er,
you would not be so certain of anything. There is a curtain over the
sun; and there are rents or holes in the curtain sometimes,--so large
that we can see the dark body of the sun through them."

"What is the curtain? Is _that_ the light?"

"Now you are coming pretty near it, Daisy," said the doctor. "The
curtain, as I call it, is not light, but it is what the light comes
from."

"Then what _is_ it, Dr. Sandford?"

"That has puzzled people wiser than you and I, Daisy. However, I think I
may venture to say, that it is something like an ocean of flame,
surrounding the dark body of the sun."

"And there are holes in it?"

"Sometimes."

"But they must be very large holes to be seen from this distance?"

"Very," said the doctor. "A great many times bigger than our whole
earth."

"Then how do you know but they are dark islands in the ocean?"

"For several reasons," said the doctor looking gravely funny; "one of
which reasons is, that we can see the deep ragged edges of the holes,
and that these edges join together again."

"But there could not be holes in _our_ ocean?" said Daisy.

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?"

"That was it."

"That is a state where it gives out white heat."

"I thought everything at the sun must be on fire," said Daisy looking
meditatively at the doctor.

"You see you were mistaken. It has only a covering of clouds of fire--so
to speak."

"But it must be very h