"Just a little afraid, I mean, when you found the ship was going tip-side up?"
"Tip-side up?" said Adolphus. "I don't understand you."
"Why, when you got to the other side of the world, then of course the ship turned right over, you know. Didn't you want to catch hold of something, for fear you'd fall into the sky?"
Adolphus laughed; he could not very well help it; but, observing the mortification expressed in his companion's face, he sobered himself instantly, and replied,—
"No, Dotty; the world is round, but you wouldn't know it by the looks of it. Wherever I've been, the land seems flat, except the hills, and so does the water, all but the waves."
As the captain's son said this, he looked pityingly at his little companion, wondering how she happened to be so silly as to suppose a ship ever went "tip-side up." But he was mistaken if he considered Dotty a simpleton. The child had never gone to school. Her parents believed there would be time enough yet for her to learn a great many things; and her ignorance had never distressed them half so much as her faults of temper.
"Did you ever go as far as Boston before?" pursued Adolphus, rather grandly, in his turn.
"No, I never," replied Dotty, meekly; "but Prudy has."
"So I presume you haven't been in Spain? It was there I bought my beautiful rabbit. Were you ever in the Straits of Malacca?" continued he, roguishly.
"No—o. I didn't know I was."