And when you see her going about in the daytime you would never think she could do it." Terry thought it would be quite easy to lie awake, waiting, for three hours.

However, after listening for about five minutes to Nursey's snoring, and blowing through her own little nose to try to do the same, she was fast asleep again.
She wakened again exactly at a quarter to six.

The moonlight was now pouring into the room, and she could see everything as well as if by day.
She got up and went out to the landing to look at the clock, and stood there in her white night-dress, with her little bare toes on the carpet, gazing at the solemn white face of the tall brown clock which Granny said had stood there just as she was for quite two hundred years.

It was impossible not to think of this clock as a personage, and she was accustomed to change her character very much as Terry changed her moods.
Sometimes she was a cheery old creature, hurrying on the time with her pleasant chimes, coaxing round the sunshine out of the dark, and bringing back the cosy bed-time when children were tired.

At other times she had the air of a stern prophetess, with a threat in every "tick, tick", and a hint of doom in the striking of every hour.