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There were protests against the implied prophecy, but none against the proposition as such. That is the spirit of hut comradeship ... a spirit which no alarm-clock controversies can do aught to impair; for though 5.15 a.m. is an hour to test the temper of a troop of twenty-one saints, 10.15 p.m. will bring geniality and garrulousness to twenty-one sinners.
The alarm-clock awakens us, less politely than a James or Joseph, but we need never suspect it of uncomplimentary mental reservations, and neither its appetite nor its morals cause us uneasiness. Fellow-citizens of Greek extraction maintain parlors where we may sit, like so many statues on the Parthenon, while they polish our shoes.
The hours of darkness dragged on miserably. Percy dozed and woke, only to doze and wake again. An occasional creaking board or muttered exclamation told that, like himself, his mates were not finding their first night one of unalloyed comfort. Bare feet struck the floor. A match scraped, and Percy saw Jim gazing at the alarm-clock. "What time is it?" groaned Budge from above.
It was my intention to start at 4 A.M., so as to reach the castle before it should get uncomfortably hot; but as I had no alarm-clock, and as no one in the club ever thought of getting up before six, I very naturally overslept myself, and by the time I had dressed, eaten a hasty breakfast of oatmeal, hard bread, and tea, and filled my canteen with boiled water, it was after seven.
With one of those strange revelations of reality that come to people in life when in solitude they look at their own reflection in a mirror she thought spoke. "It is too late too late for me to be the mother of a boy-child." Then she went and set her alarm-clock to a quarter to seven in the morning.
I wonder who has that old house of yours now." "I heard the other day," said Jill more easily. The odd sensation of embarrassment was passing. "Some people called . . . what was the name? . . . Debenham, I think." Silence fell again. It was broken by the front-door bell, like an alarm-clock that shatters a dream. Wally got up. "Your uncle," he said. "You aren't going to open the door?"
For most of us or alarm-clocks would not be made to ring continuously until the harassed bed-warmer gets up and stops the racket this getting out of bed is no such easy matter; and perhaps it will be the same when Gabriel's trumpet is the alarm-clock.
But I would not assert that they never had to put some finishing touches, either to their dress or to their hut equipment foldings, before the Company Officer's tour of inspection at 8.30. It sufficed that they would pass muster at 6 o'clock, when appearances are less minutely important. And the man who never rises till 5.55 detests an alarm-clock that whirrs at 5.15.
He stood off at a distance while he saw that she registered and was respectfully treated and led to the elevator by a page. Then he moved west to the Hotel Manhattan and found shelter. And thus they slept with propriety, Forty-second Street lying between them like a sword. The alarm-clock in Gilfoyle's head woke him at seven.
Sometimes I was of that virtuous band, and sometimes I wasn't; but, either way, I hated the alarm-clock at 5.15, though not so virulently as did those members of the hut who never by any chance dreamt of rising until five to six.
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