“A watch is a watch, Rosy,” put in the aunt, doggedly—­“and time is time.—­When it’s four o’clock at our house, it’s four o’clock at your aunt Sprague’s, and it’s so all over the world.  The world may turn round—­I’ll not deny it, for your uncle often said as much as that, but it cannot turn in the way Mr. Mulford says, or we should all fall off it, at night, when it was bottom upwards.  No, sir, no; you’ve started wrong.  My poor, dear, late Mr. Budd, always admitted that the world turned round, as the books say; but when I suggested to him the difficulty of keeping things in their places, with the earth upside down, he acknowledged candidly—­for he was all candour, I must say that for him—­and owned that he had made a discovery by means of his barometer, which showed that the world did not turn round in the way you describe, or by rolling over, but by whirling about, as one turns in a dance.  You must remember your uncle’s telling me this, Rose?”

Rose did remember her uncle’s telling her aunt this, as well as a great many other similar prodigies.  Captain Budd had married his silly wife on account of her pretty face, and when the novelty of that was over, he often amused himself by inventing all sorts of absurdities, to amuse both her and himself.  Among other things, Rose well remembered his quieting her aunt’s scruples about falling off the earth, by laying down the theory that the world did not “roll over,” but “whirl round.”  But Rose did not answer the question.

“Objects are kept in their places on the earth by means of attraction,” Mulford ventured to say, with a great deal of humility of manner.  “I believe it is thought there is no up or down, except as we go from or towards the earth; and that would make the position of the last a matter of indifference, as respects objects keeping on it.”

“Attractions are great advantages, I will own, sir, especially to our sex.  I think it will be acknowledged there has been no want of them in our family, any more than there has been of sense and information.  Sense and information we pride ourselves on; attractions being gifts from God, we try to think less of them.  But all the attractions in the world could not keep Rosy, here, from falling off the earth, did it ever come bottom upwards.  And, mercy on me, where would she fall to!”

Mulford saw that argument was useless, and he confined his remarks, during the rest of the conversation, to showing Rose the manner in which the longitude of a place might be ascertained, with the aid of the chronometer, and by means of observations to get the true time of day, at the particular place itself.  Rose was so quick-witted, and already so well instructed, as easily to comprehend the principles; the details being matters of no great moment to one of her sex and habits.  But Mrs. Budd remained antagonist to the last.  She obstinately maintained that twelve o’clock was twelve o’clock; or, if there was any difference, “London hours were notoriously later than those of New York.”