"Good-mornin', Cousin Phœbe," he said, with his suavest manner.
"Good-morning, Mr. Droop," Phœbe replied. "Where are we? Is everything all right?"
She made straight for one of the windows the iron shutters of which were now open.
"I wish't you'd call me Cousin Copernicus," Droop remarked.
"Oh—oh! What a beautiful world!"
Phœbe leaned her face close to the glass and gazed spell-bound at the wonderful landscape spread before her.
The whole atmosphere seemed filled with a clear, cold sunlight whose brilliance irradiated the giant sphere of earth so far away.
Directly below and to the right of their course, as far as she could see, there was one vast expanse of dark blue sea, gilded dazzlingly over one portion where the sun's beams were reflected. Far ahead to the north and as far behind them the sea was bordered with the fantastic curves of a faint blue coast dotted and lined with the shadows of many a hill and mountain. It was a map on which she was gazing. Nature's own map—the only perfect chart in the world.
So new—so intensely, almost painfully, beautiful was this scene that Phœbe stood transfixed—fascinated. She did not even think of speaking.
The scene was not so new to Droop—and besides he was a prey to an insistent appetite. His mental energies, therefore, sought expression in speech.