“The stars, Mister, witnessed the birth of your son a hundred thousand years ago—his birth and also his death,” said the “queen,” satisfied with the squelching of the scoffer. “They also looked down upon your own deathbed, Mister, a hundred thousand years ago.”
There was an awed silence while the company sought mentally for a solution to this tremendous and incomprehensible enigma.
“Look here, Ollie,” said Mr. Link, blatantly jocular; “if you’ve been dead as long as all that you ought to be buried. You stop in at my office in the morning.”
This remark properly was ignored by the gypsy queen. She paid no attention to the strained laugh that followed the undertaker’s sally. She sat hunched forward in the chair, her chin in her hands.
“The stars travel through space at the rate of a million miles a minute,” she said oracularly. “How long, Mister, would it take mortal man to travel a million miles?”
The question, addressed abruptly to Mr. Baxter, found him at a loss for an answer. All he could do was to shake his head helplessly.
“I see it is beyond you,” she went on. “So fast travel the stars that in one day, such as ours, they have put behind them a hundred thousand of the tiny things we call years.”
No one present was prepared to dispute the statement.
“Even as I speak to you now, Mister, my words are as ancient history to the stars. So! I lift my hand. The stars are a thousand years older than they were before I lifted it. Do you understand, Mister? Is it not clear to you?”
“Not very,” confessed Mr. Baxter, humbly.