"You may be right, of course," replied Smithson, "though it certainly
begins with an A."
"True," I corrected. "_Anno Domini_."
"Conceivably--but the second letter is a U."
I left Smithson painfully to reconstruct A-U-G-U-S-T from among the ivy. He
had got to the M of a long date when a burst of sun cast a crisp shadow
across the dial.
"I don't think much of GEORGE STEPHENSON after all," I said. "His beastly
clock doesn't know the right time."
Smithson snorted. Here was a challenge to the omniscient.
"That's all right," he said, recovering himself in a moment "All properly
constructed dials have a compensating table; we shall find one no doubt
behind the ivy; there! I see it, to the left--a compensating table by which
you have to correct the actual record of the shadow. For example, we are
now in Lat. 55 N. The month is April. At Greenwich--"
But I wasn't listening. A bright truth had flashed into my mind, and I
couldn't hold myself back any longer. "It's just about an hour slow," I
said. "You don't think that Daylight Saving has anything to do with it, do
you?"
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Busdriver._--"ALL RIGHT--ALL RIGHT! I SEE YER, YER NEEDN'T
KEEP ON SURRENDERING."]
* * * * *
"About twenty-four hours later one of the ship's officers saw something
bobbing on the water a few hundred years dead ahead."--_New York Evening
Post._
America evidently foresees a long war.
* * * * *