I didn’t look at my watch, for I thought it was making game of me he was, but I said, “And how should she tell me the time of day? Can she speak?”
“You are a big fool, Paul,” he said; “look at her face, and see where her hands point to.” That she should be able to tell me the time, and have a face and hands, with which she points, was too much, so I burst out laughing, but I took her out of my pocket.
“There,” Tim said, “don’t you see something sticking out on her face? Those are her hands, and you see they point to numbers; but may be it’s your numbers you don’t know, after all my teaching.”
This provoked me, so I looked at what he called her face, and saw the numbers, sure enough, and the things he called the hands too. “Well,” Tim went on, “and what number does the short hand point to?” “None,” said I, “for it points just half way between the two and the three.” “Then the long hand points to six, and it’s half-past two it is,” Tim said. “And how does all this happen?” I asked, for I was sorely puzzled, Tim knowing too where the long hand pointed, without my telling him.
“Put her up to your ear,” he said, “and she will tell you how she works.”
I did as I was told, and heard her go “tick-a-tick, tick-a-tick.” As I listened to her a mighty fear came over me, and I flung her from me, crying out, “The crittur does talk some unnatural language, and perhaps she’ll bite too.”
Tim caught her, and exclaimed, “What a fool you are, Paul!” for he was now quite angry; “if I had not caught her she would have been done for entirely.” After he had held her some time in his hands, seeing there was no harm in her, I took her again and went home. I was half afraid of her, so did not look at her again till night, when the big varmint, Pat Molloy, came in, shouting fit to frighten the life out of one.
“Is it a watch I hear you’ve got, Paul?”
“Those ugly long ears of yours heard right,” I answered, for I did not much like Pat. “And may be then you’ll be after telling one the time it is.” With that I pulled out the watch, and looked at her; but I had clean forgotten what Tim had told me, though I recollected something about her hands pointing to a number, so seeing something pointing to seven, I said at once, “It’s near seven o’clock,” for I did not like to be looking too long, to be laughed at by that fellow.