Up she rose, sleep banished, with a sense of cheerfulness and expectation, nimbly dressed herself, and slid down the banisters to tumble plump at the feet of her Auntie Bell in the lobby.
“Mercy on us! You'll break your neck; are you hurt?” cried Aunt Bell. “I'm not kicking,” said the child, and the dog waved furiously a gladsome tail. A log fire blazed and crackled and hissed in the parlor, and Mr. Dyce tapped time with his fingers on a chair-back to an internal hymn.
“My! ain't I the naughty girl to be snoozling away like a gopher in a hole all day? Your clock's stopped, Uncle Dan.”
Mr. Dyce looked very guilty, and coughed, rubbing his chin. “You're a noticing creature,” said he. “I declare it has stopped. Well, well!” and his sister Bell plainly enjoyed some amusing secret.
“Your uncle is always a little daft, my dear,” she said.
“I would rather be daft than dismal,” he retorted, cleaning his glasses.
“It's a singular thing that the clocks in our lobby and parlor always stop on the New Year's Day, Lennox.”
“Bud; please, say Bud,” pleaded the little one. “Nobody ever calls me Lennox 'cept when I'm doing something wrong and almost going to get a whipping.”
“Very well, Bud, then. This clock gets something wrong with it every New Year's Day, for your uncle, that man there, wants the folk who call never to know the time so that they'll bide the longer.”
“Tuts!” said Uncle Dan, who had thought this was his own particular recipe for joviality, and that they had never discovered it.