Before the Estate had finished his artistic improvements on the front door, the new tenant had begun the transfer of his simple lares and penates in a big hand-propelled pushcart.  The initial load consisted in the usual implements of eating, sitting, and sleeping.  But the burden of the half-dozen succeeding trips was homogeneous.  Clocks.  Big clocks, little clocks, old clocks, new clocks, fat clocks, lean clocks, solemn clocks, fussy clocks, clocks of red, of green, of brown, of pink, of white, of orange, of blue, clocks that sang, and clocks that rang, clocks that whistled, and blared, and piped, and drummed.  One by one, the owner established them in their new domicile, adjusted them, dusted them, and wound them, and, as they set themselves once more to their meticulous busy-ness, that place which had for so long been muffled in quiet and deadened with dust, gave forth the tiny bustle of unresting mechanism and the pleasant chime of the hours.  Number 37 became the House of Silvery Voices.

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Thus came to Our Square, to be one of us, for better or for worse, Mr. Winslow Merivale, promptly rechristened Stepfather Time.  The Bonnie Lassie gave him the name.  She said that only a stepfather could bring up his charges so badly.  For his clocks were both independent and irresponsible, though through no fault of their own.  When they were wound they went.  When they were unwound they rested.  Seldom were more than half of them simultaneously busy, and their differences of opinion as to the hour were radical and irreconcilable.  The big, emphatic eight-day, opposite the front door, might proclaim that it was eleven, only to be at once contradicted by the little tinkler on the parlor mantel, which announced that it was six, thereby starting up the cathedral case on the stairway and the Grandfather in the dining-room, who held out respectively for eight and two, while all the time it was really half-past one.  Thence arose in the early days painful misunderstandings on the part of Our Square, for we are a simple people and deem it the duty of a timepiece to keep time.  In particular we were befooled by Grandfather, the solemn-voiced Ananias of a clock with a long-range stroke and a most convincing manner.  So that Schepstein, the note-shaver, on his way to a profitable appointment at 11 A.M., heard the hour strike (thirty-five minutes in advance of the best professional opinion) from the House of Silvery Voices, and was impelled to the recklessness of hiring a passing taxi, thereby reaching his destination with half an hour to spare and half a dollar to lack, for which latter he threatened to sue the Mordaunt Estate’s tenant.  To the credit side of the house’s account it must be set down that MacLachan, the tailor, having started one of his disastrous drunks within the precincts of his Home of Fashion, was on his way to finish it in the gutter via the zigzag route from corner saloon to corner saloon, when the Twelve Apostles clock in the basement window lifted up its voice and (presumably through the influence of Peter) thrice denied the hour, which was actually a quarter before midnight.  “Losh!” said MacLachan, who invariably reacted in tongue to the stimulus of Scotch whiskey, “they’ll a’ be closed.  Hame an’ to bed wi’ ye, waster of the priceless hours!” And back he staggered to sleep it off.