Part 8 (1/2)
”I do believe you're sorry to be done with her,” a.s.serted the boy mischievously. A second later, however, he regretted his impulsive jest, for his companion answered gravely:
”I am. I've enjoyed working on her. I'd be far sorrier, though, did I not know she is going where she will be appreciated. The woman that owns her watches over her as if she were a live creature--and indeed she is--almost.”
”It's nice to feel she isn't being wasted on some dumbbell, isn't it?”
declared Christopher, catching the old man's enthusiasm.
”She's not being wasted. I can answer for that. I know the house where she lives well, for I've been there times without number to regulate clocks. There are some beauties and they have the history of every one of them--the name of the maker, the date when they were made, the place, and all. I like to handle clocks for people like that. It shows they are intelligent and care. Some folks do not know one thing about their clocks. They won't even take the trouble to wind them regularly.
Nevertheless they are the first ones to fuss if the poor things fail to keep good time. I wonder how they would like, for example, to have their meals served to them just whenever somebody happened to think of it.”
Christopher nodded agreement with the sentiment.
”To be sure,” McPhearson continued, ”people sometimes own clocks that aren't worth much pains. Still, it's only right to keep them cleaned and help them to do the best they can, even at that. All clocks can't be Tompions, or Grahams, or Quares, any more than we can all be Was.h.i.+ngtons and Lincolns. It isn't their fault nor ours.”
”You care a lot about clocks, don't you?” meditated Christopher aloud.
”I suppose I do,” the old man confessed. ”Clocks have come to be almost people to me; in fact, some of them are a good sight better than people.
By that, I mean they have finer traits. They go quietly ahead and do their work without bl.u.s.ter or complaint. When they don't it is usually because something's the matter with them. They are patient, faithful, useful, and were they to be taken out of the world they would be terribly missed and would leave it a pretty higgledy-piggledy place.”
”I guess there is no danger of the world being without clocks,” returned Christopher comfortably. ”There seem to be plenty to go round.”
”But there weren't always plenty,” broke in McPhearson quickly. ”You chance to live in a fortunate age, young man, and do not half appreciate your blessings. Had you lived a few hundred years ago you would have had no clocks.”
”Mercy on us! Why, how on earth did people manage to get on without them?”
”Primitive persons studied the sun and calculated by that,” McPhearson responded. ”Then some ingenious creature thought out the sundial whereby the hour could be gauged by a shadow; also marks were made where the sun would strike at a given time--perhaps at noon. Such a notch was called the noon mark.”
”Oh, gee! But suppose there was no sun?”
”Exactly! Now you have put your finger on the pulse of the dilemma! What was to be done when there was no sun? The sundial at best was none too correct. In different lat.i.tudes, too, different markings were needed.
Moreover, a sundial, to be of practical value, had to be kept steady.
What was to happen on s.h.i.+pboard? On cloudy days? At night?”
”The sundial was about as much good as a fan would be in Greenland,”
grinned Christopher.
”Yes, just about. It was these sunless hours that were the problem.”
”Humph! I never thought of that in my life.”
”Most of us don't.”
”I suppose that was why people began making clocks.”
”You don't for a moment imagine men leaped from sundials to clocks, do you?” interrogated the Scotchman quizzically.
”Oh, perhaps not such nice ones as ours,” conceded the boy with easy unconcern. ”Still they had to tell time somehow.”
”Clocks were a long way off from suns and shadows.”