is really
wanted is a complete change in the habits of the population? We've been
gradually slipping into wasteful ways of living. Our expenditure on
artificial light------"

"I know all about that," said Sir Timothy. "If you've said it to me
once, you've said it a dozen times, and last year I did alter my docks.
But this year--hang it all! They're sticking another twenty-five minutes
on it. If they go on at this rate, moving us back an extra half hour
every May, we'll be living in the middle of the night before we die."

"I'm sorry to hear you taking up that question of the so-called Irish
time," said Mr. Courtney. "Reactionary patriotism----"

Sir Timothy spluttered. Being an Irish gentleman, he hated to be accused
of patriotism, which he held--following Dr. Johnson--to be the last
refuge of a scoundrel.

"There's nothing patriotic about it," he said. "What I object to hasn't
anything to do with any particular country. It's simply a direct insult
to the sun."

"The sun," said Mr. Courtney, smiling more offensively than ever, "can
take care of itself."

"It can," said Sir Timothy, "and does. It takes jolly good care not
to rise in Dublin at the same time that it does in Greenwich, and what
you're trying to do is to bluff it into saying it does. When you come to
think of it, the sun doesn't rise here the same time it does in Dublin.
We're a hundred and twenty miles west of Dublin, so the real time
here----"

"We can't have a different time in every parish," said Mr. Courtney. "In
the interests of international civilization----"

"I don't care a row of pins about international civilization. We're
something like twenty minutes wrong already here. When you've made your
silly change to summer time, and wiped out that twenty-five minutes
Irish time, we shall be an hour and three quarters wrong."

"At all events," said Mr. Courtney, "you'll have to do it."

"I won't."

"And when you've got accustomed to it, you'll see the advantages of the
change."

Sir Timothy was profoundly irritated.

"You may do as you like," he said, "I mean to stick to the proper time.
The proper time, mind you, strictly according to the sun, as it rises
in this neighbourhood. I haven't worked it out exactly yet, but I should
say, roughly, that there'll be two hours' difference between your watch
and mine."

Mr. Courtney gasped.

"Do you mean to say that you're actually going to add on two hours?

"I'm going to take off two hours,"