“Why, boy, when we went to sleep the sun was what you may call six feet above the horizon; now it is twelve feet if it is an inch, so that if it be still setting, it must be setting upwards—a phenomenon of which the records of astronomical research make no mention.”
“But it is setting?” retorted Otto, with a puzzled look, “for I never heard of your astronomical searchers saying that they’d ever seen the sun rise in the same place where it sets.”
“True, Otto, and the conclusion I am forced to is that we have slept right on from sunset to sunset.”
“So, then, we’ve lost a day,” murmured Pauline, who in an attitude of helpless repose, had been winking with a languid expression at the luminous subject of discussion.
“Good morning, Pina,” said Dominick.
“Good evening, you mean,” interrupted his brother. “Well, good evening. It matters little which; how have you slept?”
“Soundly—oh, so soundly that I don’t want to move.”
“Well, then, don’t move; I’ll rise and get you some breakfast.”
“Supper,” interposed Otto.
“Supper be it; it matters not.—But don’t say we’ve lost a day, sister mine. As regards time, indeed, we have; but in strength I feel that I have gained a week or more.”