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‘ you tell me the right time, Lesbie? my watch has stopped!’ said Lady Friga, stopping her partner near our heroine, in the walk round after a quadrille.

‘Twenty-two fifty,’ replied Lesbia.

‘Eh?’ said Friga, looking puzzled.

‘Fifty minutes past twenty-two. Or, as we said before the Deluge, ten minutes to eleven p.m.,’ Lesbia explained.

‘Oh, I see, you’ve got one of the new twenty-four-hour watches; they’re the correct thing, of course, I must get one too.’

‘You’ve no need to get a new watch, Fri; all you need do is to have the figures added which come after 12, putting them on the dial under the others, 13 under 1, 14 under 2, 15 under 3, and so on until you come to the last, 24 under 12. ‘That’s the cheap way, and it’s what I’ve done, you see.’

‘We have had the twenty-four-hour clock for some time on our side of the splash,’ remarked Letitia; ‘I’m glad it’s likely to become Europian. But it’s not a great matter, after all; they’re talking now of our international convention to do away with the Christian era and devise a new method of dividing and reckoning time which shall suit all the world, independently of religious creeds, every one