Rachel and the Seven Wonders — A Closer Reading

had a glimpse of the City " " 114

The Pharos Lighthouse (_Colour_) " " 136

The Olympic Games (_Colour_) " " 160

Rachel was a very unhappy little girl as she sat in an omnibus with Miss Moore, on her way to the British Museum. She didn’t want to go to the British Museum. She didn’t want to be in London at all. She longed desperately to be back in her country home with her father and mother—now, alas! far away in Egypt.

Everything as Rachel said had happened so suddenly. Certainly her mother had been ill some time, but it was all at once decided that the only possible place to send her little daughter in a hurry, was to Aunt Hester, in London.

Aunt Hester, who was her father’s eldest sister, and in the eyes of Rachel, at least, awfully old, was quite kind, but also, as she admitted, quite unused to children. The first thing she did therefore, was to engage a governess to look after her niece for the seven weeks she would have to remain with her.

Miss Moore, a rather uninteresting, middle-aged lady, had duly arrived the previous evening, and at breakfast time Aunt Hester had suggested the British Museum as a suitable place to which Rachel might be conducted.

“She’s never been to London before, and, though I don’t want her to sit too long over lessons, I think she should improve her mind while she is here. The British Museum is an education in itself,” declared Aunt Hester, and Miss Moore had primly agreed.

So it happened that at eleven o’clock on a bright spring morning, a secretly unwilling little girl climbed the steps leading to the great entrance of the great museum. The pigeons on the steps reminded her of the dovecote at home, and the tears came suddenly to her eyes, as almost without thinking she counted the number of birds on the top step.

“Seven,” she murmured half aloud.

“Seven what?” asked Miss Moore.

“Seven pigeons on this step. Aren’t they pretty?” Rachel lingered to look at the burnished shining necks. She would much rather have stayed outside with the pigeons, but Miss Moore hurried on to the swing doors, and Rachel was obliged to follow her into the huge building.

“What do they keep here?” she asked listlessly, when Miss Moore had given up her umbrella to a man behind a counter, just inside.

“All sorts of things,” returned her governess vaguely. “It’s a _museum_, you know.”

Rachel was not very much the wiser but, as she walked with Miss Moore from one great hall to another, she was confused and wearied by the number of things of which she had glimpses. There were rows of statues, cases full of strange objects, monuments in stone all covered with carvings; curious pictures on the walls. Indeed, there _were_ “all sorts of things” in the British Museum! But, as she knew nothing about any of them, and Miss Moore volunteered very little information, she was yawning with boredom by the time her governess remarked:

“Now, _these_ things come from Egypt.”

For the first time Rachel pricked up her ears. Mother and Dad were now in Egypt, and as she glanced at the long stone things like tombs, at drawings and models and a thousand other incomprehensible objects all round her, she wished she knew something about them. Instead of saying so, however, and almost without thinking, she murmured, “This is the seventh room we’ve come to. I’ve counted them.”

“This is the famous _Rosetta_ Stone,” observed Miss Moore, reading an inscription at the foot of a dull-looking broken block of marble in front of them.

Rachel yawned for the seventh time with such vigour that her eyes closed, and when she opened them a queer-looking little old man was bending over the big block.

“What is the date of the month?” he asked so suddenly that she started violently.

“Let me see. The seventh, I think. Yes—the seventh,” she stammered, raising her eyes to his face.

He was so muffled up, that nearly all Rachel could see of him was a pair of very large dark eyes, under a curious-looking hat. He wore a long cloak reaching to his heels, and one end of the cloak was flung over his left shoulder almost concealing his face.

Rachel scarcely knew why she thought him so old, except perhaps, that his figure seemed to be much bent.

“Quite right. It’s the seventh,” he returned. “And what’s the name of your house?”

Rachel looked round for Miss Moore, who strangely enough was still reading the inscription on the stone, and seemed to be paying no attention to the old man’s questions.