the way home, and, as we went upstairs to our flat, she said, "Why
could not we have a clock like that?" She said it would seem like
having some one in the house to take care of us all--she should fancy
it was looking after baby!

I have a man in Northamptonshire from whom I buy old furniture now and
then, and to him I applied. He answered by return to say that he had
got exactly the very thing I wanted. (He always has. I am very lucky
in this respect.) It was the quaintest and most old-fashioned clock
he had come across for a long while, and he enclosed photograph and
full particulars; should he send it up?

From the photograph and the particulars, it seemed, as he said, the
very thing, and I told him, "Yes; send it up at once."

Three days afterward, there came a knock at the door--there had been
other knocks at the door before this, of course; but I am dealing
merely with the history of the clock. The girl said a couple of men
were outside, and wanted to see me, and I went to them.

I found they were Pickford's carriers, and glancing at the way-bill, I
saw that it was my clock that they had brought, and I said, airily,
"Oh, yes, it's quite right; bring it up!"

They said they were very sorry, but that was just the difficulty.
They could not get it up.

I went down with them, and wedged securely across the second landing
of the staircase, I found a box which I should have judged to be the
original case in which Cleopatra's Needle came over.