"Surely," said Balbus. Lambert was silent. "Well, now, suppose it's midnight here in Chelsea. Then it's Wednesday _west_ of Chelsea (say in Ireland or America) where midnight hasn't arrived yet: and it's Thursday _east_ of Chelsea (say in Germany or Russia) where midnight has just passed by?" "Surely," Balbus said again. Even Lambert nodded this time. "But it isn't midnight, anywhere else; so it can'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.