When the party had been going on for a long time, and the children were being taken in to supper—and a very nice supper, too, with plenty of milk, white bread, and sparkling jellies—one of the largest girls stopped with Milly Holland for a moment where the staircase turned and looked down upon the oaken landing. There stood the tall, old-fashioned clock, looking very old and rather proud in its rich dark case, and against it leaned a very little girl, not more than eight years old, with a good deal of brown hair, and big gray eyes. Her folded hands and her little cheek were pressed against the edge of the clock case. The hall lamp from the bracket overhead shone on her hair and her crumpled dress, and left her face in the shadow.
"Who's that?" asked the other girl of Milly.
"What! don't you know Caddy Podkins?" said Milly. "The idea of mother asking such a baby as that to my party!"
Then the two girls went to supper. The supper-room was farther from the landing than the parlors, and when the door had closed, the hall became quite still. All at once Caddy thought the clock ticked louder than she had ever heard a clock tick in all her life before. And she was quite right, for the clock was trying to speak to Caddy, and except just to state, without a single needless-word, the hour, this clock had never tried to speak before. But the clock liked Caddy very much. It had seen that Caddy was very bashful, and that the other children took hardly any notice of her, or any care for her pleasure, and it liked the feeling of Caddy's little cheek and warm hands upon its side.
CADDY LEANED AGAINST HER TALL FRIEND.
Now Caddy had a little invisible key. It was finer than refined gold, and stronger than adamant (which is the very hardest kind of stone there is, you know), and there was not a lock—no, not even the lock of the tongue of a clock—which could help opening to Caddy's little key. Caddy herself knew nothing about this key, not even its long name—Im-ag-i-na-tion. But the key did not need to have Caddy know; it staid in a little pearl of a room full of the brightest thoughts of Caddy's mind, and whenever these thoughts began to stir about and say, "I wonder," away the little key would fly, and open some new delightful secret to Caddy. There are thousands and thousands of children who have keys of this sort; but, oh! there's such a difference in the keys and in the secrets that they find! Caddy's key was one of the very best, and even while she was noticing that the clock ticked so loud, her little key had turned itself in the very centre of the wheels, and the clock whispered, close in her ear, "Caddy, little Caddy, shall I—tick-a-tock—talk to you?"
Caddy was not at all surprised or bashful with the clock, but asked, quickly, "Were you ever at a party?"
"Hundreds of them," said the clock. "Tiresome things, parties are."
"Guess you don't get any supper, perhaps," said Caddy, with a queer little smile.