Dr. Sandford gave a good long grave look at her, set aside his empty plate which had held raspberries, and took a chair. He talked to her now with serious quiet earnest, as if she had been a much older person.
"Our ocean, Daisy, you will remember, is an ocean of fluid matter. The ocean of flame which surrounds the sun is gaseous matter—or a sort of ocean of air, in a state of incandescence. This does not touch the sun, but floats round it, upon or above another atmosphere of another kind—like the way in which our clouds float in the air over our heads. You know how breaks come and go in the clouds; so you can imagine that this luminous covering of the sun parts in places, and shews the sun through, and then closes up again."
"Is that the way it is?" said Daisy.
"Even so."
"Dr. Sandford, you said a word just now I did not understand."
"Only one?" said the doctor.
"I think there was only one I did not know in the least."
"Can you direct me to it?"
"You said something about an ocean of air in a state—what state?"
"Incandescence?"