id MacLachan,
who invariably reacted in tongue to the stimulus of Scotch whiskey,
"they'll a' be closed. Hame an' to bed wi' ye, waster of the priceless
hours!" And back he staggered to sleep it off.

Then there was the disastrous case of the Little Red Doctor, who set out
to attend a highly interesting consultation at 4 P.M. and, hearing
Grandfather Ananias strike three, erroneously concluded that he had
spare time to stop in for a peek at Madame Tallafferr's gout (which was
really vanity in the guise of tight shoes), and reached the hospital,
only to find it all over and the patient dead.

"It's an outrage," declared the Little Red Doctor fiercely, "that an old
lunatic can move in here from God-knows-where in a pushcart and play
merry hell with a hard-working practitioner's professional duties. And
you're the one to tell him so, Dominie. You're the diplomat of
the Square."

He even inveigled the Bonnie Lassie into backing him up in this
preposterous proposal. She had her own grievance against the House of
Silvery Voices.

"It isn't the way it plays tricks on time alone," said she. "There's one
clock in there that's worse than conscience."

And she brought her indictment against a raucous timepiece which was
wont to lead up to its striking with a long, preliminary
clack-and-whirr, alleging that twice, when she had quit her sculping
early because the clay was obdurate and wouldn't come right, and had
gone for a walk to clear her vision, the clock had accosted her in these
unjustifiable terms:

"Clacketty-whirr-rr-rr! Back-to-yer-worr-rr-rrk! Yerr-rr-rr-rr _wrong!
wrong! wrong! wrong!"_

"Wherefore," said the Bonnie Lassie, "your appellant prays that you be a
dear, good, stern, forbidding Dominie and go over to Number 37 and ask
him what he means by it, anyway, and tell him he's got to stop it."

Now, the Bonnie Lassie holds the power of the high, the middle, and the
low justice over all Our Square by the divine right of loveliness and
kindliness. So that evening I went while the Little Red Doctor, as a
self-constituted Committee in Waiting, sat on my bench. Stepfather Time
himself opened the door to me.

"What might they call you, sir, if I may ask?" he inquired with timid
courtesy.

"They might call me the Dominie hereabouts. And they do."

"I have heard of you." He motioned me to a seat in the bare little room,
alive with tickings and clickings. "You have lived long here, sir?"

"Long."

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