a spotted leopard, just like
the cowry shell on Mrs. Bunker's mantel-piece. Indeed, he said
he thought she was such a curiosity that Mrs. Bunker would come
for her and set her up in the museum, and then he went away.
Suppose, oh, suppose she did!

Mrs. Bunker, or Mother Bunch, as Lucy and her brothers and sisters
called her, was housekeeper to their Uncle Joseph. He was really
their great uncle, and they thought him any age you can imagine.
They would not have been much surprised to hear that he sailed with
Christopher Columbus, though he was a strong, hale, active man, much
less easily tired than their own papa. He had been a ship's surgeon
in his younger days, and had sailed all over the world, and
collected all sorts of curious things, besides which he was a very
wise and learned man, and had made some great discovery. It was
_not_ America. Lucy knew that her elderly brother understood what
it was, but it was not worth troubling her head about, only somehow
it made ships go safer, and so he had had a pension given him as a
reward. He had come home and bought a house about a mile out of
town, and built up a high room from which to look at the stars with
his telescope, and to try his experiments in, and a long one besides
for his museum; yet, after all, he was not much there, for whenever
there was anything wonderful to be seen, he always went off to look
at it, and, whenever there was a meeting of learned men--scientific
men was the right word--they always wanted him to help them make
speeches and show wonders. He was away now. He had gone away to
wear a red cross on his arm, and help to take care of the wounded
in the sad war between the French and the Germans.

But he had left Mother Bunch behind him. Nobody knew exactly what
was Mrs. Bunker's nation; indeed she could hardly be said to have
any, for she had been born at sea, and had been a sailor's wife;
but whether she was mostly English, Dutch or Spanish, nobody knew
and nobody cared. Her husband had been lost at sea, and Uncle
Joseph had taken her to look after his house, and always said she
was the only woman who had sense and discretion enough ever to go
into his laboratory or dust his museum.

She was very kind and good natured, and there was nothing that the
children liked better than a walk to Uncle Joseph's, and, after a
play in the garden, tea with her. And such quantities of sugar
there were in her room! such curious cakes made in the fashi