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"Where is he?" responded Mary, in a swift breathlessness quite new to her. "In there. We put up a bed in the clock-room." It was the unfinished part of the house. The Veaseys had always meant to plaster, but that consummation was still afar.
"That's the afternoon Jim was took," whispered a woman to her neighbor. Hannah Prime went on. "I jest as soon tell it now. I can tell ye all together what I couldn't say to one on ye alone; an' if anybody speaks to me about it afterwards, they'll wish they hadn't. I was all by myself in the house. I set down in my clock-room, about three in the arternoon, an' there I set. I didn't git no supper.
I gave her her supper in my room. She eats like a wolf, she does, the great raw-boned hannimal. I wish you saw her in bed as I did. I put her next the clock-room she'll hear the hours betimes, I'm thinking. You never saw such a sight. The great long nose and hollow cheeks of her, and oogh! such a mouth! I felt a'most like little Red Riding-Hood I did, Miss.
While hearing this little history, the party were breathlessly climbing three steep iron staircases, the last of which ended at a trap-door, giving admittance to the clock-room, where the keeper generally sits; from here another ladder-like staircase leads up into the lantern. Arrived at the top, the Baron screamed with delight at the gorgeous spectacle before him.
It was not until dusk, when the three sat before the clock-room fire, "blazed" rather for company than warmth, that Young Nick's Hattie opened her mouth and spoke. "Mary," said she, "how'd you find out your grandpa was such great shakes?" Mary was in some things much older than her mother. She answered demurely, "I don't know as I can say."
Caleb, meanwhile, sat with his host in the clock-room, smoking many a meerschaum, and listening to the keeper's talk about his beautiful charge, a pet as well as a duty with him, obviously.
If 't w'an't so everlastin' cold, I'd take him right into the clock-room, an' blaze a fire; but he'd see right through that. You gether up them tools an' things, an' I'll help carry out the bench." If Enoch had not just then been absorbed in a delicate combination of brass, he might have spoken more sympathetically. As it was, he seemed kindly, but remote. "Look out!" said he, "you'll joggle.
It was not until dusk, when the three sat before the clock-room fire, "blazed" rather for company than warmth, that Young Nick's Hattie opened her mouth and spoke. "Mary," said she, "how'd you find out your grandpa was such great shakes?" Mary was in some things much older than her mother. She answered demurely, "I don't know as I can say."
She lifted the latch, and set her shoulder against the panel. "If it's the same old button, it'll give," she thought. And it did give. She walked steadily across the kitchen toward the clock-room, where the man that moment turned to confront her. He made a little run forward; then, seeing but one woman, he restrained himself.
What if we be gittin' on a little mite in years? We ain't underground yit, be we? I see a real good ninepenny paper once, all covered over with green brakes. I declare if 'twa'n't sweet pretty! Well, whether I paper or whether I don't, I've got some thoughts of a magenta sofy. I'm tired to death o' that old horsehair lounge that sets in my clock-room.
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