scientific, and I'd rather see hands going round than wheels.
It was only when the brazen proposal was made to transfer the gong of the cuckoo-clock—now cuckoo, alas! no more—to the patrician brass-clock on the dining room mantel, that I put my foot down, French heel and all. There is a limit to even my endurance.
For a few months longer our erstwhile cuckoo-clock ticked spasmodically on, and then succumbed—a melancholy victim to man's curiosity and love of tools. I don't know that Pater would diagnose it so, but I know Pater in some ways better than he knows himself—far. That's my compensation.
For two years I let that hollow mask of a clock remain on the wall, mute and inglorious, its weights primly hung together at the top to be out of harm's way, its hands motionless, its countenance null and void. Last spring I included it in the annual presentation to an old-clothes man, and hung a picture over the scar its absence revealed.
I doubt if it was even missed by the master of the house.
