"About thirty days ago; I have been waiting since then. I sent nearly a hundred men through the tunnels into the forest to guide you in."
"You taught them pretty good English," said the Very Young Man. "They were tickled to death that they knew it, too," he added with a reminiscent grin.
"You say about thirty days; how do you measure time down here?" asked the Big Business Man.
"I call a day, one complete cycle of sleeping and eating," the Chemist replied. "I suppose that is the best translation of the Oroid word; we have a word that means about the same thing."
"How long is a day?" inquired the Very Young Man.
"It seems in the living about the same as your twenty-four hours; it occupies probably about the interval of time of ten hours in your world.
"You see," the Chemist went on, "we ordinarily eat twice between each time of sleep—once after rising—and once a few hours before bedtime. Workers at severe muscular labor sometimes eat a light meal in between, but the custom is not general. Time is generally spoken of as so many meals, rather than days."
"But what is the arbitrary standard?" asked the Doctor. "Do you have an equivalent for weeks, or months or years?"
"Yes," answered the Chemist, "based on astronomy the same as in your world. But I would rather not explain that now. I want to take you, later to-day, to see Lylda's father. You will like him. He is—well, what we might call a scientist. He talks English fairly well. We can discuss astronomy with him; you will find him very interesting."
"How can you tell time?" the Very Young Man wanted to know. "There is no sun to go by. You have no clocks, have you?"