"What was the difficulty?" he asked, and listened to the explanation
attentively. "Bunday!" he exclaimed at the finish, showing he had fully
grasped the situation. Of course he knew all about Bunday! Wasn't it so
many weeks after the Chinaman's New Year festival? And in a jargon of
pidgin-English he swept aside all moon discussions, and fixed the date of
"Bunday" for the twenty-eighth of March, "which," as Dan wisely remarked,
"proved that somebody was right," but whether the Maluka or the Dandy, or
the moon, he forgot to specify. "The old heathen to beat us all too," he
added, "just when it had got us all dodged." Dan took all the credit of
the suggestion to himself. Then he looked philosophically on the
toughness of the problem: "Anyway," he said, "the missus must have learnt
a bit about beginning at the beginning of things. Just think what she'd
have missed if any one had known when Easter was right off!"
"What she'd have missed indeed. Exactly what the townsman misses, as long
as he remains in a land where everything can be known right off."
But a new idea had come to Dan.
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