rs! Ay, I don't know what 'a ha'n't a done. Never were
such a steer, 'a b'lieve.'

Conversation of this kind and inquiries of Stephen for his mother's
wellbeing occupied them for the remainder of the journey. When they
drew near the river, and the cottage behind it, they could hear the
master-mason's clock striking off the bygone hours of the day at
intervals of a quarter of a minute, during which intervals Stephen's
imagination readily pictured his mother's forefinger wandering round the
dial in company with the minute-hand.

'The clock stopped this morning, and your mother in putting en right
seemingly,' said his father in an explanatory tone; and they went up the
garden to the door.

When they had entered, and Stephen had dutifully and warmly greeted his
mother--who appeared in a cotton dress of a dark-blue ground, covered
broadcast with a multitude of new and full moons, stars, and planets,
with an occasional dash of a comet-like aspect to diversify the
scene--the crackle of cart-wheels was heard outside, and Martin
Cannister stamped in at the doorway, in the form of a pair of legs
beneath a great box, his body being nowhere visible. When the luggage
had been all taken down, and Stephen had gone upstairs to change his
clothes, Mrs. Smith's mind seemed to recover a lost thread.

'Really our clock is not worth a penny,' she said, turning to it and
attempting to start the pendulum.

'Stopped again?' inquired Martin with commiseration.

'Yes, sure,' replied Mrs. Smith; and continued after the manner of
certain matrons, to whose tongues the harmony of a subject with a casual
mood is a greater recommendation than its pertinence to the occasion,
'John would spend pounds a year upon the jimcrack old thing, if he
might, in having it claned, when at the same time you may doctor it
yourself as well. "The clock's stopped again, John," I say to him.
"Better have en claned," says he. There's five shillings. "That clock
grinds again," I say to en. "Better have en claned," 'a says again.
"That clock strikes wrong, John," says I. "Better have en claned," he
goes on. The wheels would have been polished to skeletons by this
time if I had listened to en, and I assure you we could have bought a
chainey-faced beauty wi' the good money we've flung away these last ten
years upon this old green-faced mortal. And, Martin, you must be wet. My
son is gone up to change. John is damper than I should like to be,
but 'a calls it nothing. So