"It wasn't good, my dear; I may tell you about it to-morrow."
"Hadn't I better go back to father at once?"
"Oh, my child, not for our sake; if you're not too lonesome we'd rather
keep you. Let me see; has Mingo ever danced for you? Why, tell Sidney
to make Mingo come dance for you."
Mingo came; his leaps, turns, postures, steps, and outcries were a most
laughable wonder, and I should have begged for more than I did, but I
saw that it was a part of Sidney's religion to disapprove the dance.
"Sidney," I said, "did you ever hear of the great clock in the sky?
Yes, there's one there; it's made all of stars." We were at the foot
of some veranda steps that faced the north, and as she and Mingo were
about to settle down at my feet I said if they would follow me to the
top of the flight I would tell this marvel: what the learned believed
those eternal lamps to be; why some were out of view three-fourths of
the night, others only half, others not a quarter; how a very few never
sank out of sight at all except for daylight or clouds, and yet went
round and round with all the others; and why I called those the clock
of heaven; which gained, each night, four minutes, and only four, on
the time we kept by the sun.
"Pra-aise Gawd!" murmured Sidney. "Miss Maud, please hol' on tell
Mingo run' fetch daddy an' mammy; dey don't want dat sto'y f'om me
secon' haynded!" Mingo darted off and we waited. "Miss Maud, what de
white folks mean by de nawth stah? Is dey sich a stah as de nawth
stah?"
I tried to explain that since all this seeming movement of the stars
around us was but our own daily and yearly turning, there would
necessarily be two opposite points on our earth which would never move
at all, and that any star directly in line with those two points would
seem as still as they.
"Like de p'int o' de spin'le on de spinnin'-wheel, Miss Maud? Oh,
yass, I b'lieve I un'stand dat; I un'stan' it some."
I showed her the north star, and told her how to find it; and then I
took from my watch-guard a tiny compass and let her see how it forever
picked out from among all the stars of heaven that one small light, and
held quiveringly to it. She hung over it with ecstatic sighs. "Do it
_see_ de stah, Miss Maud, like de wise men o' de Eas' see de stah o'
Jesus?"