“Pray ask me,” said Alleyne, “and I will endeavour to answer you.”
“Well, then: here is my problem,” said Oldroyd; “perhaps you will try and solve it too, Miss Alleyne. Suppose two men set to work to perform a task, and the one—as you mathematicians would put it, say A, worked twenty hours a day for five years, while B worked eight hours a day for twenty years, which would do most work?”
“I know,” said Lucy, quickly; “the busy B, for he would do a hundred and sixty hours’ work, while A would only do a hundred hours’ work.”
Alleyne smiled and nodded very tenderly at his sister.
“Isn’t that right?” she said quickly, and her cheeks flushed.
“Quite right as to proportion, Lucy,” he said, “but in each case it would be three hundred and sixty-five times, or three hundred and thirteen times as much.”
“Of course,” she said. “How foolish of me.”
“Well, Mr Oldroyd, what about your problem?” continued Alleyne, commencing upon a fresh piece of tough mutton.
“You have solved it,” said Oldroyd. “You have shown me that the eight-hour’s man does more work than the twenty-hour’s man.”
“Yes, but one works five years, the other twenty, according to your arrangement.”