“Yesterday? but why?”
“Because yesterday—was it not?—was the first of the two days agreed upon between you and our father?”
“No—surely to-day is the first day—I was to come XXI. i. 3, which would be your December 9.”
“But yesterday was December 9 with us—to-day is December 10.”
“Strange! What day of the week do you make it?”
“To-day is Thursday, December 10.”
“This is still stranger—we make it Wednesday; yesterday was Tuesday.”
Then I saw it. The year XX. had been a leap year with the Erewhonians, and 1891 in England had not. This, then, was what had crossed my father’s brain in his dying hours, and what he had vainly tried to tell me. It was also what my unconscious self had been struggling to tell my conscious one, during the past night, but which my conscious self had been too stupid to understand. And yet my conscious self had caught it in an imperfect sort of a way after all, for from the moment that my dream had left me I had been composed, and easy in my mind that all would be well. I wish some one would write a book about dreams and parthenogenesis—for that the two are part and parcel of the same story—a brood of folly without father bred—I cannot doubt.
I did not trouble George with any of this rubbish, but only shewed him how the mistake had arisen. When we had laughed sufficiently over my mistake—for it was I who had come up on the wrong day, not he—I fished my knapsack out of its hiding-place.
“Do not unpack it,” said I, “beyond taking out the brooches, or you will not be able to pack it so well; but you can see the ends of the bars of gold, and you can feel the weight; my father sent them for you. The pearl brooch is for your mother, the smaller brooches are for your sisters, and your wife.”