Then subtract Seventeen, and the answer must be —”
“Must be what, Dolly?”
“Exactly and perfectly true,” said Dolly, who was only half listening, but who knew her Lewis Carroll by heart. Her eyes were turned up to the ceiling and she was gabbling over and over—“by a series of monarchs also called Ptolemies down to the time of Queen Cleopatra, the last of the line. By a series of Ptolemies—a series of Ptolemies also called monarchs,—h’m—also called Cleopatra—no, also called—also called—oh, what were the old things called?”
“You’re nutty!” said Dotty. “No, my child, that isn’t slang, I mean you’re thinking of the nutting party and you can’t get the series of mummies straight in your head.”
“They weren’t mummies—”
“They were after they stopped being monarchs, weren’t they? All Egyptians were,—I mean, all fashionable Egyptians. Do keep still, dear, sweet Dollyrinda, do keep still. The cube root of xy,—Oh!—I do abhor, detest, despise, abominate these cubed XY’s!”
But having thus exploded her wrath, Dotty set to work in earnest and finally conquered the refractory factors.
“Done!” she announced, at the end of a half hour of hard work. “I’ve cubed everything in sight, and some roots that were hidden deeply and darkly in the earth.”
“You ought to be a Cubist, that we read so much about in the papers.”
“No, thank you. I’ll cube what I have to, but I’ll never go out cubing, for pleasure. How are your Ptolemies?”