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 assure 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 philosoph