Page 147 - Nuts to You - The Nutcracker Retold

Going About Her Business
As is often the case when you’re itching to start something and need to get going, Clara had to wait for someone else. First, it was Mother Stahlbaum issuing orders to the maids and then complaining to Father Stahlbaum about their horrible daughter.
Or so Clara imagined – for she could hear the murmur of her parents’ voices as they walked to their room. Or rather, she could hear her mother’s voice droning on and on – as her father made his nightly rounds of resetting the clocks in the house – and his indecipherable mutter, as he stopped at each clock and complained about the abominable timepieces in their household, before resetting the time and moving on to the next piece. Tonight, his journey through the house was punctuated by his wife’s steady monologue of what Clara could only imagine was a list of her shortcomings. Clock and child were lumped together as something needing fixed, but with no repairs in sight.
And so, father and mother – highly dis-satisfied over the state of affairs and even more dis-gruntled with the lack of a solution – at last, closed their door. And their grumbling
133