IN WHICH THE SOCIETY OF STAR-GAZERS IS FORMED AND DISCOVERS TWO BEARS—ONE WITH A STRETCHED TAIL

Uncle Henry sat on the porch of “Seven Oaks” Cottage, watching the new moon sink into the woods across Sand Lake.

The ripples of the motor-boat that had carried “Sister” and “The Children’s Father” away from the dock had gone from the glassy water. Over across the lake, at Pentecost station, they would catch the ten o’clock train, to be gone a week.

Uncle Henry had urged “Sister” to go. He had said he was perfectly sure of being able to look after Peter and Paul and Betty for just seven days, but now that “Sister” was really gone Uncle Henry felt the size of the task he had undertaken.

Of course he wasn’t alone. There was big, wholesome Katy, the maid. “Competent Katy,” he had at once named her to himself on his arrival two weeks before. The sleeping, eating, and dressing of twin ten-year-old boys and a seven-year-old girl would go on as usual without Uncle Henry’s assistance.

In the daytime he planned to take them fishing, berry-picking, sailing, and bathing. Target-practice with Peter and Paul’s air-rifle would help, too, and there would be walks in the woods, and up to Brighton’s farm house for the milk every evening.

But between supper and bed was a gap that Uncle Henry thought might be hard to fill. He must think of some games. He didn’t want to be a poor companion for his adored niece and nephews for even an hour of the time.

Uncle Henry blew a cloud from his pipe and watched it eddy slowly away, filtering through the leaves of the oak-branches at the side of the porch. Then he looked up to the vaporous band of the milky way. Stars hung in it, sparkling. It was like a chiffon streamer with tiny diamond spangles—or a cloud of smoke, blown, with sparks, from the pipe of Pan.

You will see right away that Uncle Henry was a poet, even if Pan’s pipe wasn’t the smoking kind. It might have been, as easy as not. Uncle Henry was wondering whether this last fancy might be made into a poem for his college paper, when the children’s voices floated up from the beach. They were sitting on the smooth sand and singing in unison,

Uncle Henry took his feet off the porch-railing and allowed his chair to use all of its feet again. Then he leaned out by a post and looked straight up into the blue-black vault of a moonless July night sky. The stars were beautifully clear.

Evidently Peter, Paul, and Betty were singing praise to the fact. They had clapped enthusiastically for themselves, and were now beginning the encore—a repetition of “Star bright, star-light.”

Uncle Henry’s face had become thoughtful, and now he stepped down from the porch, and strolled down the boards to the dock. There he stood craning his neck backward and looking up, until the children had once more finished the verse, laughing and clapping. Evidently the applause for themselves was not enough this time, for there was no encore.

Peter, his eye on Uncle Henry, flopped down on his back and began gazing upward, too. In a moment he called,

“Uncle Hen?”

“Yes, Pete,” from the dock, where Uncle Henry was star-gazing in the opposite direction.

“Why do they call ‘the big dipper’ the ‘great bear’—and is there any ‘little dipper’? Betty says there isn’t, ’cause she never saw it.”

Uncle Henry stepped off the dock upon the smooth sand, kneeled down, and without answering began collecting little smooth pebbles.

Peter sat up and asked in surprise,

“Don’t you know, Uncle Hen?”

Surely this genius, who could make new kinds of kites, and willow-whistles that “worked fine,” was not going to fail now. The other children turned to him, expectant too. Betty herself was willing to be proved wrong about the existence of the “little dipper,” rather than admit a limit to Uncle Henry’s wisdom.

“Let’s make a nice, smooth place on the sand,” said Uncle Henry, his hands now full of those mysterious pebbles. These he put into his pocket and began, on all fours, to smooth sand industriously.

“Come on, youngsters,” he invited, “and I’ll let you settle the questions yourselves. We’ll make a game of it,” he added.

The trio breathed easier. Uncle Henry did know, and was going to tell—in a new, interesting way. Three pairs of hands started smoothing sand, with some waste of energy, but with rapid results.

“Now,” said Uncle Henry, squatting down before the leveled place, and pouring out the pebbles in a little pile, “how many stones do you need to make the dipper, Pete? We’ll draw it on the sand, with pebbles for stars.”

Three necks craned upward in unison, and the two boys’ voices answered, almost together,

“Seven.”

Betty gazed a moment longer, and said,

“Eight.”

Uncle Henry looked interested.

“Where do you see the eighth, Betty?” he asked.

“Right close where the handle bends,” announced Betty.

