The daisies marched very steadily, like little people who knew their business very well. They massed themselves together in regiments, in armies. On certain parts of the smooth grass certain companies of them stopped and stayed.
“They’re making a sort of pattern,” said Edred. “Look! there’s a big ring all round—a sort of pattern.”
“I should think they were!” cried Elfrida. “Look! look! It’s the clock.”
It was. On the pure green face of the lawn was an enormous circle marked by a thick line of closely packed white daisies. Within it were the figures that are on the face of a clock—all twelve of them. The hands were of white daisies, too, both the minute hand and the hand that marks the hours, and between the VI and the centre was a smaller circle, also white and of daisies—round which they could see a second hand move—a white second hand formed of daisies wheeling with a precision that would have made the haughtiest general in the land shed tears of pure admiration.
With one accord the two children blundered down the dark, dusty, cobwebby, twisty stairs of the gate tower and rushed across the lawn. In the very centre of the clock-face sat the Mouldiwarp, looking conscious and a little conceited.
“How did you do it?” Elfrida gasped.
“The daisies did it. Poor little things! They can’t invent at all. But they do carry out other people’s ideas quite nicely. All the white things have to obey me, of course,” it added carelessly.
“THEY SAT DOWN ON THE CLOSE, WHITE LINE OF DAISIES.”
“And this is The Clock?”