“The bag is just like that, isn’t it?” I suggested. “Is not the outer surface of one side of it continuous with the inner surface of the other side?”
“So it is!” she exclaimed. “Only it isn’t a bag, just yet. How shall we fill up this opening, Mein Herr?”
“Thus!” said the old man impressively, taking the bag from her, and rising to his feet in the excitement of the explanation. “The edge of the opening consists of four handkerchief-edges, and you can trace it continuously, round and round the opening: down the right edge of one handkerchief, up the left edge of the other, and then down the left edge of the one, and up the right edge of the other!”
“So you can!” Lady Muriel murmured thoughtfully, leaning her head on her hand, and earnestly watching the old man. “And that proves it to be only one opening!”
She looked so strangely like a child, puzzling over a difficult lesson, and Mein Herr had become, for the moment, so strangely like the old Professor, that I felt utterly bewildered: the “eerie” feeling was on me in its full force, and I felt almost impelled to say “Do you understand it, Sylvie?” However I checked myself by a great effort, and let the dream (if indeed it was a dream) go on to its end.
“Now, this third handkerchief,” Mein Herr proceeded, “has also four edges, which you can trace continuously round and round: all you need do is to join its four edges to the four edges of the opening. The Purse is then complete, and its outer surface—”
“I see!” Lady Muriel eagerly interrupted. “Its outer surface will be continuous with its inner surface! But it will take time. I’ll sew it up after tea.” She laid aside the bag and resumed her cup of tea. “But why do you call it Fortunatus’s Purse, Mein Herr?”
The dear old man beamed upon her, with a jolly smile, looking more exactly like the Professor than ever. “Don’t you see, my child—I should say Miladi? Whatever is inside that Purse, is outside it; and whatever is outside it, is inside it. So you have all the wealth of the world in that leetle Purse!”
His pupil clapped her hands, in unrestrained delight. “I’ll certainly sew the third handkerchief in—some time,” she said: “but I won’t take up your time by trying it now. Tell us some more wonderful things, please!” And her face and her voice so exactly recalled Sylvie, that I could not help glancing round, half-expecting to see Bruno also!
Mein Herr began thoughtfully balancing his spoon on the edge of his teacup, while he pondered over this request. “Something wonderful—like Fortunatus’s Purse? That will give you—when it is made—wealth beyond your wildest dreams: but it will not give you Time!”
A pause of silence ensued—utilised by Lady Muriel for the very practical purpose of refilling the teacups.
“In your country,” Mein Herr began with a startling abruptness, “what becomes of all the wasted Time?”
Lady Muriel looked grave. “Who can tell?” she half-whispered to herself. “All one knows is that it is gone—past recall!”
“Well, in my—I mean in a country I have visited,” said the old man, “they store it up: and it comes in very useful, years afterwards! For example, suppose you have a long tedious evening before you: nobody to talk to: nothing you care to do: and yet hours too soon to go to bed. How do you behave then?”
“I get very cross,” she frankly admitted: “and I want to throw things about the room!”
“When that happens to—to the people I have visited, they never act so. By a short and simple process—which I cannot explain to you—they store up the useless hours: and, on some other occasion, when they happen to need extra time, they get them out again!”
The Earl was listening with a slightly incredulous smile. “Why cannot you explain the process?” he enquired.
Mein Herr was ready with a quite unanswerable reason. “Because you have no words, in your language, to convey the ideas which are needed. I could explain it in—in—but you would not understand it!”
“No indeed!” said Lady Muriel, graciously dispensing with the name of the unknown language. “I never learnt it—at least, not to speak it fluently, you know. Please tell us some more wonderful things!”
“They run their railway-trains without any engines—nothing is needed but machinery to stop them with. Is that wonderful enough, Miladi?”
“But where does the force come from?” I ventured to ask.
Mein Herr turned quickly round, to look at the new speaker. Then he took off his spectacles, and polished them, and looked at me again, in evident bewilderment. I could see he was thinking—as indeed I was also—that we must have met before.
“They use the force of gravity,” he said. “It is a force known also in your country, I believe?”
“But that would need a railway going downhill,” the Earl remarked. “You can’t have all your railways going downhill?”
“They all do,” said Mein Herr.
“Not from both ends?”
“From both ends.”
“Then I give it up!” said the Earl.
“Can you explain the process?” said Lady Muriel. “Without using that language, that I can’t speak fluently?”
“Easily,” said Mein Herr. “Each railway is in a long tunnel, perfectly straight: so of course the middle of it is nearer the centre of the globe than the two ends: so every train runs halfway down-hill, and that gives it force enough to run the other half up-hill.”
“Thank you. I understand that perfectly,” said Lady Muriel. “But the velocity, in the middle of the tunnel, must be something fearful!”
“Mein Herr” was evidently much gratified at the intelligent interest Lady Muriel took in his remarks. At every moment the old man seemed to grow more chatty and more fluent. “You would like to know our methods of driving?” he smilingly enquired. “To us, a runaway horse is of no import at all!”
Lady Muriel slightly shuddered. “To us it is a very
