About eleven the sunshine generally came, and he drew a line on the frame to mark the hour. But in two days the verge of the shadow had gone on, and at eleven left the pencil-mark behind. He marked it again and again, it went on as the sun, coming up higher and higher, described a larger ring. So with his pencil-lines on the window-frame he measured the spring and graduated the coming of summer, till the eggs in the goldfinch’s nest in the apple-tree were hard set. From this he knew that his sun-dial was not correct, for as the sun now each day described a circle slightly less than before, the shadow too would change and the error increase. Still the dial would divide the day for them, and they could work and arrange their plans by it.
Had they had the best chronometer ever made it would have been of no further use. All time is artificial, and their time was correct to them.
Mark shouted that breakfast was ready, so he went down, and they sat at the table under the awning.
“Pan’s been thieving,” said Mark. “There was half a damper on the table last night, and it was gone this morning, and two potatoes which we left, and I put the skin of the kangaroo on the fence, and that’s gone—”
“He couldn’t eat the skin, could he?” said Bevis. “Pan, come here, sir.”
“Look at him,” said Mark, “he’s stuffed so full he can hardly crawl—if he was hungry he would come quick.”
“So he would. Pan, you old rascal! What have you done with the kangaroo skin, sir?”
Pan wagged his tail and looked from one to the other; the sound of their voices was stern, but he detected the goodwill in it, and that they were not really angry.
“And the damper?”
“And the potatoes? And just as if you could eat leather and fur, sir!”