‘we had such a thunderstorm last Tuesday — I mean one of the last set of Tuesdays, you know.’

Alice was puzzled. ‘In our country,’ she remarked, ‘there’s only one day at a time.’

The Red Queen said, ‘That’s a poor thin way of doing things. Now here, we mostly have days and nights two or three at a time, and sometimes in the winter we take as many as five nights together — for warmth, you know.’

‘Are five nights warmer than one night, then?’ Alice ventured to ask.

‘Five times as warm, of course.’

‘But they should be five times as cold, by the same rule — ’