Mrs. Maynard sank into a chair, and gazed distressfully at the ruins. That the pendulum, now lying prone and dismembered, would ever tick again, that those two little hands would ever again tell the time of day, that the weights would run down and have to be wound up every Saturday night, or that she should ever again on any June day hear the faithful little gong strike four o'clock in the morning—her signal for jumping out of bed with the unvarying ejaculation: “Land sakes! [pg 217] it's four o'clock!”—seemed to her impossible.
“And to think that you should do such work on the Sabbath-day!” she groaned out, casting an accusing glance on her daughter-in-law. “You seem to have lost all the religion you ever had since you got married.”
Bessie's blue eyes lighted up: “I think it just as pious for Jack to study, and find out how useful things are made, as to wear out a pair of shoes going to hear Parson Bates talk through his nose, or sit at home and spoil his eyes reading over and over about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
“Come, come!” interposed Jack; “if you two women quarrel, and bother me, I shall spoil the clock.”
This procured silence.
Had he been a little more thoughtful and tender, he would have told his mother that Bessie had tried to dissuade him from touching the clock, and had urged the impropriety of his doing such work on Sunday; but he did not think. She shielded him, and he allowed her to, scarcely aware that she had, indeed.
The young man's prediction was fulfilled. Before sunset, the clock was ticking soberly on the mantelpiece, the minute-hand hitching round its circle, and showing the reluctant hour-hand the way, and Jack was marching homeward through the woods, with his rifle on one arm and his wife on the other.
They were both so silent—that dark-browed man and bright faced woman—that they might almost be taken as kindred of the long shadows and sunstreaks over which they walked. He was building up a visionary entanglement of pulleys in the air, through which power should run with ever-increasing force, and studying how he should dispense with an idle-wheel that belonged in that maze; and she was thinking of him. He was thinking that this forest, that once had bounded his hopes and aspirations, now pressed on his very breathing, and hemmed his steps in, and wishing that he had wings, like that bird flitting before him; and she was watching his eyes till she, too, saw the bird.
Jack stopped, raised his rifle, took a hasty aim, and fired. Bessie ran to pick up the robin:
“How could you, Jack!” she exclaimed reproachfully, as she felt the fluttering heart stop in her hand.