Chapter XXVIII: George and I Spend a Few Hours Together at the Statues, and The - Page 2

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."

I then told him how much gold there was, and from my pockets brought out the watches and the English knife.

"This last," I said, "is the only thing that I am giving you; the rest is all from our father. I have many many times as much gold myself, and this is legally your property as much as mine is mine."

George was aghast, but he was powerless alike to express his feelings, or to refuse the gold.

"Do you mean to say that my father left me this by his will?"

"Certainly he did," said I, inventing a pious fraud.

"It is all against my oath," said he, looking grave.

"Your oath be hanged," said I. "You must give the gold to the Mayor, who knows that it was coming, and it will appear to the world, as though he were giving it you now instead of leaving you anything."

"But it is ever so much too much!"

"It is not half enough. You and the Mayor must settle all that between you. He and our father talked it all over, and this was what they settled."

"And our father planned all this, without saying a word to me about it while we were on our way up here?"

"Yes. There might have been some hitch in the gold's coming. Besides the Mayor told him not to tell