“Now, if you are ready,” said uncle Jack, laughing a little to himself as he looked down at her.  Then he related as follows:  “Toby is a little black fellow, not much taller than you are, and he lives in Pokonoket, and keeps a loon.  Toby’s hair is very short and kinky, and his mouth is wide, and always curves up a little at the corners, as if he were laughing; his eyes are astonishingly bright; but all the people’s eyes are bright in Pokonoket.

“Pokonoket is a very dark country.  It always was dark.  The most ancient historians make no mention of its ever being light in Pokonoket.

“The cause of the darkness has never been exactly understood.  Philosophers and men of science have worked very hard over it, but all the conclusion they have been able to arrive at is, it must be due to fog, or smoke, or atmospheric phenomena.  The most celebrated of them are in favor of atmospheric phenomena, and they are probably correct.

“The houses are always furnished with lamps, of course, and everybody carries a lantern.  No one dreams of stirring out in Pokonoket without a lantern.  The men go to their work with lanterns, the ladies take theirs when they go out shopping, and all the children have their little lanterns to carry to school.

[Illustration:  SCHOOL CHILDREN IN POKONOKET.]

“On account of the darkness, there are some very curious customs in Pokonoket.  One is, all the inhabitants are required by law to wear squeaky shoes.  Whenever anybody’s shoes don’t squeak according to the prescribed standard he is fined, and sometimes even imprisoned, if he persists in his offense.  A great many sad accidents are prevented by this custom.  People hear each other’s shoes squeaking in the darkness at quite a distance, and don’t run into each other.  Pokonoket shoemakers make a specialty of squeaky shoes, and the squeakier they are, the higher prices they bring; they can even put in new squeaks when the old ones are worn out.  It is a very common thing to see a Pokonoket man with his little boy’s shoes under his arm, carrying them to a shoemaker to get them re-squeaked.

“Another funny custom is the wearing of phosphorescent buttons.  Everybody, men, women and children, are required to wear phosphorescent buttons on their outside garments.  They are quite large—­about the size of an old-fashioned cent—­and there are, generally, two rows of them down the front of a garment.  It is rather a frightful sight to see a person with phosphorescent buttons on his coat advancing toward one in the dark, till you are accustomed to it; he looks as if he had two rows of enormous eyes.

“Then, when the weather is stormy, everybody has to carry an umbrella with his name on it in phosphorescent letters.  In this way, nobody’s eyes are put out, and no umbrellas are lost.  Otherwise, umbrellas would get so hopelessly mixed up in a dark country like Pokonoket that it would require a special sitting of Parliament to sort them out again.