- end_line
- 10686
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.985Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 10589
- text
- I still watched it, and with still increasing self-possession. Sparkling
and wriggling, it still continued its throes. In another moment it was
just on the point of escaping its prison. A thought struck me. Running
for a tumbler, I clapped it over the insect just in time to secure it.
After watching it a while longer under the tumbler, I left all as it
was, and, tolerably composed, retired.
Now, for the soul of me, I could not, at that time, comprehend the
phenomenon. A live bug come out of a dead table? A fire-fly bug come out
of a piece of ancient lumber, for one knows not how many years stored
away in an old garret? Was ever such a thing heard of, or even dreamed
of? How got the bug there? Never mind. I bethought me of Democritus, and
resolved to keep cool. At all events, the mystery of the ticking was
explained. It was simply the sound of the gnawing and filing, and
tapping of the bug, in eating its way out. It was satisfactory to think,
that there was an end forever to the ticking. I resolved not to let the
occasion pass without reaping some credit from it.
‘Wife,’ said I, next morning, ‘you will not be troubled with any more
ticking in our table. I have put a stop to all that.’
‘Indeed, husband,’ said she, with some incredulity.
‘Yes, wife,’ returned I, perhaps a little vaingloriously, ‘I have put a
quietus upon that ticking. Depend upon it, the ticking will trouble you
no more.’
In vain she besought me to explain myself. I would not gratify her;
being willing to balance any previous trepidation I might have betrayed,
by leaving room now for the imputation of some heroic feat whereby I had
silenced the ticking. It was a sort of innocent deceit by implication,
quite harmless, and, I thought, of utility.
But when I went to breakfast, I saw my wife kneeling at the table again,
and my girls looking ten times more frightened than ever.
‘Why did you tell me that boastful tale,’ said my wife, indignantly.
‘You might have known how easily it would be found out. See this crack,
too; and here is the ticking again, plainer than ever.’
‘Impossible,’ I explained; but upon applying my ear, sure enough, tick!
tick! tick! The ticking was there.
Recovering myself the best way I might, I demanded the bug.
‘Bug?’ screamed Julia. ‘Good heavens, papa!’
‘I hope, sir, you have been bringing no bugs into this house,’ said my
wife, severely.
‘The bug, the bug!’ I cried; ‘the bug under the tumbler.’
‘Bugs in tumblers!’ cried the girls; ‘not _our_ tumblers, papa? You have
not been putting bugs into our tumblers? Oh, what does--what _does_ it
all mean?’
‘Do you see this hole, this crack here?’ said I, putting my finger on
the spot.
‘That I do,’ said my wife, with high displeasure. ‘And how did it come
there? What have you been doing to the table?’
‘Do you see this crack?’ repeated I, intensely.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Julia; ‘that was what frightened me so; it looks so
like witch-work.’
‘Spirits! spirits!’ cried Anna.
‘Silence!’ said my wife. ‘Go on, sir, and tell us what you know of the
crack.’
‘Wife and daughters,’ said I, solemnly, ‘out of that crack, or hole,
while I was sitting all alone here last night, a wonderful----’
Here, involuntarily, I paused, fascinated by the expectant attitudes and
bursting eyes of Julia and Anna.
‘What, what?’ cried Julia.
‘A bug, Julia.’
‘Bug?’ cried my wife. ‘A bug come out of this table? And what did you do
with it?’
‘Clapped it under a tumbler.’
‘Biddy! Biddy!’ cried my wife, going to the door. ‘Did you see a tumbler
here on this table when you swept the room?’
‘Sure I did, marm, and ’bomnable bug under it.’
‘And what did you do with it?’ demanded I.
‘Put the bug in the fire, sir, and rinsed out the tumbler ever so many
times, marm.’
- title
- Chunk 7