MY BIRTHDAY.
"My birthday," I said, "is setting in with its usual severity."
"What," said Francesca, "has driven you to this terrible conclusion?"
"Little signs; straws showing how the wind blows."
"I wonder," she said, "how that came to be a proverb. Personally I don't keep packets of straws to test the wind by, and I never met anybody else who did. Handkerchiefs are much more certain, and men's hats are best of all."
"Yes," I said, "when I see my hat starting full tilt on an excursion I always know which way the wind is blowing right enough. Tell me, Francesca, why does a man's hat, when it's blown off, always bring up in a puddle?"
"And get run over by a butcher's cart?"
"And why does everybody laugh at the hat's owner?"
"And why does the boy who brings it back to you expect payment for the miserable and useless object?"
"And where," I said, "does the owner disappear to afterwards? You never see a man with a hat on his head that's been run over—no, I mean, with a hat that's been run over on his head—no, no, I mean, with a hat that's been run over off his head—Francesca, I give it up; I shall never get that sentence right, but you know what I mean. Anyhow I will put the dreadful vision by. What was I talking about when this hat calamity broke in?"
"You had made," said Francesca, "a cold and distant allusion to your birthday. It's coming to-morrow."
"Well," I said, "it can come if it likes, but I shall refuse to receive it. I don't want it. I'm quite old enough without it. At my age people don't have birthdays. They just go on living, and other people say how wonderful they are for their years, and they must be sixty if they're a day, but nobody would think so, and——"
"And that it's all due to early rising and regular habits."
"And smoking and partial abstemiousness."
"And general good conduct. But you can have all that sort of praise and yet celebrate your birthday."
"But I tell you I won't have my birthday celebrated. Those are my orders."
"Orders?" she said. "People don't give orders about absurdities like that."
"Yes," I said, "they do; but their orders are not obeyed. There's Frederick, for instance. He's only eight, I know, but he's got something up his sleeve. He asked me yesterday if I could lend him threepence, and did I think that a small notebook with a pencil would be a nice present for a sort of uncle on his birthday—not a father, mind you, but an uncle. There's a Machiavelli for you."
"And what did you say?"
"I told him I had never met an uncle who didn't adore notebooks, but that few fathers really appreciated them; and then he countered me. He said he had noticed that many fathers were uncles too."
"That child," said Francesca, "will be a Lord Chancellor. He'd look splendid on a woolsack."
"Yes, later on. At present his legs would dangle a bit, wouldn't they?"
"They're very-well-shaped legs, anyhow. Any Lord Chancellor would be proud to possess them."
"To resume," I said, "about the birthday. There's Alice too. She's engaged on some nefarious scheme with a paint-box and a sheet of paper. It's directed at me, I know, because, whenever I approach her, things have to be hustled away or covered up. However, it's all useless. My mind's made up. I will not have a birthday."
"You can't prevent it, you know."
"Yes, I can," I said. "It's mine, and if I decide not to have it nobody can make me."
"But isn't that rather selfish?"
"It can't be selfish of me to deprive myself of a birthday."
"But you're depriving the children of it, and that's worse than selfish. It's positively heartless."
"Very well, then, I'm heartless. At any rate my orders are that there shall be no birthday; and don't you forget it, or, rather, forget it as hard as ever you can."
"I can't hold out the least prospect that your suggestion will meet with favourable consideration."
The birthday duly arrived, and I went down to breakfast. As I entered the room a shout of applause broke from the already assembled family. "Look at your place," said Frederick. I did, and beheld on the table a collection of unaccustomed articles. There was a box of chocolates from Muriel and Nina; there was a note-book with an appropriate pencil. "That," said Frederick, "is for Cousin Herbert's uncle. Ha, ha!" And there was, from Alice, a painted Calendar fit to hang on any wall. It represents a Tartar nobleman haughtily walking in a green meadow, with a background of snow-capped mountains. He has a long pig-tail and a black velvet cap with a puce knob. His trousers are blue striped with purple. He has a long blue cloak decorated with red figures, and his carmine train is borne by a juvenile page dressed in a short orange-coloured robe. It is a very magnificent design, and on the back of it is written:—
"This is but a Birthday rhyme
Written in this dark War-time.
We can't afford to waste our ink,
And so I'll quickly stop, I think."
Thus I was compelled to have a birthday after all.
R. C. L.