One afternoon, while the old clock mender had stepped out for his lunch, the clocks in his shop began to talk.
“My master is so careless,” said the Eight-Day Clock. “He always means to wind me, and then picks up a newspaper and forgets entirely. He lets me run down completely — stops me cold — and then winds me up days later, as if nothing happened. I am such a fine clock.”
“You may be fine,” said the little Watch with the broken mainspring, “but it doesn’t seem to be doing you much good. You’re always being brought here.”
“I can’t help it,” said the Eight-Day Clock. “When I’m not wound on time I get worried, and something goes wrong with my works. I wish we could teach our masters a lesson.”
“We can,” said the Cuckoo Clock.
“What will we do?”
“We’ll be absolutely impossible to mend,” said the Cuckoo Clock. “So complicated and troublesome that the clock mender has to charge enormous prices. Then our masters will look after us properly rather than let us run down.”
Every clock in the shop immediately looked more cheerful.
