Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/221

 cured of my absurd craze for filling the house with tomfoolery.

The next day the clock struck thirteen four times, and this cheered her up. She said that if we were all going to die, it did not so much matter. Most likely there was a fever or a plague coming, and we should all be taken together.

She was quite lighthearted over it!

After that, the clock went on and killed every friend and relation we had, and then it started on the neighbours.

It struck thirteen all day long for months, until we were sick of slaughter, and there could not have been a human being left alive for miles around.

Then it turned over a new leaf, and gave up murdering folks, and took to striking mere harmless thirty-nines and forty-ones. Its favourite number now is thirty-two, but, once a day, it strikes forty-nine. It never strikes more than forty-nine. I don't know why,—I have never been able to understand why,—but it doesn't.

It does not strike at regular intervals, but when it feels it wants to and would be better for it. Sometimes it strikes three or four times within the same hour, and at other times it will go for half-a-day without striking at all.

He is an odd old fellow!

I have thought now and then of having him "seen to," and made to keep regular hours and be respectable; but, somehow, I seem to have grown to love him as he is with his daring mockery of Time.

He certainly has not much respect for it. He seems to go out of his way almost to openly insult it. He calls half-past two thirty-eight o'clock, and in twenty minutes from then he says it is one!