“Only this year,” Simon replied; “afterward it will be all right. It is but to bring the first of January in the right place.”
“It was right enough,” persisted Caleb. “And I say no one, king or no king, has any right to take eleven days away from the English people.”
Then Mistress Margery Lippett spoke:
“For my part,” she said, “I think the New Way unchristian. Mistress Duncan, you know, has a fine crowing little boy, and when the squire asked how old he was, she told him—’twas but a day so ago—three months and two weeks; and he laughed, and told her she would have to take the two weeks off. Now that I call unchristian, and not dealing justly with the child.”
At this the school-master laughed, and taking his pipe out of his mouth, and pushing his velvet skull-cap a little farther back, he replied:
“They were both right, Mistress Margery. Both of them. The mother counts by weeks—very good—the squire by the proper calendar. One makes the child three months and two weeks, and she is right; the other deducts eleven days to fit the calendar, and he, too, is right.”
“Out with it,” cried Caleb; “out with such a calendar! Why, the whole realm will be in confusion. None of us will ever know how old we are, or when the church-days are due; but I doubt if, in spite of it all, the Pope’s new calendar doesn’t keep the squire’s rent-day straight. They’ll look out for that.”
“I suppose,” said Simon, “you all think the year was created when the world was?”
“Of course it was,” said Mistress Margery; “didn’t He make the day and the night, and do you suppose He would have passed the year over?”
“You are about right,” said Simon; “but the trouble is we are just finding out what His year is? See here, Roger,” and he turned his head to the boy, “do you know how many different kinds of years we can reckon?”