and cock-
ing its spout pertly and mockingly at Mrs. Peery-
bingle, as if it said, 'I won't boil. Nothing shall
induce me!'
But Mrs. Peerybingle, with restored good humour,
dusted her chubby little hands aginst each other,
and sat down before the kettle, laughing. Mean-
time, the jolly blaze uprose and fell, flashing and
gleaming on the little Haymaker at the top of the
Dutch clock, until one might have thought he stood
stock still before the Moorish Palace, and nothing
was in motion but the flame.
He was on the move, however; and had his spasms,
two to the second, all right and regular. But, his
sufferings when the clock was going to strike, were
frightful to behold; and, when a Cuckoo looked out
of a trap-door in the Palace, and gave note six times,
it shook him, each time, like a spectral voice or like
a something wiry, plucking at his legs.
It was not until a violent commotion and a whir-
ing noise among the weights and ropes below him
had quite subsided, that this terrified Haymaker be-
came himself again. Nor was he startled without
reason; for these rattling, bony skeletons of clocks
are very disconcerting in their operation, and I won-
der very much how any set of men, but most of all
how Dutchmen, can have had a liking to invent them.
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