ALAS, THOSE CHIMES!

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 36, 1 December 1894, Page 11

ALAS, THOSE CHIMES!

Circumstances over which I had no •control had forced me to sit and listen to the chatter of a woman —I suppose the little bundle of affectations was a woman —whose chief aim in life appeared to be to make herself resemble as nearly as possible the extraordinary looking creatures we see pictures of in fashion books. While I groaned within myself and wondered how much longer this affliction was to last, the clock chimed; then I knew that for at least another quarter-o£-an-hour there would be no respite. “ Oh, don’t you love that clock ?” lisped the simpering little dame. I suppose this was the proverbial last straw for I answered roughly —“ No, I hate it.” She gave a short gasp, lifted her tightly-gloved hands and looked at me as if she thought the proper authorities should be applied to, as I was certainly unfit to be at large. “ You evidently are not musical,” she said pityingly. Well, perhaps I am not, and that accounts for my distaste for ambitious choral services in small churches and a decided disinclination to go to second-rate concerts. I felt rather ashamed of having spoken so rudely, but determined to make the best of my case. “ You see,” I said, turning to my tormentor, “ you live -two miles away from them and (looking intently at a patch on her nose where the powder had been rubbed off)

dktance lends, enchantment in many cases, you know. We are so much nearer, and the prevailing winds blow the sound right down on us, and it is not always welcome. Eor instance, the nights our mankind are away from home it frequently blows steadily in this direction. Consequently one could almost imagine the tower was erected on the front door step, I stay up till it is very late so as to have a good chance of sleeping during the remainder of the night; and j ust as 1 am going off to sleep, and am particularly anxious not to know what time it is, the clock chimes. I am wide awake in an instant. Then it strikes two, and I begin to think of all the terrible things that have happened between two and three in the morning, and feel that some great danger is imminent, and that I shall never go to sleep again. Then the house begins to crack. Whatever is it that makes a house crack so at night time when there are no men in it ? Then in imagination I go through two or three of the most horrible of Wilkie Collins’ hooks until my brain gets exhausted, and I doze, only to wake a ifew minutes later out of a terrible nightmare. Altogether I have a very bad time, and it’s all through those chimes wakening me up at the start. There is also another thing about them I object to. When we have a few really nice people spending an evening with us, before we have had half enough of their company the clock volunteers the information that it is twelve o’clock. Well, I look upon that as an unpardonable intrusion; it is like being reproached, too, for keeping late hours. Our friends look as if they had been told to go home, and I feel as vexed when they make a move to do so as I should if my husband had pulled out his watch and said —‘ Dear me, it is getting very late.’ And it is all through the very unnecessary interference of those chimes. Linda.