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Rh seemed to impart a questionable tone. The glue-pot had to be kept within reach, and I revoked my usual arrangement of having the sitting-room "done" on Saturdays, preferring Monday, instead, for obvious reasons.

Of course I had realized and lamented the probable end, from the first. I allowed myself to be buoyed up occasionally on a Sunday evening by Pater's evident confidence in himself and relish of the affair, but after the suppression of the cuckoo, I never felt any great sense of security in what remained.

My fears were realized. It wasn't long before the clock began to show signs of aberration. Sometimes it sounded the hours, sometimes it didn't. Suspicions got abroad of its character as a time-keeper. I noticed that Catherine went less often to the front hall to consult it by way of checking her own erratic kitchen clock, while other parts of its anatomy had followed the bird and its song to the ignominy of the tool-box. To me, there was something almost profane in this uncovering of the hidden things of—no, not nature, but mechanical devices. I am one who prefers to let well alone. But then, of course, I'm not