As I live and breathe, Thomas, you will not flourish unless you are part of our brotherhood. I swear that on all the saints.

A farmer could place an order for a new tractor part by text message and pay for it by mobile money-transfer. A supplier many miles away would then take the part to the local matternet station for airborne dispatch via drone.

[March, May, Quintilis, and October] also have their Nones on the seventh, as Numa [Pompilius] ordained, because Julius [Caesar] changed nothing about them. As for January, Sextilis, and December, they still have their Nones on the fifth, though they began to have thirty-one days after Caesar added two days to each, and it is nineteen days from their Ides to the following Kalends, because in adding the two days Caesar did not want to insert them before either the Nones or the Ides, lest an unprecedented postponement mar religious observance associated with the Nones or Ides themselves, which have a fixed date.

Though Lady Mary had none of the young-ladyism or sentimentality of girls of her age, we are not to suppose her either hard or masculine.