BROWN EYES AND EQUINOXES

“What is an equinox?” said Titania.

I pretended not to hear her and prayed fervently that the inquiry would pass from her mind.  Sometimes her questions, if ignored, are effaced by some other thought that possesses her active brain.  I rattled my paper briskly and kept well behind it.

“Yes,” I murmured husbandly, “delicious, delicious!  My dear, you certainly plan the most delightful meals.”  Meanwhile I was glancing feverishly at the daily Quiz column to see if that noble cascade of popular information might give any help.  It did not.

Clear brown eyes looked across the table gravely.  I could feel them through the spring overcoat ads.

“What is an equinox?”

“I think I must have left my matches upstairs,” I said, and went up to look for them.  I stayed aloft ten minutes and hoped that by that time she would have passed on to some other topic.  I did not waste my time, however; I looked everywhere for the “Children’s Book of a Million Reasons,” until I remembered it was under the dining-room table taking the place of a missing caster.

When I slunk into the living room again I hastily suggested a game of double Canfield, but Titania’s brow was still perplexed.  Looking across at me with that direct brown gaze that would compel even a milliner to relent, she asked: 

“What is an equinox?”

I tried to pass it off flippantly.

“A kind of alarm clock,” I said, “that lets the bulbs and bushes know it’s time to get up.”

“No; but honestly, Bob,” she said, “I want to know.  It’s something about an equal day and an equal night, isn’t it?”

“At the equinox,” I said sternly, hoping to overawe her, “the day and the night are of equal duration.  But only for one night.  On the following day the sun, declining in perihelion, produces the customary inequality.  The usual working day is much longer than the night of relaxation that follows it, as every toiler knows.”

“Yes,” she said thoughtfully, “but how does it work?  It says something in this article about the days getting longer in the Northern Hemisphere, while they are getting shorter in the Southern.”

“Of course,” I agreed, “conditions are totally different south of Mason and Dixon’s line.  But as far as we are concerned here, the sun, revolving round the earth, casts a beneficent shadow, which is generally regarded as the time to quit work.  This shadow—­”

“I thought the earth revolved round the sun,” she said.  “Wasn’t that what Galileo proved?”

“He was afterward discovered to be mistaken,” I said.  “That was what caused all the trouble.”

“What trouble?” she asked, much interested.

“Why, he and Socrates had to take hemlock or they were drowned in a butt of malmsey, I really forget which.”

“Well, after the equinox,” said Titania, “do the days get longer?”