"O, yes, I've heard about that! Susy read it in a book."
"Well, I'll tell you how it was. There had been a world, you see; but people had lost the run of it, and didn't know where it was, after the flood. And then Columbus went in a ship and discovered it."
"He did?"
Dotty looked keenly at the captain's son. He was certainly in earnest; but there was something about it she did not exactly understand.
"Why, if there wasn't any world all the time, where did C'lumbus come from?" faltered she, at last.
"It is not generally known," replied Adolphus, taking off his hat, and hiding his face in it.
Dolly sat for some time lost in thought.
"O, I forgot to say," resumed Adolphus, "the north pole isn't driven in so hard as it ought to be. It is so cold up there that the frost 'heaves' it. You know what 'heaves' means? The ground freezes and then thaws, and that loosens the pole. Somebody has to pound it down, and that makes the noise we call thunder."
Dotty said nothing to this; but her youthful face expressed surprise, largely mingled with doubt.
"You have heard of the axes of the earth? That is what they pound the pole with. Queer—isn't it? But not so queer to me as the Red Sea."