Even to the shining mark of a boy on a
bicycle he was indifferent, and when a dog has reached that stage one
may safely say of him that he has renounced the world and all its
vanities. Willy Woolly's one concern in life was his master and their
joint business.
Soon they became accepted familiars of Our Square. Despite the general
conviction that they were slightly touched, we even became proud of
them. They lent distinction to the locality by getting written up in a
Sunday supplement, Willy Woolly being specially photographed therefor, a
gleam of transient glory, which, however it may have gratified our local
pride, left both of the subjects quite indifferent. Stepfather Time
might have paid more heed to it had he not, at the time, been wholly
preoccupied in a difficult quest.
In a basement window, far over on Avenue D, stood an old and battered
timepiece of which Stepfather Time had heard the voice but never seen
the face. Each of three attempts to investigate with a view to
negotiations had been frustrated by a crabbed and violent-looking man
with a repellent club. Nevertheless, the voice alone had ensnared the
connoisseur; it was, by the test of the pipe which he carried on all his
quests, D in alt, and would thus complete the major chord of a chime
which he had long been building up. (She had loved, best of all,
harmonic combinations of the clock bells.
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