The Next Morning Was Sunny Overhead And Damp Underfoot, With A
Thrill In The Air Like A Reminiscence Of Frost.
I went up into the
sloping garden behind the inn and smoked a pipe pleasantly enough,
to the tune of my landlady's lamentations over sundry cabbages and
cauliflowers that had been spoiled by caterpillars.
She had been
so much pleased in the summer-time, she said, to see the garden all
hovered over by white butterflies. And now, look at the end of it!
She could nowise reconcile this with her moral sense. And, indeed,
unless these butterflies are created with a side-look to the
composition of improving apologues, it is not altogether easy, even
for people who have read Hegel and Dr. M'Cosh, to decide
intelligibly upon the issue raised. Then I fell into a long and
abstruse calculation with my landlord; having for object to compare
the distance driven by him during eight years' service on the box
of the Wendover coach with the girth of the round world itself. We
tackled the question most conscientiously, made all necessary
allowance for Sundays and leap-years, and were just coming to a
triumphant conclusion of our labours when we were stayed by a small
lacuna in my information. I did not know the circumference of the
earth. The landlord knew it, to be sure - plainly he had made the
same calculation twice and once before, - but he wanted confidence
in his own figures, and from the moment I showed myself so poor a
second seemed to lose all interest in the result.
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