ongest night," she
retorted, catching the spirit of the game.

"Some day," I threatened her, "the earth will stop rotating on its
orbit, or its axis, or whatever it is, and then we will be like the
moon, divided into two hostile hemispheres, one perpetual day and the
other eternal night."

She did not seem alarmed. "Yes, and I bet I know which one you'll
emigrate to," she said. "But how about the equinoctial gales? Why should
there be gales just then?"

I had forgot about the equinoctial gales, and this caught me unawares.

"That was an old tradition of the Phoenician mariners," I said, "but the
invention of latitude and longitude made them unnecessary. They have
fallen into disrepute. Dead reckoning killed them."

"And the precession of the equinoxes?" she asked, turning back to her
magazine.

This was a poser, but I rallied stoutly. "Well," I said, "you see, there
are two equinoxes a year, the vernal and the autumnal. They are well
known by coal dealers. The first one is when he delivers the coal and
the second is when he gets paid. Two of them a year, you see, in the
course of a million years or so, makes quite a majestic series. That is
why they call it a procession."

Titania looked at me and gradually her face broke up into a charming
aurora borealis of laughter.

"I don't believe you know any more about the old things than I do," she
said.

And the worst of it is, I think she was right.

163 INNOCENT OLD MEN

I found Titania looking severely at her watch, which is a queer little
gold disk about the size of a waistcoat button, swinging under her chin
by a thin golden chain. Titania's methods of winding, setting and
regulating that watch have always been a mystery to me. She frequently
knows what the right time is, but how she deduces it from the data given
by the hands of her timepiece I can't guess. It's something like this:
She looks at the watch and notes what it says. Then she deducts ten
minutes, because she remembers it is ten minutes fast. Then she performs
some complicated calculation connected with when the baby had his bath,
and how long ago she heard the church bells chime; to this result she
adds five minutes to allow for leeway. Then she goes to the phone and
asks Central the time.

"Hullo," I said; "what's wrong?"

"I'm wondering about this daylight-saving business," she said. "You
know, I think it's all a piece of Bolshevik propaganda to get us
confused and encourage anarch