The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch | Page 9

socks lying on the table with a hole in each heel, which appeared to be waiting their turn for mending, belonged to the son of the old lady he had met in the train. He wondered if the footsteps in the passage belonged to the head master, and whether that awful being was being fetched to punish him for his crime of driving the cab. He wondered who the boy was who put his head in at the door and drew it back again. With what reverential eyes he followed that hero's retreating form, and how he hung on his whistling.
When would he, he wondered, be sufficiently hardy to whistle within those awful walls? Then he wondered if he was the only new boy, and if so, whether every one would stare at him and laugh at his new coat. He wished he'd got his old one on, then he wouldn't have felt so brand-new. And then--and then...
But here, tired-out with his long journey and the excitement of the day, a drowsy fit came over him, and without another thought he dropped off to sleep, where he sat. In this attitude the housekeeper found him when she returned.
She could not help feeling rather more than a common interest in this curly-haired, tired-out little fellow, as he sat there in his new clothes, huddled up, with his little hat slipping from his head, and his hand clasping his precious six-bladed knife. Accustomed as she was to boys and their rude ways, this matron had a good deal of softness left in her heart, and I dare say she thought as she watched Charlie that afternoon that if she had ever had a son of her own she would have liked a boy something like the little fellow before her. She went softly up to him, took his hat from its perilous situation, and, lifting him in her strong arms so gently as not to wake him, laid him on her own sofa, and left him there to enjoy his well-merited sleep, while she busied herself about making tea.
It was at this moment that a calamity befell me, which, in my inexperience of the ways and natures of watches, I imagined to be nothing short of fatal. The excitement through which I had passed, and the rough-and-ready usage to which I had been subjected during the day, seemed all of a sudden to overpower me. In some unaccountable way I found my hands caught together in a manner I had never known them to be before; no effort of mine could disengage them, and the exertion thus required, added to the fatigues of the day, produced a sort of paralysis of my whole system without quite losing consciousness. I could feel my circulation become slower and finally stop; my nerves and energies became suspended, and my hands grew numb and powerless. Even my heart ceased to beat, and the little cry of alarm which I gave just before my powers left me failed to bring me any help. I was ill, very ill indeed; to me it seemed as if my last moment had come, and I could not bear the thought of thus early being taken from my young master, whom already I had learned to love as my best, though my roughest friend.
How long I lay thus, speechless and helpless, I cannot say. Once I was just conscious of a slight jerk from my chain as he peeped in and whispered,--
"What are you so quiet about down there?"
Of course I could not answer.
"Do you hear? What are you so quiet about?"
It only added to my misery to know that there was a fellow-being so close at hand, and yet that I was powerless to make him aware of my condition. My silence offended him, for he turned away, muttering to himself,--
"Sulky humbug! I declare some people haven't so much as the manners of a kitchen clock."
After that I was left to myself, in agony and suspense, to wait the moment of my dissolution.
A long time passed before my master stirred, and when he did the housekeeper's tea was cold. She bustled about to make him some more, and was so kind in buttering his toast and hunting for some jam, that the drooping spirits of the tired-out boy revived wonderfully. Indeed, as the meal proceeded he became on friendly and confidential terms even with so awful a personage as Mrs Packer.
"Would you like to see my knife, ma'am?" he asked.
"Bless me, what a knife it is," cried the lady. "You'll go doing yourself some harm with it."
"That's what the other old lady in the train said," replied Charlie, unconscious of wounding the feelings of his hostess, who fondly imagined she was not more than middle-aged; "but then, you know, she