Read Ebook: Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe by Yonge Charlotte M Charlotte Mary Fr Lich Lorenz Illustrator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 371 lines and 22287 words, and 8 pages

PAGE MOTHER BUNCH 1

PAGE

"DO PLEASE SIT DOWN, THERE'S A GOOD MOTHER BUNCH, AND TELL ME ALL ABOUT THEM?" 19

LUCY HAD A GREAT SNEEZING FIT, AND WHEN SHE LOOKED AGAIN INTO THE SMOKE, WHAT DID SHE SEE BUT TWO LITTLE BLACK FIGURES 23

"I'M SO GLAD TO SEE YOU: HUSH, DON! DON'T BARK SO" 26

"I CAN EAT MUCH BETTER WITHOUT," SAID LAVO 31

LAVO HAD CLIMBED UP THE SIDE OF THE DOOR, AND WAS SITTING ASTRIDE ON THE TOP OF IT 34

"AH! CECCO, CECCO!" CRIED THE LITTLE GIRL, PAUSING AS SHE BEAT HER TAMBOURINE 39

"IS THAT THE WAY YOU GET FISH?" SHE ASKED 46

"HELP ME: I'M AFRAID," SAID LUCY 53

HARK! THERE'S A CRY, AND OUT JUMPS A LITTLE BLACK FIGURE, WITH A STOUT CLUB IN HIS HAND 59

AND HERE BESIDE HER WAS A LITTLE FELLOW WITH A BOW AND ARROWS SUCH AS SHE HAD NEVER SEEN BEFORE 65

"IS IT NOT GOOD?" SAID THE LITTLE HOSTESS 73

WHISKING OVER THE SNOW, WITH ALL HER MIGHT AND MAIN, MUFFLED UP IN CLOAKS AND FURS 78

"MARRIED! OH NO, YOU ARE JOKING" 87

"I WILL SHOW YOU WHERE YOU LIVE--THIS IS CONSTANTINOPLE" 93

"I CUT IT OUT WITH MY KNIFE; ALL MYSELF" 99

WHILE HE JERKED OUT HIS ARMS AND LEGS AS IF THEY WERE PULLED BY STRINGS 103

"SEE NOW," CRIED THE SPANIARD; "STAND THERE! AH! HAVE YOU NO CASTANETS?" 111

"WHAT ARE YOU ABOUT, LITTLE BOY?" 115

"AH! MADEMOISELLE, GOOD MORNING; ARE YOU COME HERE TO TAKE SHELTER FROM THE SHELLS?" 122

"WHAT CAN THAT BE, COMING AT THIS TIME OF DAY?" 127

"GOOD MORNING, WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?" 130

OH! SUCH A DIN 136

LITTLE LUCY'S WONDERFUL GLOBE.

MOTHER BUNCH.

THERE was once a wonderful fortnight in little Lucy's life. One evening she went to bed very tired and cross and hot, and in the morning when she looked at her arms and legs they were all covered with red spots, rather pretty to look at, only they were dry and prickly.

Nurse was frightened when she looked at them. She turned all the little sisters out of the night nursery, covered Lucy up close, and ordered her not to stir, certainly not to go into her bath. Then there was a whispering and a running about, and Lucy was half alarmed, but more pleased at being so important, for she did not feel at all ill, and quite enjoyed the tea and toast that Nurse brought up to her. Just as she was beginning to think it rather tiresome to lie there with nothing to do, except to watch the flies buzzing about, there was a step on the stairs and up came the doctor. He was an old friend, very good-natured, and he made fun with Lucy about having turned into a spotted leopard, just like the cowry shell on Mrs. Bunker's mantelpiece. Indeed, he said he thought she was such a curiosity that Mrs. Bunker would come for her and set her up in the museum, and then he went away. Suppose, oh, suppose she did!

But he had left Mother Bunch behind him. Nobody knew exactly what was Mrs. Bunker's nation, indeed she could hardly be said to have had any, for she had been born at sea, and had been a sailor's wife; but whether she was mostly English, Dutch, or Danish, nobody knew and nobody cared. Her husband had been lost at sea, and Uncle Joseph had taken her to look after his house, and always said she was the only woman who had sense and discretion enough ever to go into his laboratory or dust his museum.

