"I should think those would have to be alike," Christopher responded.
"You'd think so, and so would I if I had not handled so many and learned otherwise. No, every clock has its personality, its little tricks. One doesn't like a cold room, perhaps, and as a protest will stop or lose time; another shows its disapproval of the heat by being ten minutes fast. Still another balks at an incline in the mantelpiece, so slight that nobody can see it, and will not tick even. So it goes. And it is not always the most expensive clocks and watches, either, that keep the best time, for sometimes a cheap affair will, for reasons not to be fathomed, put to shame your costly one. Not infrequently I take to pieces a fine clock or watch and fail to find anything the matter with it, and yet it will not go as it should. The creatures actually seem to be stubborn and take notions just as people do."
"I'd no idea clocks were like that," mused Christopher.
"That's because you haven't lived with them more than half a century as I have," the old man returned in friendly fashion. "I've summered and wintered them, you see, for fifty years and know their tricks and their manners. But this clock of Richard Parsons has no such caprices. It is a fine, sensible clock that goes faithfully about its business unless hindered by the lack of a rivet or a drop of oil. Just now its chimes are bothering; but we'll have them right after a little."
"Has it chimes?"
"Aye, surely. It has eight bells, though it is a small clock for the table or mantelpiece. The people of 1700 loved music and so did the clockmakers. Therefore clocks like this, that would play a different tune every day of the week, were in great demand. Maybe you never happened to see an old bracket clock of the long ago."
"No, I never did." Christopher shook his head.
"I'll go and fetch it. To tell you the truth, I put it away so it shouldn't be a temptation to me. Otherwise I'd be fussing with it and letting commonplace things such as this go."
McPhearson rose and shuffled away, only to return a few moments later carrying the bracket clock by its brass handle.
"So you never saw an old fellow like this, eh?" inquired he with evident satisfaction.