“Correct,” said Uncle Henry, “that shows you have good eyes. The Arabs used to call that little star ‘the proof,’ because it is a test of good eyesight to see it. The star at the bend of the handle is also called ‘the horse,’ and that faint little star over it ‘the rider.’ You can make the dipper itself with seven pebbles, though. Go ahead and do it, Peter,” Uncle Henry finished, “and take good-sized stones, to show that they’re bright stars.”

When Peter had finished, the smooth patch of sand looked like this in the light from Uncle Henry’s pocket electric torch.

Betty insisted upon adding a tiny stone above “the horse,” to represent her discovery, “the rider.”

“Now,” said Uncle Henry, looking upward, “I’ll help you this much in finding all of ‘the great bear.’ The handle of the dipper is his tail. Everybody try to find the rest of him. Put down a pebble in the right spot for every star; big ones for bright ones, and little stones for faint ones.”

“Ooh,” interrupted Betty, “I got his nose!”

Here is where Betty put it.

“—and his shoulders!” she added in a moment, putting them in with small pebbles.

“I got his front leg!” announced Paul excitedly, adding three pebbles rapidly.

Then the bear looked like this.

It was Peter who contributed his hind legs and his “skeleton,” made of finger-drawn lines in the sand. Like this.

And when Uncle Henry had drawn an outline in the sand with his finger, the “great bear” was done to everybody’s satisfaction.

While they were all looking at it, Uncle Henry recited,

“Did you say, ‘Noah’—or ‘no one,’ Uncle Henry?” asked Betty.

“I said, ‘no one,’ but have it ‘Noah’ if you like,” said Uncle Henry. “Maybe Noah named him. He was interested in animals, and Adam ought not to have the only right to name them.”

“Now let’s find the little dipper!” urged Peter, anxious for a victory over Betty’s doubts of its existence.

“When we find it,” announced Uncle Henry solemnly, “it won’t be a dipper at all; it will be another bear—a little bear. You know that Noah had two of everything in his ark.”

“I told you there wasn’t any little dipper!” shrilled Betty at Peter.

“Uncle Henry said we’d find it, though,” countered Peter, looking hopefully at the oracle.

“So we will,” laughed Uncle Henry, “the little dipper and the little bear are the same thing!”

“Come on!” urged Paul, “how do we start, Uncle Henry?”

Uncle Henry got up on his knees and drew a long straight line in the sand with his forefinger. (1) It went up through both stars in the middle of the great bear’s body, and a long way beyond. Over three times the distance between the two stars the line went beyond them. Uncle Henry put down a fair-sized pebble at the end.

“There,” he said, “is the tip of the little bear’s tail. Go ahead and find him; but I warn you—it’s a very long tail, and you’ll have to imagine his legs and nose.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then Peter said,

“I can’t see any bear, but I can make out a dipper.”

“Make it,” said Uncle Henry.

When Peter finished putting down little pebbles the little dipper was very plain, just above the great bear’s back.

Then Uncle Henry solemnly drew an outline around the seven small pebbles.

“Oooh, what a funny bear!” laughed Betty, when Uncle Henry’s finger had finished. “His tail is so long!”

“Bears always have short tails,” said Peter, looking reproachfully at Uncle Henry, as if that person was responsible. There was, however, a note of expectancy in Peter’s voice. He expected a satisfactory explanation from Uncle Henry.

“This bear once had as short a tail as any other bear,” said Uncle Henry, quite undisturbed.

“Who stretched it?” inquired Paul breathlessly.

“You will note,” began Uncle Henry, “that the tip of the little bear’s tail is a star that is right at the top of the North Pole. You can’t see the pole, but it’s there—and long ago somebody tied the tip of the little bear’s tail fast to it. As the earth turned around year after year, and the pole turned with it, the little bear was swung round and round by his tail. That would make anybody’s tail stretch, wouldn’t it?”

There was a moment’s quiet. Then Peter said roguishly,

“You can’t kid us into believing that, Uncle Hen—but we’ll sure remember it.”

All Uncle Henry said was,

“Your mother doesn’t like you to talk slang, Peter.”

Uncle Henry had scored again, and knew it.

“To-morrow night we’ll find the dragon, and the man who drives the great bear around the pole, and his dogs, and maybe the lions and the swan,” promised Uncle Henry, as he looked at his watch and stood up.

“Oooh, great!” cried the trio together.

“We’ll have a reg’lar Noah’s Ark on that sand, won’t we?” said Betty.

“We’ll call it ‘Noah’s Ark in the Sky,’” Uncle Henry agreed, as the children followed him up the walk to Seven Oaks Cottage.