Excerpt
CHAPTER I. MOTHER BUNCH.
There was once a wonderful fortnight in little Lucy's life. One evening she went to bed very tired and cross and hot, and in the morning when she looked at her arms and legs they were all covered with red spots, rather pretty to look at, only they were dry and prickly.
Nurse was frightened when she looked at them. She turned all the little sisters out of the night nursery, covered Lucy up close, and ordered her not to stir, certainly not to go into her bath. Then there was a whispering and a running about, and Lucy was half alarmed, but more pleased at being so important, for she did not feel at all ill, and quite enjoyed the tea and toast that Nurse brought up to her. Just as she was beginning to think it rather tiresome to lie there with nothing to do, except to watch the flies buzzing about, there was a step on the stairs and up came the doctor. He was an old friend, very good-natured, and he made fun with Lucy about having turned into 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....