“Why! what know you of it?” she replied; “you have never seen it.”
“What! can you deny,” retorted the other, “that I have seen it an hundred times over, when you were a little lassie?”
“Ah! but,” said she, “I was then but a stripling, and knew not yet what was what.”
“Still, I suppose ’tis yet in the same place as of old, and hath not changed position. I ween I could even now find it in the same spot.”
“Oh, yes! ’tis there still, albeit mine husband hath rolled it and turned it about, more than ever did Diogenes with his tub.”
“Yes! and nowadays how doth it do without movement?”
“’Tis for all the world like a clock that is left unwound.”
“Then take you heed, lest that befall you that doth happen to clocks when they be not wound up, and continue so for long; their springs do rust by lapse of time, and they be good for naught after.”
“’Tis not a fair comparison,” said she, “for that the springs of the clock you mean be not liable to rust at all, but keep in good order, wound or unwound, always ready to be set a-going at any time.”
“Please God,” cried the gentleman, “whenas the time for winding come, I might be the watchmaker to wind it up!”