WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?" 130

OH! SUCH A DIN 136

LITTLE LUCY'S WONDERFUL GLOBE.

CHAPTER I.

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!

Mrs. Bunker, or Mother Bunch, as Lucy and her brothers and sisters
called her, was housekeeper to their Uncle Joseph. He was really their
great uncle, and they thought him any age you can imagine. They would
not have been much surprised to hear that he had sailed with Christopher
Columbus, though he was a strong, hale, active man, much less easily
tired than their own papa. He had been a ship's surgeon in his younger
days, and had sailed all over the world, and collected all sorts of
curious things, besides which he was a very wise and learned man, and
had made some great discovery. It was _not_ America. Lucy knew that her
elder brother understood what it was, but it was not worth troubling her
head about, only somehow it made ships go safer, and so he had had a
pension given him as a reward; and had come home and bought a house
about a mile out of the town, and built up a high room to look at the
stars from with his telescope, and another to try his experiments in,
and a long one besides for his museum; yet, after all, he was not much
there, for whenever ther