“Have we really been forty-four days here?” she inquired, after counting the marks with growing astonishment.

“I believe the reckoning is accurate,” he said.  “The Sirdar was lost on the 18th of March, and I make this the 1st of May.”

“May Day!”

“Yes.  Shall we drive to Hurlingham this afternoon?”

“Looked at in that way it seems to be a tremendous time, though indeed, in some respects, it figures in my mind like many years.  That is when I am thinking.  Otherwise, when busy, the days fly like hours.”

“It must be convenient to have such an elastic scale.”

“Most useful.  I strive to apply the quick rate when you are grumpy.”

Iris placed her arms akimbo, planted her feet widely apart, and surveyed Jenks with an expression that might almost be termed impudent.  They were great friends, these two, now.  The incipient stage of love-making had been dropped entirely, as ludicrously unsuited to their environment.

When the urgent necessity for continuous labor no longer spurred them to exertion during every moment of daylight, they tackled the box of books and read, not volumes which appealed to them in common, but quaint tomes in the use of which Jenks was tutor and Iris the scholar.

It became a fixed principle with the girl that she was very ignorant, and she insisted that the sailor should teach her.  For instance, among the books he found a treatise on astronomy; it yielded a keen delight to both to identify a constellation and learn all sorts of wonderful things concerning it.  But to work even the simplest problem required a knowledge of algebra, and Iris had never gone beyond decimals.  So the stock of notebooks, instead of recording their experiences, became covered with symbols showing how x plus y equaled x squared minus 3,000,000.

As a variant, Jenks introduced a study of Hindustani.  His method was to write a short sentence and explain in detail its component parts.  With a certain awe Iris surveyed the intricacies of the Urdu compound verb, but, about her fourth lesson, she broke out into exclamations of extravagant joy.

“What on earth is the matter now?” demanded her surprised mentor.

“Don’t you see?” she exclaimed, delightedly.  “Of course you don’t!  People who know a lot about a thing often miss its obvious points.  I have discovered how to write Kiplingese.  All you have to do is to tell your story in Urdu, translate it literally into English, and there you are!”

“Quite so.  Just do it as Kipling does, and the secret is laid bare.  By the same rule you can hit upon the Miltonic adjective.”

Iris tossed her head.

“I don’t know anything about the Miltonic adjective, but I am sure about Kipling.”

This ended the argument.  She knitted her brows in the effort to master the ridiculous complexities of a language which, instead of simply saying “Take” or “Bring,” compels one to say “Take-go” and “Take-come.”