isn’t it?  But not so queer to me as the Red Sea.”