Part 39

“Some people measure everything,” said I, with a displeased air. “It is a detestable habit.”

“Archie, what does Pereunt et imputantur mean?”

“Eh? Oh, I see. Well, I say, Carter!--Oh, well, you know, I suppose it means you’ve got to pay for your fun, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, is that all? I was afraid it was something horrid. Why did you frighten me, Mr. Carter?”

“I think it is rather horrid,” said I.

“Why, it isn’t even true,” said Dolly scornfully.

Now when I heard this ancient and respectable legend thus cavalierly challenged, I fell to studying it again, and presently I exclaimed:

“Yes, you’re right! If it said that, it wouldn’t be true; but Archie translated it wrong.”

“Well, you have a shot,” suggested Archie.

“The oysters are eaten and put down in the bill,” said I. “And you will observe, Archie, that it does not say in whose bill.”

“Ah!” said Dolly.

“Well, somebody’s got to pay,” persisted Archie.

“Oh, yes, somebody,” laughed Dolly.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Archie. “I suppose the chap that has the fun--”

“It’s not always a chap,” observed Dolly.

“Well, then the individual,” amended Archie. “I suppose he’d have to pay.”

“It doesn’t say so,” I remarked mildly. “And according to my small experience--”

“I’m quite sure your meaning is right, Mr. Carter,” said Dolly in an authoritative tone.

“As for the other motto, Archie,” said I, “it merely means that a woman considers all hours wasted which she does not spend in the society of her husband.”

“Oh, come, you don’t gammon me,” said Archie. “It means that the sun don’t shine unless it’s fine, you know.”

Archie delivered this remarkable discovery in a tone of great self satisfaction.

“Oh, you dear old thing!” said Dolly.

“Well, it does you know,” said he.

There was a pause. Archie kissed his wife (I am not complaining; he has, of course, a perfect right to kiss his wife) and strolled away toward the hothouses.

I lit another cigarette. Then Dolly, pointing to the stem of the dial, cried:

“Why, here’s another inscription--oh, and in English?”

She was right. There was another--carelessly scratched on the old battered column--nearly effaced, for the characters had been but lightly marked--and yet not, as I conceived from the tenor of the words, very old.

“What is it?” asked Dolly, peering over my shoulder, as I bent down to read the letters, and shading her eyes with her hand. (Why didn’t she put on her hat? We touch the Incomprehensible.)