The Unmapped Sea Read Online Free Page A

simple as painting pictures and hanging them on the walls!”
    To the Incorrigibles, of course, it was. They were still calling out names as they retied their smocks around their waists and readied themselves to paint.
    â€œAgatha Swanburne!”
    â€œQueen Victoria!” The children had never met either of these ladies in person, as Agatha Swanburne was long dead and Queen Victoria was busy being queen of the realm, but that hardly seemed to matter.
    â€œDon’t forget Incorrigibles!” Beowulf said. The thought of painting one another amused them greatly, and they struck many hilarious poses.
    â€œIncorrigibles—and Lumawoo, too,” Cassiopeia added.
    â€œLumawoo! Lumawoo!” her brothers agreed. “First we paint Lumawoo.”
    Laughing and determined, they led their governess to where the light seemed best. They debated about how she should pose, and what style of painting would suit her. In the end, they decided to show her in thenursery, in the comfortable chair where she often sat to read poems and stories to them. On the wall behind her, they would add the portrait of Agatha Swanburne that hung in Miss Mortimer’s office at the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females. This way, they reasoned, they would make a painting of a portrait and a portrait of a painting, all at the same time.
    The portrait could not pose for them, of course, but the children remembered its subject well: a young Agatha wearing an impish, amused expression, with eyes as sea green as Cassiopeia’s, and smooth, vividly auburn-colored hair. It was a striking shade, quite like that of the children’s hair, and Penelope’s, too, as it so happened.
    Obediently, the young governess posed with her favorite book of poetry in her lap, one hand resting on the cover. “‘I wander through the meadows green/Made happy by the verdant scene,’” she recited softly. These were the first lines of “Wanderlust,” her favorite of the poems. Miss Mortimer had given her the book as a gift, many years earlier. It was a collection of melancholy German poetry in translation, and Penelope had read it cover to cover more times than she could count.
    Perhaps it was the poem that soothed her lonely heart, or the thought of her kind headmistress, or thegood cheer of the Incorrigibles as they dipped their pony-scented paintbrushes into the paint, but her gloom left her all at once, like a flock of sparrows taking flight. Now she too found herself with an impish smile playing on her lips.
    She turned her face toward the window, to better catch the light. “The Long-Lost Lumleys are bound to turn up someday,” she thought, “and as for the other mysteries, I am quite sure they can be solved as well, with a bit of effort and pluck.”
    Naturally she thought so; after all, she was a Swanburne girl, through and through. Yet as Agatha Swanburne herself once cautioned, “Things are rarely as complicated, or as simple, as they seem.”

T HE S ECOND C HAPTER
There is an unfortunate misunderstanding.
    T HE UNPLEASANT DOCTOR ’ S RECOMMENDATION TO improve Lady Constance’s health was not revealed right away—at least, not to her. It so happened that one of the household butlers had delivered a fresh box of cigars to Lord Fredrick’s study at the very moment that Dr. Veltschmerz had come by to discuss the matter, and had thus overheard their entire conversation.
    If only the butler had gone more often to the theater! If he had, he would have known that eavesdropping leads only to humiliating discoveries andunfortunate misunderstandings (comedies), or people being run through with swords while cowering behind the drapes (tragedies). But the poor fellow had not had that luxury, and now he wasted no time in telling the other butlers all that he thought he had learned. They in turn told the housemaids, who told the scullery maids, who told the stable boys, and on it went. Soon