The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch | Page 5

consciousness of a silver watch in his pocket made him hold his head even higher than usual.
"He is a beauty!" again he broke out, "exactly the kind I like most. I'll take ever such a lot of care of him." And so saying, he began to swing me at the end of the chain, till I suddenly came sharply into collision with the door of the cab.
"Hullo," exclaimed my young master, "that won't do. I'll put him away now. It was good of you, father."
With that we reached the railway station, and in the bustle that ensued I was for the time forgotten.
Charlie's trunks were duly labelled for Randlebury, and then came the hardest moment of all, when father and son must part.
"I wonder if you'll be altered, Charlie, when I see you again."
"Not for the worse I hope, anyhow," replied the boy, laughing.
"Tickets, please!" demanded the guard.
"There goes the bell," said Charlie, pulling me out of his pocket. "They're very punctual. Hullo, we're off! Good-bye, father."
"Good-bye, boy, and God bless you."
And there was a close grasp of the hand, a last smile, a hasty wave from the window; and then we were off.
How many grown-up men are there who cannot recall at some time or other this crisis in their lives, this first good-bye from the home of their childhood, this stepping forth into the world with all that is familiar and dear at their backs, and all that is strange and unknown and wonderful stretching away like a vast landscape before them? How many are there who would not give much to be back once more at that threshold of their career; and to have the chance of living over again the life they began there with such bright hopes and such careless confidence? Ah, if some of them could have seen whither that flower-strewn path was to lead them, would they not rather have chosen even to die on the threshold, than take so much as the first step forth from the innocent home of childhood!
But I am wandering from my story. For half an hour after that last good-bye Charlie leaned back in the corner of his carriage and gave himself up to his loneliness, and I could feel his chest heaving to keep down the tears that would every now and then rise unbidden to his eyes.
But what boy of thirteen can be in the dumps for long? Especially if he has a new watch in his pocket. Charlie was himself again before we had well got clear of London, and his reviving spirits gradually recalled to his memory his father's parting gift, which had for a while been half forgotten amid other cares.
Now again I was produced, I was turned over and over, was listened to, was peeped into, was flourished about, was taken off my chain, and put on again with the supremest satisfaction. At every station we came to, out I came from his pocket, to be compared with the railway time. By the clock at Batfield I was a minute slow--a discrepancy which was no sooner discovered than I felt my glass face opened, and a fat finger and thumb putting forward my hand to the required time. At Norbely I was two minutes fast by the clock, and then (oh, horrors!) I found myself put back in the same rough-and-ready way. At Maltby I was full half a minute behind the great clock, and on I went again. At the next station the clock and I both gave the same time to a second, and then what must he do but begin to regulate me! After a minute calculation he made the astounding discovery that I had lost a minute and a quarter in four hours, and that in order to compensate for this shortcoming it would be necessary for him to move my regulator forward the two hundred and fortieth part of an inch. This feat he set himself to accomplish with the point of his scarf-pin while the train was jolting forward at the rate of thirty miles an hour!
I began to grow nervous. If this was a sample of what I was to expect, I had indeed need be the healthy, hardy watch I was represented to be by my maker.
And yet I could not be angry with my brave, honest little tormentor.
It was a sight to see him during that long journey, in all the glory of a new suit, with a high hat on his head for the first time, and a watch in his pocket. In his pocket, did I say? I was hardly ever so lucky. Every five minutes he whipped me out to see how the time was going. If he polished me up once with his handkerchief, he did it twenty