A Dance to Still Music (1974)

Barbara Corcoran's novel for young readers, published by Atheneum in 1974 with drawings by Charles Robinson, follows Margaret, a girl from Maine who lost her hearing to an illness and has wrapped herself in silence since her mother moved them to Key West. She finds a refuge with Josie, who lives on a houseboat and cleans other people's houses, keeps a fawn she names Sonny on board, learns gin rummy with a deck of old railway cards and, slowly, works up to speaking aloud again. (Open Library)

Watches

Timex (unidentified model): Waiting at the gangplank with a cake she has baked for Josie's birthday, three matches stuck in it for candles and Sonny wearing a bow, Margaret looks at her Timex watch and worries that Josie is late and has gone to buy groceries, which Margaret feels she is eating up. Josie arrives wheeling her bicycle with the groceries in its basket. The maker is named; the model is not; Margaret's surname is not given.

Source text: She looked at her Timex watch. Josie was late. She had probably gone to buy groceries. (Barbara Corcoran, A Dance to Still Music, scan cataloged as Atheneum, 1974, p. 112, dropping a stray OCR hyphen after "buy"; her deafness is explained on pp. 3 to 4; Internet Archive scan OCR)