Next evening Peter and Paul carried the blackboard to the roof after supper, but soon returned in disappointment. The sky had all clouded over! The evening’s session of the “Society of Star-Gazers” was spoiled. Its members stood in a circle about Uncle Henry and looked hopefully at him. Never yet had he failed to make good in an emergency.
“Well, it can’t be helped,” said Uncle Henry cheerfully. “We’ll just have to bring Starland down here into our playroom for this evening. Suppose you get me—let’s see—about a dozen sheets of paper from a big scratch pad, some of Betty’s colored crayons—they had better be the dark-colored ones—and a good-sized sheet of stiff cardboard or Bristol board. Yes, and some pins and an Almanac. Betty’ll get the colored pencils, Paul the cardboard, and Peter the sheets of paper and the pins. I’ll borrow the Almanac from Katy. She has one in the kitchen.”
The children scattered for the materials and Uncle Henry took the shade off the electric lamp that stood on the playroom table.
When everybody was back in the playroom with the things needed the Society gathered around Uncle Henry and asked,
“Where do we go from here, Uncle Hen?”
“Out into Starland,” said Uncle Henry, spreading out his arms wide. “This room is the universe. This lamp with the shade off is the sun. Imagine that the pictures on the walls are groups of stars, the constellations, the star-people we have been finding in the sky right along. Imagine that there are pictures on the ceiling, too, and on the floor. Lots of them, all over the six sides of this square room.
“Now Paul, you have a nice round head and have just had a hair-cut. Your head can be the earth. Just walk around the table once or twice until we get used to thinking about your head as the world. It seems rather small at first. That’s right. Now you’re going around the sun the way the earth does, from right to left, just opposite to the way the clock-hands go. You go once around the sun every year.”
“The earth of course spins on its axis, too, just like a top, while it is circling round the sun. It turns round completely every twenty-four hours, from West to East. Paul, see if you can spin like a top while you are going round the lamp. Spin from right to left, just opposite to the way the clock-hands go.”
Paul did his best to spin and walk at the same time, and Uncle Henry showed Peter and Betty that the side of Paul’s head that was toward the lamp was always bright, while the other side was always in shadow. As Paul turned on his axis from right to left his face became lighted, then the right side of his head, then its back, then the left side, and so on, round and round.
Part of the time Paul was facing a picture on one wall and the next minute his back was toward that picture and he was looking at another picture on the opposite wall, across the lamp.