But Mrs. March now had it sorely on her conscience where,
in its danger from the heat of the stove, it rested with the weight of
the Pantheon, whose classic form it recalled. She wondered that no one
had noticed it before the fire was kindled, and she required her husband
to remove it at once from the top of the stove to the mantel under the
mirror, which was the natural habitat of such a clock. He said nothing
could be simpler, but when he lifted it, it began to fall all apart, like
a clock in the house of the Hoodoo. Its marble base dropped-off; its
pillars tottered; its pediment swayed to one side. While Mrs. March
lamented her hard fate, and implored him to hurry it together before any
one came, he contrived to reconstruct it in its new place. Then they both
breathed freer, and returned to sit down before the stove. But at the
same moment they both saw, ineffaceably outlined on the lacquered top,
the basal form of the clock. The chambermaid would see it in the morning;
she would notice the removal of the clock, and would make a merit of
reporting its ruin by the heat to the landlord, and in the end they would
be mulcted of its value. Rather than suffer this wrong they agreed to
restore it to its place, and, let it go to destruction upon its own
terms.
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