e, for we couldn't go down-stairs
or up, couldn't go to bed, couldn't rise, couldn't wash, couldn't dress,
couldn't stand up, couldn't sit down, couldn't even cross our legs,
without calling a meeting first and explaining the case and passing
resolutions, and getting consent. It wouldn't ever do--now would it?"

"Do? Why, it would wear a person out in a week! Did you ever hear
anything like it, Patsy Cooper?"

"Oh, you'll find there's more than one thing about them that ain't
commonplace," said the widow, with the complacent air of a person with a
property right in a novelty that is under admiring scrutiny.

"Well, now, how ever do you manage it? I don't mind saying I'm suffering
to know."

"He who made us," said Angelo reverently, "and with us this difficulty,
also provided a way out of it. By a mysterious law of our being, each of
us has utter and indisputable command of our body a week at a time, turn
and turn about."

"Well, I never! Now ain't that beautiful!"

"Yes, it is beautiful and infinitely wise and just. The week ends every
Saturday at midnight to the minute, to the second, to the last shade of
a fraction of a second, infallibly, unerringly, and in that instant the
one brother's power over the body vanishes and the other brother takes
possession, asleep or awake."

"How marvelous are His ways, and past finding out!"

Luigi said: "So exactly to the instant does the change come, that during
our stay in many of the great cities of the world, the public clocks
were regulated by it; and as hundreds of thousands of private clocks and
watches were set and corrected in accordance with the public clocks, we
really furnished the standard time for the entire city."

"Don't tell me that He don't do miracles any more! Blowing down the
walls of Jericho with rams' horns wa'n't as difficult, in my opinion."

"And that is not all," said Angelo. "A thing that is even more
marvelous, perhaps, is the fact that the change takes note of longitude
and fits itself to the meridian we are on. Luigi is in command this
week. Now, if on Saturday night at a moment before midnight we could
fly in an instant to a point fifteen degrees west of here, he would hold
possession of the power another hour, for the change observes local time
and no other."

Betsy Hale was deeply impressed, and said with solemnity:

"Patsy Cooper, for detail it lays over the Passage of the Red Sea."

"Now, I shouldn't go as far as that," said Aunt Pa