Mrs. Bunker was not a bit like the smart housekeepers at other houses. To be sure, on Sundays she came out in a black silk gown with a little flounce at the bottom, a scarlet China crape shawl with a blue dragon upon it--his wings over her back, and a claw over each shoulder, so that whoever sat behind her in church was terribly distracted by trying to see the rest of him--and a very big yellow Tuscan bonnet, trimmed with sailor's blue ribbon; but in the week and about the house she wore a green stuff, with a brown holland apron and bib over it, quite straight all the way down, for she had no particular waist, and her hair, which was of a funny kind of flaxen grey, she bundled up and tied round, without any cap or anything else on her head. One of the little boys had once called her Mother Bunch, because of her stories; and the name fitted her so well that the whole family, and even her master, took it up.

Lucy was very fond of her; but when about an hour after the doctor's visit she was waked by a rustling and a lumbering on the stairs, and presently the door opened, and the second best big bonnet--the go-to-market bonnet with the turned ribbons--came into the room with Mother Bunch's face under it, and the good-natured voice told her she was to be carried to Uncle Joseph's and have oranges and tamarinds, she did begin to feel like the spotted cowry, to think about being set on the chimney-piece, to cry, and say she wanted Mamma.

The Nurse and Mother Bunch began to comfort her, and explain that the doctor thought she had the scarlatina; not at all badly; but that if any of the others caught it, nobody could guess how bad they would be; especially Mamma, who had just been ill; and so she was to be rolled up in her blankets, and put into a carriage, and taken to her uncle's; and there she would stay till she was not only well, but could safely come home without carrying infection about with her.

Lucy was a good little girl, and knew that she must bear it; so, though she could not help crying a little when she found she must not kiss any one, nay not even see them, and that nobody might go with her but Lonicera, her own washing doll, she made up her mind bravely; and she was a good deal cheered when Clare, the biggest and best of all the dolls, was sent in to her, with all her clothes, by Maude, her eldest sister, to be her companion,--it was such an honour and so very kind of Maude that it quite warmed the sad little heart.

So Lucy had her little scarlet flannel dressing gown on, and her shoes and stockings, and a wonderful old knitted hood with a tippet to it, and then she was rolled round and round in all her bed-clothes, and Mrs. Bunker took her up like a very big baby, not letting any one else touch her. How Mrs. Bunker got safe down all the stairs no one can tell, but she did, and into the fly, and there poor little Lucy looked back and saw at the windows Mamma's face, and Papa's, and Maude's, and all the rest, all nodding and smiling to her, but Maude was crying all the time, and perhaps Mamma was too.

The journey seemed very long; and Lucy was really tired when she was put down at last in a big bed, nicely warmed for her, and with a bright fire in the room. As soon as she had had some beef-tea, she went off soundly to sleep, and only woke to drink tea, and administer supper to the dolls, and put them to sleep.

The next evening she was sitting up by the fire, and on the fourth day she was running about the house as if nothing had ever been the matter with her, but she was not to go home for a fortnight; and being wet, cold, dull weather, it was not always easy to amuse herself. She had her dolls, to be sure, and the little dog Don, to play with, and sometimes Mrs. Bunker would let her make funny things with the dough, or stone the raisins, or even help make a pudding; but still there was a good deal of time on her hands. She had only two books with her, and the rash had made her eyes weak, so that she did not much like reading them. The notes that every one wrote from home were quite enough for her. What she liked best--that is, when Mrs. Bunker could not attend to her--was to wander about the museum, explaining the things to the dolls: "That is a crocodile, Lonicera; it eats people up, and has a little bird to pick its teeth. Look, Clare, that bony thing is a skeleton--the skeleton of a lizard. Paws off, my dear; mustn't touch. That's amber, just like barley sugar, only not so nice; people make necklaces of it. There's a poor little dead fly inside. Those are the dear delightful humming-birds; look at their crests, just like Mamma's jewels. See the shells; aren't they beauties? People get pearls out of those great flat ones, and dive all down to the bottom of the sea after them; mustn't touch, 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.

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?"

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet