"No, it wasn't a dream," said Jerry thoughtfully. "It was simply psychical phenomena. I've heard of things just as queer. Awfully funny things happen in India. And look at the 'phantom armies' in France."
"Rot," said Dick briefly. "I think it was a kink in Mollie's brain, and she passed it on to me. We do, sometimes. Mother says all twins do. And your silly head was as empty as usual and you psychicked it from me."
"Rot," said Jerry, with as much decision as Dick. "I saw the blooming parrot as soon as you did, if not sooner."
"It wasn't rot," Mollie said decidedly; "whatever it was it wasn't rot. I think—" she paused for a moment to consider her words—"I believe it may have been just what Prue said it was. We travelled back in Time. It sounds impossible, but if you come to think of it lots of things that happen now would have sounded impossible to those children, or at any rate to Papa and Mamma. If Alice in Wonderland could have seen forty years ahead she would have found it quite easy to believe six impossible things before breakfast. There's submarines for one, and flying, and wireless, especially telephones, and the cinema. If we could have taken the Campbells to a moving picture of a submarine submerging, with aeroplanes flying round, and a lecture wirelessed from America coming out of a gramophone, and the music done with a piano-player, Time-travelling would not have seemed much more wonderful to them."
Dick shook his head again. "It's different," he said. "All those things might have seemed very wonderful and almost impossible, but they weren't quite impossible. Time-travelling is."
"But we've done it," said Mollie.
Nobody answered. There did not appear to be an answer to that statement.
"Have you ever heard," Mollie said at last, speaking slowly and looking at the boys with solemn eyes, "of a thing called Einstein's Theory of Relatittey—I mean Rela_tiv_ity—Rel-a-tiv-ity?"
"Old Bibs jawed us about it one day," Dick answered, "but he said no one could understand it except the chap himself and not always him. So he didn't expect us to, which was a good job for everybody."
"That's what Aunt Mary said; I heard her talking. That's why I read about it, because I'm fairly good at maths. She has it all pasted in a book. I had to skip most of it, but here and there I found bits. I took some notes," Mollie drew a penny notebook from her pocket. "One man says that, if the world travelled as fast as light, there would be no Time. All the clocks would stop, and we'd be There as soon as we were Here. Well now, that's just what we did. We were Here—and we were There. So our time stopped and Now was Then. See?"