“Come out, then, into the yard, and I will throw you one down.”
Lucy accordingly ran out, and Royal, taking up one of the whistles, which he had made, tossed it out from among the branches of the tree. It sailed out horizontally through the air, and then, turning downward, it began to descend in that beautiful curve, which bodies projected from a great height always describe, and at last it came down to the ground.
But it was now some time after sunset, and it was not very light in the yard. Lucy went to the place where the whistle had fallen, and looked for it among the grass, but she could not find it. However, Royal himself came down pretty soon, and, after a little search, he found it close to Lucy’s foot. The interest which Lucy felt in this incident drove all thoughts of the lesson on windows from her mind; and so she did not get the sequel to the lesson, which her father had promised her.
What her father had intended by the sequel to the lesson was this: He was going to send Lucy into one room, and Royal into another, and let each of them examine a fireplace, so as to observe its peculiarities, and then to come in and tell him what they were; and also to ask him for the reason of any thing they noticed about the fireplace, which they did not understand.
They did not do this, however, until the next day; and then, when they came in from the examination of the fireplace, Lucy said that she observed one peculiarity about the fireplace, and that was, that the back of the chimney was black, and that she did not understand why the fire, which was red, should make the bricks black. Royal said that he observed, that there was always a mantel shelf over a fireplace, and he did not see why they always had a mantel shelf over a fireplace, rather than in any other part of the room.
“But, father,” said Lucy, “what is a sequel?”
“A sequel of any thing,” replied her father, “is that which comes in consequence of it, and is the conclusion of it.”
“I don’t understand that very well,” said Lucy.
“Never mind,” replied her father; “I can’t explain it to you any more now.”
So Lucy went away.