retorted angrily. "When that
animated mop put up his paws and stuck his tongue out like a child--"

"I know," I said. "You took on a new patient. Probably gratis," I added,
with malice, for this was one of the Little Red Doctor's notoriously
weak points.

"Just the same, he's a fool dog."

"On the contrary, he is a person of commanding intellect and nice social
discrimination," I asserted, recalling Willy Woolly's flattering
acceptance of myself.

"A faker," asseverated my friend. "He pretends to see things."

I sat up straight on my bench. "Things? What kind of things?"

"Things that aren't there," returned the Little Red Doctor, and fell to
musing. "They couldn't be," he added presently and argumentatively.

Receiving no encouragement when I sought further details, I asked
whether he had called the new resident to account for the delinquencies
of his clocks. He shook his head.

"I didn't have time," said he doggedly.

"Time? Why, there's nothing but time in that house."

The Little Red Doctor chose to take my feeble joke at par. "No time at
all. None of the clocks keep it."

"How does he manage his life, then?"

"Willy Woolly does that for him. Barks him up in the morning. Jogs his
elbow at mealtimes. Tucks him in bed at night, for all I know."

Thus abortively ended Our Square's protest against Stepfather Time and
his House of Silvery Voices. The Little Red Doctor's obscure suggestion
stuck in my mind, and a few nights later I made a second call. Curiosity
rather than neighborliness was the inciting cause. Therefore I ought to
have been embarrassed at the quiet warmth of my reception by both of the
tenants. Interrupting himself in the work of adjusting a new
acquisition's mechanism, Stepfather Time settled me into the most
comfortable chair and immediately began to talk of clocks.

Good talk, it was; quaint and flavorous and erudite. But my attention
kept wandering to Willy Woolly, who, after politely kissing my hand, had
settled down behind his master's chair. Willy Woolly was seeing things.
No pretense about it. His mournful eyes yearned hither and thither,
following some entity that moved in the room, dimmer than darkness, more
ethereal than shadow. His ears quivered. A muffled, measured thumping
sounded, dull and indeterminate like spirit rapping; it took me an
appreciable time to identify it as the noise of the poodle's tail,
beating the floor. Once he whined, a quick, quivering, eager note. And