“If you will sit down now I will direct you,” continued Madame, authoritatively.
The Prophet sat down at the table, holding a lead pencil upside down in one hand and an account-book wrong side up in the other.
“Let’s see—what’s to-day?” inquired Madame, of her husband.
“The seventeenth, my dear,” replied Mr. Sagittarius, looking at his wife with almost sickly adoration.
“To be sure. Capricornus’s day for Homer’s Idyl. Very well, Mr. Vivian, to-day being the seventeenth, and the old lady’s birthday the twentieth, you have three days, or rather nights, of steady work before you.”
“Steady work?” murmured the Prophet.
“What should be his hours, Jupiter?” continued Madame. “At what time of night is he to commence? Shall I say nine?”
The Prophet remembered feebly that, during the next three nights, he had two important dinner-engagements, a party at the Russian Ambassador’s, and a reception at the Lord Chancellor’s just opposite. However, he made no remark. Somehow he felt that words were useless when confronted with such an iron will as that of the lady in the pelisse.
“Nine would be too early, my dear,” said Mr. Sagittarius. “Eleven p.m. would be more to the purpose.”
“Eleven let it be then, punctually. Will you dot down, Mr. Vivian, that you have to be at the telescope to take observations at eleven p.m. every night from now till the twentieth.”