an't be changing from one
day to another anywhere else. And yet, if Ireland and America and so on
call it Wednesday, and Germany and Russia and so on call it Thursday,
there _must_ be some place--not Chelsea--that has different days on the
two sides of it. And the worst of it is, the people _there_ get their
days in the wrong order: they've got Wednesday _east_ of them, and
Thursday _west_--just as if their day had changed from Thursday to
Wednesday!"

"I've heard that puzzle before!" cried Lambert. "And I'll tell you the
explanation. When a ship goes round the world from east to west, we
know that it loses a day in its reckoning: so that when it gets home,
and calls its day Wednesday, it finds people here calling it Thursday,
because we've had one more midnight than the ship has had. And when you
go the other way round you gain a day."

"I know all that," said Hugh, in reply to this not very lucid
explanation: "but it doesn't help me, because the ship hasn't proper
days. One way round, you get more than twenty-four hours to the day, and
the other way you get less: so of course the names get wrong: but people
that live on in one place always get twenty-four hours to the day."

"I suppose there _is_ such a place," Balbus said, meditatively, "though
I never heard of it. And the people must find it very queer, as Hugh
says, to have the old day _east_ of them, and the new one _west_:
because, when midnight comes round to them, with the new day in front of
it and the old one behind it, one doesn't see exactly what happens. I
must think it over."

So they had entered the house in the state I have described--Balbus
puzzled, and Lambert buried in gloomy thought.

"Yes, m'm, Master _is_ at home, m'm," said the stately old butler.
(N.B.--It is only a butler of experience who can manage a series of
three M's together, without any interjacent vowels.) "And the _ole_
party is a-waiting for you in the libery."

"I don't like his calling your father an _old_ party," Mad Mathesis
whispered to her niece, as they crossed the hall. And Clara had only
just time to whisper in reply "he meant the _whole_ party," before they
were ushered into the library, and the sight of the five solemn faces
there assembled chilled her into silence.

Her father sat at the head of the table, and mutely signed to the ladies
to take the two vacant chairs, one on each side of him. His three sons
and Balbus completed the party. Writing materials had been