“I suppose you know I’ve been away thirty-five millions of years?” “What’s that, after all? You look as boyish as ever.” The Comet showed pleasure. He prided himself on his youth, and was wont to dress young, and talk young, and behave young. Many constellations and nebulæ invited to guess at his age, took him for not an hour more than two hundred million years old, whereas, in reality, he was nearly thirty times as much. “It’s the exercise,” he said; “nothing like it for keeping one agile and youthful. I’ve been eighty-three trillion, seventy-six billion, twenty-nine hundred millions of millions of quadrillions of miles since I saw you last. I attribute my health and--ahem!--good looks entirely to regular exercise.” “I wish I could have a run round with you,” answered the Sun, “but I can’t leave the System. I stroll my modest four hundred to five hundred million miles through space every year; but, of course, it’s not enough to do any practical good.” “Lord! what a sedentary life!” said the Comet; “don’t you find it tell on your liver? With your temperature, too, you ought to make yourself take some reasonable exercise. I’m sure you’d get rid of those spots if you did.” “Ah, it’s jolly easy for you free-lances to talk! You have nothing to think of but your own tail. I’m a busy planet.” The Comet did not like this somewhat slighting allusion to his tail. “As to that, my dear fellow, a tail fifty millions of miles long takes some watching, I can assure you. It isn’t all beer and skittles going at the pace I do, and keeping clear of everything and everybody. It wants tact and a cool head, anyway.” “Why, you wouldn’t hurt anybody if you hit ’em,” said the Sun, rather rudely. “Everybody knows you could pack the whole of your tail into a Gladstone bag, and still leave room for your toothbrush and a change of linen.” “No,” admitted the other, “I shouldn’t hurt other people, but they might jolly well shatter me. I’m not a robust Comet, for all my apparent physical strength. It’s a trying life, and there are dangers. Why, you yourself, though you mean well, always singe my hair and give me a sharp attack of fever every time I pass you. But never mind me and my tail. How prospers it with you? How’s the System?” “Going strong; but sometimes I am inclined to chuck the whole lot of ’em up; they’re such little plagues. Yet one can’t help feeling a bit proud of the inhabited ones.” “Ah! you’ve warmed some of them into life since I was last round?” “Oh, yes. A few have quite interesting little things living on them. Mars, for instance; they are getting fairly advanced there. Saturn has put on frills since you were here. He found a big swarm of asteroids which had lost their way, and now wears them like a collar. Saturn’s a regular child of Nature.” “How’s Venus? Lovely as ever?”