I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking fellow-feeling
for the mummy in the museum, and a desire to swap news with him. I went
to a watchmaker again. He took the watch all to pieces while I waited,
and then said the barrel was "swelled." He said he could reduce it in
three days. After this the watch averaged well, but nothing more. For
half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking
and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting, that I could not
hear myself think for the disturbance; and as long as it held out there
was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it. But the
rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all
the clocks it had left behind caught up again. So at last, at the end of
twenty-four hours, it would trot up to the judges' stand all right and
just in time. It would show a fair and square average, and no man could
say it had done more or less than its duty. But a correct average is
only a mild virtue in a watch, and I took this instrument to another
watchmaker. He said the king-bolt was broken. I said I was glad it was
nothing more serious. To tell the plain truth, I had no idea what the
king-bolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger.
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