Bryce knew what he was thinking of. "I'll attend
to the flowers for Mother," he assured Cardigan, and he added
fiercely: "And I'll attend to the battle for Father. We may lose, but
that man Pennington will know he's been in a fight before we fin---"
He broke off abruptly, for he had just remembered that he was to dine
at the Pennington house the following Thursday--and he was not the
sort of man who smilingly breaks bread with his enemy.
CHAPTER X
For many years there had been installed in Cardigan's mill a clock
set to United States observatory time and corrected hourly by the
telegraph company. It was the only clock of its kind in Sequoia;
hence folk set their watches by it, or rather by the whistle on
Cardigan's mill. With a due appreciation of the important function of
this clock toward his fellow-citizens, old Zeb Curry, the chief
engineer and a stickler for being on time, was most meticulous in his
whistle-blowing. With a sage and prophetic eye fixed upon the face of
the clock, and a particularly greasy hand grasping the whistle-cord,
Zeb would wait until the clock registered exactly six-fifty-nine and
a half--whereupon the seven o'clock whistle would commence blowing,
to cease instantly upon the stroke of the hour. It was old Zeb's
pride and boast that with a single exception, during the sixteen
years the clock had been in service, no man could say that Zeb had
been more than a second late or early with his whistle-blowing.
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