Mulford was a good deal embarrassed, but he gained courage by looking at Rose, who appeared to him to be quite as much mystified as her aunt. For once he hoped Rose was ignorant; for nothing would be so likely to diminish the feeling produced by the exposure of the aunt’s mistake as to include the niece in the same category. “My watch is a chronometer, you will recollect, Mrs. Budd,” said the young man. “I know it; and they ought to keep the very best time—_that_ I’ve always heard. My poor Mr. Budd had two, and they were as large as compasses, and sold for hundreds after his lamented decease.” “They were ship’s chronometers, but mine was made for the pocket. It is true, chronometers are intended to keep the most accurate time, and usually they do; this of mine, in particular, would not lose ten seconds in a twelvemonth, did I not carry it on my person.” “No, no, it does not seem to lose any, Harry; it only gains,” cried Rose, laughing. Mulford was now satisfied, notwithstanding all that had passed on a previous occasion, that the laughing, bright-eyed, and quick-witted girl at his elbow, knew no more of the uses of a chronometer than her unusually dull and ignorant aunt; and he felt himself relieved from all embarrassment at once. Though he dared not even seem to distrust Mrs. Budd’s intellect or knowledge before Rose, he did not scruple to laugh at Rose herself, to Rose. With _her_ there was no jealousy on the score of capacity, her quickness being almost as obvious to all who approached her as her beauty. “Rose Budd, you do not understand the uses of a chronometer, I see,” said the mate, firmly, “notwithstanding all I have told you concerning them.” “It is to keep time, Harry Mulford, is it not?” “True, to keep time—but to keep the time of a particular meridian; you know what meridian means I hope?” Rose looked intently at her lover, and she looked singularly lovely, for she blushed slightly, though her smile was as open and amicable as ingenuousness and affection could make it. “A meridian means a point over our heads—the spot where the sun is at noon,” said Rose, doubtingly. “Quite right; but it also means longitude, in one sense. If you draw a line from one pole to the other, all the places it crosses are on the same meridian. As the sun first appears in the east, it follows that he rises sooner in places that are east, than in places that are further west. Thus it is, that at Greenwich, in England, where there is an observatory made for nautical purposes, the sun rises about five hours sooner than it does here. All this difference is subject to rules, and we know exactly how to measure it.” “How can that be, Harry? You told me this but the other day, yet have I forgotten it.”