Yea, buns, and buns, and buns!

Old Song.

“How very, very sad!” exclaimed Clara; and the eyes of the gentle girl

filled with tears as she spoke,

“Sad — but very curious when you come to look at it arithmetically,” was

her aunt’s less romantic reply. “Some of them have lost an arm in their

country’s service, some a leg, some an ear, some an eye — ”

“And some, perhaps, all!” Clara murmured dreamily, as they passed the long

rows of weather-beaten heroes basking in the sun. “Did you notice that very

old one, with a red face, who was drawing a map in the dust with his wooden

leg, and all the others watching? I think it was a plan of a battle — ”

“The Battle of Trafalgar, no doubt,” her aunt interrupted briskly. “Hardly

that, I think,” Clara ventured to say. “You see, in that case, he couldn’t

well be alive — ”

“Couldn’t well be alive!” the old lady contemptuously repeated. “He’s as

lively as you and me put together! Why, if drawing a map in the dust — with

one’s wooden leg — doesn’t prove one to be alive, perhaps you’ll kindly

mention what does prove it!”

Clara did not see her way out of it. Logic had never been her forte.

“To return to the arithmetic,” Mad Mathesis resumed — the eccentric old

lady never let slip an opportunity of driving her niece into a calculation —

“what percentage do you suppose must have lost all four — a leg, an arm, an

eye, and an ear?”

“How can I tell?” gasped the terrified girl. She knew well what was coming.

“You ca’n’t, of course, without data,” her aunt replied: “but I’m just

going to give you ”

“Give her a Chelsea bun, miss! That’s what most young ladies like best!”

The voice was rich and musical, and the speaker dexterously whipped back the

snowy cloth that covered his basket, and disclosed a tempting array of the

familiar square buns, joined together in rows, richly egged and browned and

glistening in the sun.

“No, sir! I shall give her nothing so indigestible! Be off!” The old lady

waved her parasol threateningly: but nothing seemed to disturb the good

humour of the jolly old man, who marched on, chanting his melodious refrain:

“Far too indigestible, my love!” said the old lady. Percentages will agree

with you ever so much better!”

Clara sighed, and there was a hungry look in her eyes as she watched the

basket lessening in the distance; but she meekly listened to the relentless

old lady, who at once proceeded to count off the data on her fingers.

“Say that 70 per cent have lost an eye — 75 per cent an ear — 80 per cent

an arm — 85 per cent a leg — that’ll do it beautifully. Now, my dear, what

percentage, at least, must have lost all four?”

No more conversation occurred unless a smothered exclamation of, “Piping

hot!” which escaped from Clara’s lips as the basket vanished round a corner

could be counted as such — until they reached the old Chelsea mansion, where

Clara’s father was then staying, with his three sons and their old tutor.

Balbus, Lambert, and Hugh had entered the house only a few minutes before

them. They had been out walking, and Hugh had been propounding a difficulty

which had reduced Lambert to the depths of gloom, and had even puzzled

Balbus.

“It changes from Wednesday to Thursday at midnight, doesn’t it?” Hugh had

begun.

“Sometimes,” said Balbus cautiously.

“Always,” said Lambert decisively.

“Sometimes,” Balbus gently insisted. “Six midnights out of seven, it

changes to some other name.”

“I meant, of course,” Hugh corrected, “when it does change from Wednesday

to Thursday, it does it at midnight — and only at midnight.”

“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 ca’n’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, people there get their days in the wrong order:

they’ve 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 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 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 queer, as Hugh says, to have

the old day east of th............