necessarily loud tones. "This fowl is fastened in so tight I can't budge it."
"But why—" I began.
"It's perfectly simple," he interrupted argumentatively, "I can get it out, but if I don't have the pincers to bend this wire with, some of the woodwork may come off. And you may as well bring me a file too."
I never expostulate with Pater when he's in that tone of voice. For one thing it's useless, and I'm not one to batter myself on a stonewall, or its equivalent. I merely went and got the pincers, when it turned out that it was a wrench he really wanted—a small one. When I reminded him that we hadn't such a thing, he wanted to know with a quite unnecessary degree of warmth why we hadn't, and didn't even so much as answer when I inquired if the scissors would be of any use.
Difficulties seemed to increase upon him. Without the ponderous weights, which always fell off at precisely the wrong moment, the works wouldn't work of course, and when the pendulum was off, which it took every opportunity to be, they worked too much. As the clock had to be on the mantle piece so that the weights could be suspended, to manipulate it
