A Tangled Tale quotes

“A goodly pace, I trow!” he exclaimed. “We sped not thus in the ascent!”

“Goodly, indeed!” the other echoed with a groan. “We clomb it but at three miles in the hour.”

“And on the dead level our pace is—?” the younger suggested; for he was weak in statistics, and left all such details to his aged companion.

There was an anxious pause.

“How large did he say the pudding was to be?” Balbus said at last. “Take its cubical contents, divide by the cubical contents of what each man can eat, and the quotient⁠—”

“He didn’t say anything about pudding,” said Hugh, “—and here’s the Square,” as they turned a corner and came into sight of the “eligible apartments.”

“Shall I knock, or ring?” said Hugh, looking in some perplexity at a square brass plate which bore the simple inscription “Ring Also.”

“Both,” said Balbus. “That’s an Ellipsis, my boy. Did you never see an Ellipsis before?”

“I couldn’t hardly read it,” said Hugh, evasively. “It’s no good having an Ellipsis, if they don’t keep it clean.”

“I couldn’t hardly read it,” said Hugh, evasively.

“It’s no good having an Ellipsis, if they don’t keep it clean.”

“Which there is one room, gentlemen,” said the smiling landlady. “And a sweet room too! As snug a little backroom—”

“It do scratch, but not without you pulls its whiskers! It’ll never do it,” she repeated slowly, with a visible effort to recall the exact words of some written agreement between herself and the cat, “without you pulls its whiskers!”

“Much may be excused in a cat so treated,” said Balbus

, as they left the house and crossed to Number Seventy-three, leaving the landlady curtseying on the doorstep, and still murmuring to herself her parting words, as if they were a form of blessing, “—not without you pulls its whiskers!”

The way the trains run is most peculiar. The westerly ones go round in two hours; the easterly ones take three; but they always manage to start two trains from here, opposite ways, punctually every quarter-of-an-hour.”

“They part to meet again,” said Clara, her eyes filling with tears at the romantic thought.

“No need to cry about it!” her aunt grimly remarked. “They don’t meet on the same line of rails, you know. Talking of meeting, an idea strikes me!” she added, changing the subject with her usual abruptness.

“They part to meet again,” said Clara, her eyes filling with tears at the romantic thought.

“No need to cry about it!” her aunt grimly remarked.

“They don’t meet on the same line of rails, you know. Talking of meeting, an idea strikes me!” she added, changing the subject with her usual abruptness. “Let’s go opposite ways round, and see which can meet most trains.

“You’d be none the worse if you did!” Mad Mathesis interrupted. “In fact, you’d be the better, I’m certain!”

“Neither does our excellent preceptress approve of puns,” said Clara.

“But we’ll have a match, if you like. Let me choose my train,” she added after a brief mental calculation, “and I’ll engage to meet exactly half as many again as you do.”

“Merely to help us into the trains.” The elder lady spoke with the nonchalance of one quite used to the process.

“Very few people can get into a carriage without help in less than three seconds, and the trains only stop for one second.”

At this moment the whistle was heard, and two trains rushed into the station. A moment’s pause, and they were gone again;

The old man muttered under his breath “If only my sister were here!” and looked helplessly at his son. His son looked at the five natives. The five natives looked at the Captain.

The Captain looked at nobody: his eyes were cast down, and he seemed to be saying softly to himself “Contemplate one another, gentlemen, if such be your good pleasure. I contemplate Myself!”

“Of course you may,” said her aunt.

“Anyone, that has three eyes, may be said to have two eyes, I suppose?”

Clara followed her aunt’s dreamy gaze across the crowded gallery, half-dreading to find that there was a three-eyed person in sight.

“Come, come! Don’t lose heart!” said the other. “All this is full of charm for me.”

“You are young, Norman,” sighed his father; “young and lighthearted. For me, it is Charm without the C.”

“The old one is sad,” the Governor remarked with some anxiety. “He has, without doubt, effected some fearful crime?”

“The words of old men are weak!” the Governor interrupted angrily. “Let the youth speak!”

“Tell her,” cried Norman, in a wild burst of eloquence, “that, like two grasshoppers in a volcano, we are shrivelled up in the presence of Her Spangled Vehemence!”

“It is well,” said the Governor, and translated this into Kgovjnian. “I am now to tell you,” he proceeded, “what Her Radiancy requires of you before you go. The yearly competition for the post of Imperial Scarf-maker is just ended; you are the judges.

“Courage!” cried the younger cheerily. “Haec olim meminisse juvabit! The end of all this will be glory!”

“Glory without the L!” was all the poor old man could say, as he rocked himself to and fro on the malachite bench.

“Glory without the L!”

“Well, look here again!” cried Hugh, triumphantly, as he poured the water from the big bucket into the little one. “Why, it doesn’t half fill it!”

“That’s its business,” said Lambert. “If Balbus says it’s the same bulk, why, it is the same bulk, you know.”

“Well, I don’t believe it,” said Hugh.

Just before doing that, it turns a corner, and runs round the garden again, alongside of the first portion, and then inside that again, winding in and in, and each lap touching the last one, till it has used up the whole of the area.”

“Like a serpent with corners?” said Lambert.

“Exactly so. And if you walk the whole length of it, to the last inch, keeping in the centre of the path, it’s exactly two miles and half a furlong.

“You said it was a flower-garden?” Hugh inquired, as Balbus was leaving the room.

“Where do the flowers grow?” said Hugh. But Balbus thought it best not to hear the question.

He left the boys to their problem, and, in the silence of his own room, set himself to unravel Hugh’s mechanical paradox.

“There’s a fallacy somewhere,” he murmured drowsily, as he stretched his long legs upon the sofa. “I must think it over again.”

He closed his eyes, in order to concentrate his attention more perfectly, and for the next hour or so his slow and regular breathing bore witness to the careful deliberation with which he was investigating this new and perplexing view of the subject.

Clara did not see her way out of it.

Logic had never been her forte.

“To return to the arithmetic,” Mad Mathesis resumed—the eccentric old lady never let slip an opportunity of driving her niece into a calculation—“what percentage do you suppose must have lost all four—a leg, an arm, an eye, and an ear?”

“It changes from Wednesday to Thursday at midnight, doesn’t it?” Hugh had begun.

“Sometimes,” Balbus gently insisted. “Six midnights out of seven, it changes to some other name.”

“I meant, of course,” Hugh corrected himself, “when it does change from Wednesday to Thursday, it does it at midnight—and only at midnight.”

but it was too late to go back.

“Hear, hear!” cried Balbus.

“Quite so,” said the old gentleman, recovering his self-possession a little: “when first I began this annual custom—my friend Balbus will correct me if I am wrong—” (Hugh whispered “with a strap!”

I can but enumerate their names, and I take this opportunity of saying that this is the last time I shall put on record the names of competitors who give no sort of clue to the process by which their answers were obtained.

In guessing a conundrum, or in catching a flea, we do not expect the breathless victor to give us afterwards, in cold blood, a history of the mental or muscular efforts by which he achieved success; but a mathematical calculation is another thing.

The names of this “mute inglorious” band are Common Sense, D. E. R., Douglas, E. L., Ellen, I. M. T., J. M. C., Joseph, Knot I, Lucy, Meek, M. F. C., Pyramus, Shah, Veritas.