The clock had stopped! It was with terrific suddenness that I realized the clock had stopped and in my barren shanty was the silence of the tomb. Its round, glassy face grinned an imbecile grin at me from its place on a shelf on the wall. Its hands showed a quarter to four. . . . Well, there was nothing very mysterious about that. In the excitement of the wedding party I had merely forgotten to wind the clock. Only an overwrought nervous system could discern anything uncanny in that. I reasoned all this out, with absurd deliberation, as I rubbed my eyes and wondered why the clock had stopped. Or perhaps the frost had stopped it.
My watch had fared better, and when I drew it from my pocket on the corner of the bed the friendly bustle of its ticking was reassuring to my ear. I could hear the companionable canter of its balance wheel galloping down the road of life by my side. "Next to a dog," I said to myself, "a watch is the best friend a man can have."
That set me thinking about dogs, and I wondered why in all these months I had neglected to provide myself with a dog. As a sort of insurance, I grimly reflected. One always can fall back on a dog.
The hands of the watch said half-past eight, and I suddenly remembered there were cattle to feed. It would be a decent thing to get up and do all the chores that morning, if they were not already done. So I drew my underwear from beneath my pillow, where I had learned to tuck it in cold weather, and sprang from the friendly shelter of the blankets. One needs no incentive to quick dressing in a temperature only a few points above zero. I was fully clothed in less time than a city man, in his steam-heated flat, takes to decide whether his collar really demands changing.
I hurriedly started a fire; watched it until it had a proper draft; turned the damper in the pipe to guard against its getting beyond control after I left it. Then, after drawing on my pea-jacket, cap and mitts, I set out for the stables. The morning was grey, with a scattered sifting of small snowflakes, but the nip to the air was not nearly so uncomfortable as it seemed when contemplated from under the warm blankets. I reflected that comfort and happiness are largely a matter of the point of view. But that doesn't help much when the bottom has fallen out of your particular universe.
Buck and Bright were bawling before they heard my hand on the stable door. An ox with an empty stomach has an uncanny ear for the food purveyor. A half-inch fuzz of new untrodden snow was good evidence that Jack was keeping hours even worse than mine. As I opened the door the oxen turned their big, reproving eyes upon me, while even the cow tossed her head from side to side in peevish protest.
"It's all right, old chaps," I assured them. "Blessed is he whose wants are few and easily satisfied," as I threw them each a forkful of hay. They made a great attack upon it, tossing it with their noses and their horns in an atavistic appreciation of the good old days when their ancestors roamed the range and were never tied by the neck to a manger and left to starve while their masters married. Our cow was at present enjoying her annual holidays, so there was no milking to be done, and my morning chores were soon finished. Our pigs—we had two pigs now—saluted me after the manner of their kind until I choked their squeals with a dole of barley chop. Not even a pig can squeal through a mouthful of dry barley chop.
While I was engaged in these operations the hens ran about my feet until one happened to get tramped on. Her squawking reminded me that there might be eggs, and search discovered two, fresh laid that morning. That was a glint of sunshine through the gloom. I gathered them up and turned it over in my mind for a moment whether I should take them to Jack and Marjorie. But then that would leave Jean without. There would be noses out of joint on Twenty-two soon enough, without provoking an issue. In the interests of peace I decided to eat them myself.
I resisted a desire to go to Jack's door and announce that the morning chores were done because I knew that at the bottom of that desire was a hope that I should see and speak with Jean. One may be tied to a stake but that is no reason why he should poke his feet needlessly in the fire.
The stove lids were red hot and the kettle was belching forth a small geyser of steam when I got back to the shack. My search for remnants from the feast of the night before was astonishingly fruitless, until I remembered that the young Hansens had been turned loose upon the left-overs. So I cooked a mixture of oatmeal and water, which I called porridge, boiled the two fresh eggs, thawed out part of a loaf of bread, melted a piece of butter, and sat down to a meal that was hardly calculated to make me rejoice in my single blessedness.