Good again! the
hot-water plate represents the land rarefying the air over it. Bear that
in mind, and give me a lighted candle. I hold my lighted candle over the
cold water, and blow it out. The smoke immediately moves from the dish
to the plate. Before you have time to express your satisfaction, I
light the candle once more, and reverse the whole proceeding. I fill the
pie-dish with hot-water, and the plate with cold; I blow the candle out
again, and the smoke moves this time from the plate to the dish. The
smell is disagreeable--but the experiment is conclusive."
He shifted the camp-stool back again, and looked at Mrs. Lecount with
his ingratiating smile. "You don't find me long-winded, ma'am--do
you?" he said, in his easy, cheerful way, just as the housekeeper was
privately opening her e ars once more to the conversation on the other
side of her.
"I am amazed, sir, by the range of y our information," replied Mrs.
Lecount, observing the captain with some perplexity--but thus far with
no distrust. She thought him eccentric, even for an Englishman, and
possibly a little vain of his knowledge. But he had at least paid her
the implied compliment of addressing that knowledge to herself; and she
felt it the more sensibly, from having hitherto found her scientific
sympathies with her deceased husband treated with no great respect
by the people with whom she came in contact.
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