“Will you translate it for me, please?”
“‘If you guard me carefully, if you listen to me diligently, if you are as clever in understanding me as I am in telling you, Fortune will smile on you,’” translated the duke.
“The delicious braggart!” cried Mrs. Gordon delightedly. “Now what do you think that brave promise means, Mr. St. Hilary?”
“Pooh, pooh, madame! It promises too much to mean anything. ‘Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise.’ ‘Time is money’–there are a score of proverbs as vague and as meaningless.”
“Oh, but you mustn’t cast any aspersions on my dear clock. Perhaps Luigi can read the riddle more cleverly. Do you know if there is any legend connected with the clock?”
The old man hesitated.
“Come, come, speak up,” said the duke roughly.
“Ah, yes, your Excellency,” replied the old man. “But I implore you not to sell or give away the clock. You will always regret it. Good luck goes with the clock, your Excellency.”
“But the motto,” urged Mrs. Gordon. “Has it any meaning?”
“Yes, yes, signora. It means that each hour brings its own gift, if one can only understand. One may never suffer, not hunger nor cold, not poverty nor disappointment, if one can only read the secret of each hour. For at every hour something wonderful is told. And the clock is a charm against the Evil One. My father told me, and his father told him. Yes; we have guarded it carefully in that quiet room. It has stood there as long as I can remember. And now your Excellency will give it away! Misfortune will come; I know it.”