Third Reader: The Alexandra Readers

by W. A. McIntyre; John Dearness; John C. Saul

But it was otherwise with the little town. As far back as anybody could remember, it had always been the same that it was at the time of our story. And the people who lived there could see no reason to suppose that it would ever be different from what it was then. It was a pleasant little town and its citizens were very happy. So why should there be any change in it?

If Rondaine had been famed for anything at all, it would have been for the number of its clocks. It had many churches, and in the steeple of each of these churches there was a clock. There were town buildings which stood upon the great central square. Each of these had a tower, and in each tower was a clock. Then there were clocks at street corners and in the market-place; clocks over shop doors, and a clock at each end of the bridge.

Many of these clocks were fashioned in some quaint and curious way. In one of the largest a stone man came out and struck the hours with a stone hammer, while a stone woman struck half hours with a stone broom; and in another an iron donkey kicked the hours on a bell behind him. It would be impossible to tell all the odd ways in which the clocks of Rondaine struck.

It was very interesting to lie awake in the night and hear the clocks strike. First would come a faint striking from one of the churches in the by-streets, a modest sound; then from another quarter would be heard a more confident clock striking the hour clearly and distinctly. When they were quite ready, but not a moment before, the seven bells of the large church on the square would chime the hour. The sound of these bells seemed to wake up the stone man in the tower of the town building and he struck the hour with his hammer. And when every sound had died away, the iron donkey would kick out the hour on his bell.

The very last clock to strike in Rondaine was one belonging to a little old lady with white hair, who lived in a little white house in one of the prettiest and cleanest streets in the town. Her clock was in a little white tower at the corner of her house. Long after every other clock had struck, the old lady’s clock would strike quickly and with a tone that said, “I know that I am right, and I wish other people to know it.”

In a small house which stood at a corner of two streets in the town there lived a young girl named Arla. Her room was at the top of the house, and one of its windows opened to the west and another to the south. Arla liked to leave these windows open so that the sound of the clocks might come in. It was not because she wanted to know the hour that she used to lie awake and listen to the clocks. She could tell this from her own little clock in her room.

On the front of her clock, just below the dial, was a sprig of a rosebush beautifully made of metal, and on this, just after the hour had sounded, there was a large green bud. At a quarter past the hour this bud opened a little, so that the red petals could be seen; fifteen minutes later it was a half-blown rose, and at a quarter of an hour more it was nearly full blown. Just before the hour the rose opened to its fullest extent, and so remained until the clock had finished striking, when it immediately shut up into a great green bud.

This clock was a great delight to Arla; for not only was it a very pleasant thing to watch the unfolding of the rose, but it was a satisfaction to think that her little clock always told her exactly what time it was, no matter what the other clocks of Rondaine might say.

Arla’s father and mother were thrifty, industrious people. They were very fond of their daughter, and wished her to grow up a thoughtful, useful woman. In the early morning, listening to the clocks of Rondaine, Arla did a great deal of thinking. It so happened on the morning of the day before Christmas she began to think of something which had never entered her mind before.

“How in the world,” she said to herself, “do the people of Rondaine know when it is really Christmas? Christmas begins at twelve o’clock on Christmas Eve; but as some of the people depend on one clock and some upon others, a great many of them cannot truly know when Christmas Day has really begun. Not one of the clocks strikes at the right time! As for that iron donkey, I believe he kicks whenever he feels like it. And yet there are people who go by him!” With these thoughts in her mind, Arla could not go to sleep again. She heard all the clocks strike, and lay awake until her own little clock told her that she ought to get up.