loth sofa against the wall; a few damaged chairs; the
small table the lamp stood on; the crippled stove--these things
constituted the furniture of the room. There was no carpet on the floor;
on the wall were occasional square-shaped interruptions of the general
tint of the plaster which betrayed that there used to be pictures in the
house--but there were none now. There were no mantel ornaments, unless
one might bring himself to regard as an ornament a clock which never came
within fifteen strokes of striking the right time, and whose hands always
hitched together at twenty-two minutes past anything and traveled in
company the rest of the way home.

"Remarkable clock!" said Sellers, and got up and wound it. "I've been
offered--well, I wouldn't expect you to believe what I've been offered
for that clock. Old Gov. Hager never sees me but he says, 'Come, now,
Colonel, name your price--I must have that clock!' But my goodness I'd
as soon think of selling my wife. As I was saying to--silence in the
court--now, she's begun to strike! You can't talk against her--you have
to just be patient and hold up till she's said her say. Ah well, as I
was saying, when--she's beginning again! Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one,
twenty-two, twen----ah, that's all.--Yes, as I was saying to old Judge
----go it, old girl, don't mind me.--Now how is that?----isn't that a
good, spirited tone? She can wake the dead! Sleep? Why you might as
well try to sleep in a thunder-factory. Now just listen at that. She'll
strike a hundred and fifty, now, without stopping,--you'll see. There
ain't another clock like that in Christendom."

Washington hoped that this might be true, for the din was distracting
--though the family, one and all, seemed filled with joy; and the more the
clock "buckled down to her work" as the Colonel expressed it, and the
more insupportable the clatter became, the more enchanted they all
appeared to be. When there was silence, Mrs Sellers lifted upon
Washington a face that beamed with a childlike pride, and said:

"It belonged to his grandmother."

The look and the tone were a plain call for admiring surprise, and
therefore Washington said (it was the only thing that offered itself at
the moment:)

"Indeed!"

"Yes, it did, didn't it father!" exclaimed one of the twins. "She was my
great-grandmother--and George's too; wasn't she, father! You never saw
her, but Sis has seen her, when Sis was a baby-didn't you, Sis!