THAT POST OFFICE CLOCK

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17567, 18 June 1925, Page 9

THAT POST OFFICE CLOCK

AND ITS VAGARIES. “ Speaking of aeroplanes,’’ said the man with the green waistcoat; ‘‘they ain't the only things that are fast.” He sighed disgustedly as he turned his gaze across the Square. “ I’ve been watching her for quite a while now, and I’m satisfied file's going to the dogs. It'll take a man who knows his job to set her right again, too. For I’m telling you that clock has got them pyoperly. She has been seventeen minutes ahead of herself all evening,” ne said knowingly, as he drew an unwashed handkerchief from his pocket. Gazing out from his little seat in the Square, he laughed. “ Some of these folks will sure be biting” he said. They don’t know about it. Guess I’m the only man in the Square that knows just how fast that there clock really ‘‘ I just got ten minutes before I'll have lo be off to catch my car over the way. I knows haw to work that old clock even in her worst moods. It’s a process of substruction.” And the man with the green waistcoat stood beside the red whiskered man and laughed. Together they watched unsuspecting people enter the Square at a leisurely walk, gaze up at the clock, consult their own little watches, and hurry on. their faces registering both anger and surprise. It seemed funny to the man in the green waistcoat. It amused him. “Poor blighters; they don’t suspect nothing,” he said to his companion, as he bit harder at his cherry wood. “ They don’t know that clock, 'tis easy to see. Course, I'm admitting she takes some getting used to, but when she does go off on one of these bouts I'm generally one of the first to know of it. And I keep up with her all the time. Never had a watch these twenty years. The old clock sure can’t put any thing across me.” lie looked up. “Five minutes to go,” he saidThen he laughed again: laughed at the unsuspecting folk hurrying on their way, all condemning their own little timeoieces in favour of the big clock. “It’s funny,” laughed the man with the green waistcoat. “My word, it's funny.” And he told his red-whiskered companion of the previous occasions on which the old clock had got ahead of itself, and how he had invariably been one of the first to notice it. Again he looked up. “ Five minutes Great Scott,” he ejaculated; “it's stopped.” “ It's been stopped these ten minutes nearly,” said a passer-by, overhearing him—and the man with the green waistcoat- watched his tram slide noisily out of the Square.