“No, sir,” answered Arla.
“I wish,” he said, “that you were a boy, so that I might take you by the collar and soundly cuff your ears, for coming here to insult an officer of the church in the midst of his duties! But, as you are a girl, I can only tell you to go away from here as rapidly and as quietly as you can, or I shall have to put you in the hands of the church authorities!”
Arla was truly frightened, and although she did not run—for she knew that would not be proper in a church—she walked as fast as she could into the outer air.
“What a bad man,” she then said to herself, “to be employed in a church! It surely is not known what sort of a person he is, or he would not be allowed to stay there a day!”
Arla thought she would not go to any more churches at present, for she did not know what sort of sacristans she might find in them.
“When the other clocks in the town all strike properly,” she thought, “it is most likely they will see for themselves that their clocks are wrong, and they will have them changed.”
She now made her way to the great square of the town, and entered the building at the top of which stood the stone man with his hammer. She found the doorkeeper in a little room by the side of the entrance. She knew where to go, for she had been there with her mother to ask permission to go up and see the stone man strike the hour with his hammer, and the stone woman strike the half-hour with her broom.
The doorkeeper was a grave, middle-aged man with spectacles; and, remembering what had just happened, Arla thought she would be careful how she spoke to him.
“If you please, sir,” she said, with a courtesy, “I should like to say something to you. And I hope you will not be offended when I tell you that your clock is not quite right. Your stone man and your stone woman are both too slow; they sometimes strike as much as seven minutes after they ought to strike.”
The grave, middle-aged man looked steadily at her through his spectacles.