The Panchronicon Part 16

"Well, I declare!" Rebecca exclaimed. "Ain't you ever agoin' to fix up your room, Phoebe Wise?"

"Oh, in a minute, Rebecca. I was just agoin' over my trunk a minute."

She leaned back against the foot of the bed, and folding her hands gazed pensively into vacancy, while Rebecca stared at her in astonishment.

"Do you know," Phoebe went on, "I've ben thinkin' it's awful mean not to give you a chance to go back to 1876, Rebecca. Joe Chandler's a mighty fine man!"

Rebecca gave vent to an unintelligible murmur and turned to Phoebe's bed. She grasped the mattress and gave it a vicious shake as she turned it over. She was probably only transferring to this inoffensive article a process which she would gladly have applied elsewhere.

There was a long silence while Rebecca resentfully drew the sheets into proper position, smoothed them with swift pats and caressings, and tucked them neatly under at head and sides. Then came a soft, apologetic voice.

"Rebecca!"

The spinster made no reply but applied herself to a mathematically accurate adjustment of the top edge of the upper sheet.

"Rebecca!"

The second call was a little louder than the first, and there was a queer half-sobbing, half-laughing catch in the speaker's voice that commanded attention.

Rebecca looked up.

Phoebe was still sitting on the floor beside her trunk, but the trunk was open now and the young woman's rosy face was peering with a pathetic smile over a--what!--could it be!

Rebecca leaned forward in amazement.

Yes, it was! In Phoebe's outstretched hands was the dearest possible little baby's undergarment--all of cambric, with narrow ribbons at the neck.

For a few seconds the two sisters looked at each other over this unexpected barrier. Then Phoebe's lips quivered into a pathetic curve and she buried her face in the little garment, laughing and crying at once.

Rebecca dropped helplessly into a chair.

"Phoebe Martin Wise!" she exclaimed. "Do you mean--hev you brought----?"

She fell silent, and then, darting at her sister, she took her head in her hands and deposited a sudden kiss on the smooth bright gold-brown hair and whisked out of Phoebe's room and into her own.

In the meantime Copernicus was too deeply absorbed in his calculations to notice these comings and goings. Apparently he had been led into the most abstruse mathematical regions. Nothing short of the triple integration of transcendental functions should have been adequate to produce those lines of anxious care in his face as he slowly covered sheet after sheet with figures.

He was at length startled from his preoccupation by a gentle voice at his side.

"Can't I help, Mr. Droop?"

It was Phoebe, who, having made all right in her room and washed all traces of tears from her face, had come to note Droop's progress.

Dazed, he raised his head and looked unexpectedly into a lovely face made the more attractive by an expression only given by a sense of duty unselfishly done.

"I--I wish'd you'd call me Cousin Copernicus," he said for the fifth time.

She picked up one of the sheets on which he had been scribbling as though she had not heard him, and said:

"Why, dear me! How comes it you have so much figurin' to do?"

"Well," he began, in a querulous tone, "it beats all creation how many things a feller has to work out at once! Ye see, I've got a rope forty foot long that's got to tie the Panchronicon to the North Pole while we swing 'round to cut meridians. Now, then, the question is, How many times an hour shall we swing 'round to get to 1892, an' how long's it goin' to take an' how fast must I make the old thing hum along?"

"But you said eighteen hours by the clock would do it."

"Well, I jest guessed at that by the time the future man an' I took to go back five weeks, ye know. But I can't seem to figur it out right."

Phoebe seated herself at the table and took up a blank sheet of paper.

"Please lend me your pencil," she said. "Now, then, every time you whirl once 'round the pole to westward you lose one day, don't you?"

"That's it," said Droop, cheerfully. "Cuttin' twenty-four meridians----"

"And how many days in twenty-two years?" Phoebe broke in.

"You mean in six years."

"Why, no," she replied, glancing at Droop with a mischievous smile, "it's twenty-two years back to 1876, ain't it?"

"To '76--why, but----"

He caught sight of her face and stopped short.

There came a pleased voice from one of the state-rooms.

"Yes, we've decided to go all the way back, Mr. Droop."

It was Rebecca.

She came forward and stood beside her sister, placing one hand affectionately upon her shoulder.

Droop leaned back in his chair with both hands on the edge of the table.

"Goin' all the way! Why, but then----"

He leaped to his feet with a radiant face.

"Great Jumpin' Jerusha!" he cried.

Slapping his thigh he began to pace excitedly up and down.

"Why, then, we'll get all the big inventions out--kodak an' phonograph and all. We'll marry Joe Chandler an' set things agoin' in two shakes fer millions."

"Eight thousand and thirty-five," said Phoebe in a quiet voice, putting her pencil to her lips. "We'll have to whirl round the pole eight thousand and thirty-five times."

"Whose goin' to keep count?" asked Rebecca, cheerfully. Ah, how different it all seemed now! Every dry detail was of interest.

Phoebe looked up at Droop, who now resumed his seat, somewhat sobered.