“‘My head tells me to carry the clock so I can always tell if I am early or late,’ she said to herself. ‘But my heart tells me to carry a looking glass so I can look at my face and tell if I am getting older or younger.’
“At last she decides to take the clock and leave the looking glass—because her head says so. She starts away. She goes through the door, she is out of the house, she goes to the street, she starts up the street.
“Then her heart tells her to go back and change the clock for the looking glass. She goes back up the street, through the door, into the house, into her room. Now she stands in front of the clock and the looking glass saying, ‘To-night I sleep home here one more night, and to-morrow morning I decide again.’
“And now every morning Deep Red Roses decides with her head to take the clock. She takes the clock and starts away and then comes back because her heart decides she must have the looking glass.
“If you go to her house this morning you will see her standing in the doorway with blue skylights like the blue sky of early April in her eyes, and lips that remind you of deep red roses in the cool of the evening in summer. You will see her leave the doorway and go out of the gate with the clock in her hands. Then if you wait you will see her come back through the gate, into the door, back to her room where she puts down the clock and takes up the looking glass.
“After that she decides to wait until to-morrow morning to decide again what to decide. Her head tells her one thing, her heart tells her another. Between the two she stays home. Sometimes she looks at her face in the looking glass and says to herself, ‘I am young yet and while I am young I am going to do my own deciding.’”
Blixie Bimber fingered the end of her chin with her little finger and said, “It is a strange story. It has a stab in it. It would hurt me if I couldn’t look up at the big white clouds shouldering their shoulders, rolling on the rollers of the big blue sky.”
“It is a good story to tell when April is here all over again—and I am shining up the brass bickerjiggers on my accordion,” said the Potato Face Blind Man.
