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A STORY ABOUT A CLOCK.

Our move-in took place in no furtive or clandestine fashion; our installation of ourselves in our semi-detached was performed well under the eye of the neighbouring public.  Our furniture waited on the public thoroughfare until our new home was ready to receive it.  Small children played games on our sofa; enthusiastic acquaintances played tunes on our piano.  In a word, our move-in was a local festival; everyone took part.  This is the sad tale of the man who took the most expensive part—­the clock.

If the hard choice had been put to Diana, my wife, to say which she could least sorrowfully part with, me or the clock, the clock would have stayed.  If I had been put to the same dismal alternative as to Diana or the clock, Diana would have gone.  In fact, directly the clock was safely in Diana had gone out.  That was all she cared about; small children might play on the sofa, enthusiastic acquaintances might play on the piano, and I might toil unremittingly with everything else, for all Diana cared.  So, the clock being in, out she went upon her lawful or unlawful purposes.  As she departed she said something about my seeing to the clock.  I remembered that later on, but I remembered it wrong.  This is how I did it.

The man sat a little on my own special chair (at that time on the pavement) before he came in.  I asked him what he was sitting there for.  He got up and came inside.  Then I asked him what he had come in for, and he said, “The clock.”  I looked at the clock and it had stopped.  I gave it a shake, and it still stopped.  He said it was no good shaking it; that only annoyed it.  He said he had come to look after it.  He then took off his hat and his coat, moved the fingers about, put his ears to it to hear its heart beating, and asked me what I had been doing to it.  I said I hadn’t been doing anything to it; he watched me doing things to everything else, and adopted an expression as if to say he didn’t believe me.  He gave me the feeling that I was a very interfering person, and that he didn’t want to have anything more to do with me.  He said he should have to take the clock away.  I asked him when he would bring it back.  He said he didn’t know.  He appeared to take a pessimistic view of it.  I asked him cheerfully if he would ever bring it back.  He gave me a contemptuous look and, without another word, went, taking the clock with him.

When Diana came back she asked where the clock was.  I said it had gone.  “Gone where?” asked Diana.  I said I didn’t know; the man had taken it.  “What man?” asked Diana.  I was trying to move the sofa at the moment and I was inclined to be short-spoken.  I said that the man who had taken it was, no doubt, the man whom Diana had gone forth to find and bid take away our clock.  Diana said that, if the man had said that she had said that he might take our clock away, the man was a liar. Had the man said that she had said he might take the clock away?  The answer was in the negative.