Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 10, 2025
He was wedged against the wall, close to the great eight-day clock, with its round moon-like smiling face forming a ludicrous contrast to his long, sallow, grave countenance, which was pretty much at the same level above the sanded floor. Before him sat Molly Brunton and one of her sisters, their heads close together in too deep talk to attend to the progress of the game.
Will'um, the eldest, has a gun, which customarily stands behind the old eight-day clock; and he takes it with him to the garden to shoot the blackbirds. Long before Will'um is ready to let fly, the blackbirds have gone away; and so the gun is never, never fired; but there is a determined look on Will'um's face when he returns from the garden.
The furniture of the room was very homely of course a few rough chairs and a table, a corner cupboard with their little stock of crockery and delf, a gaudy tea-tray, representing a lady in bright red, walking out with a very blue parasol, a few common, coloured scripture subjects in frames upon the wall and chimney, an old dwarf clothes-press and an eight-day clock, with a few bright saucepans and a kettle, comprised the whole.
I could see the blue parlour that Sunday evening; the sober couple seated primly opposite to each other; the china monsters on the high chimneypiece; the blue-and-white Dutch tiles, with queer squat figures of Flemish citizens on foot and on horseback; the candles burning dimly on the spindle-legged table two poor pale flames reflected ghastly in the dark polished panels of the wainscot; the big open Bible on an adjacent table; the old silver tankard, and buckhorn-handled knives and forks set out for supper; the solemn eight-day clock, ticking drearily in the corner; and amid all that sombre old-fashioned comfort, gray-haired Matthew sighing and lamenting for his vanished youth.
All slept; the gas in the hall had been left faintly burning to light his return; a dreadful stillness reigned, broken by the deep ticking of the eight-day clock. He put the gas out, and sat on a chair in the hall, waiting and counting the minutes, longing for any human countenance.
Through the mellow dusk, as through the varnish of an old picture, one saw the different objects in a golden light and shade the brass warming-pan hanging beside the tall eight-day clock the table in front of the long window-seat, covered with its checked red cloth the carved door of a cupboard in the wall bearing the date 1679 the miscellaneous store of things packed away under the black rafters, dried herbs and tools, bundles of list and twine, the spindles of old spinning wheels, cattle-medicines, and the like the heavy oaken chairs the settle beside the fire, with its hard cushions and scrolled back.
At one of the Penny Banks in Yorkshire, an old man in receipt of parish outdoor relief was found using the Penny Bank as a place of deposit for his pennies until he had accumulated enough to buy a coat. Others save, to buy an eight-day clock, or a musical instrument, or for a railway trip.
He stooped as if in the act of sitting down, and Reuben, passing an arm about his waist, led him to an armchair. "Thank you, lad," he said again. An eight-day clock ticked in a neighboring room. "That was how it came to pass," said the old man, in a voice so strangely commonplace that Reuben started at it. "Ah! That was how it came to pass."
'That's the way it always happens. And once more in my life I experienced the peculiar feeling of being altogether at a loss for words. "'Aggy, says I at last, 'I've got a good notion to lay two violent hands on you, and wind you up like an eight-day clock, but rather than make hard feelings between friends, I'll refrain. Besides you are a funny cuss, that's sure.
"Have you missed nothing?" said she, archly. "Nothing," was his reply. "Been deprived of no comfort?" "So far from it, I have found a great many new ones." "And been saved the trouble of winding up and regulating that pretty eight-day clock for which you gave forty dollars."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking