“Thank you,” said Arla, and she took her leave.
As she walked home she lifted the lid of the basket and looked at her little rose clock. “To think of it!” she said, “that you should be sometimes too fast and sometimes too slow! And worse than that, to think that some of the other clocks have been right and you have been wrong. I can hardly believe it of you.”
But the little clock never went to be compared with the sundial. “Perhaps you are right now,” Arla would say to her clock each day when the sun shone, “and I shall not take you until some time when I feel very sure that you are wrong.”
Whether it was right or wrong Arla was satisfied that no other clock in Rondaine was its equal. But she kept her thoughts to herself, and never again attempted to regulate the affairs of others.—Frank R. Stockton.
From “Fanciful Tales,” published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
THE CAMEL’S NOSE
Once in his shop a workman wrought,
With languid hand and listless thought,
When through the open window’s space,