“Do you, Mr. Owl,” said Tommy Smith.
“Yes,” said the owl. “I don’t mind how far I am from a railway station or even a post office, but the church must be near.”
“I suppose you like to sit in the tower, Mr. Owl,” said Tommy Smith.
“I should think so,” said the owl; “the belfry is there, you know, and I am so fond of that. It is so nice to sit in one’s belfry and think of one’s barns, and farms, and haystacks. And then, when the bells ring, you can’t think what fun that is—especially on the first day of January when they ring in the New Year. I get quite excited then, and I give a scream, and throw myself off the old tower, and fly round it, and whoop and shriek until I seem to be one of the mad bells myself. For they are mad then, you know. They go mad once every year—on New Year’s day. People come out to listen sometimes. They look up into the air, and say, ‘Hark! There they go. It is the New Year now. They are ringing it in.’ Then all at once the bells stop ringing, and it is all over; the New Year has been rung in. But what there is new about it is more than I can say, wise as I am. It all seems to go on just the same as before, and sometimes I wonder what all the fuss has been about. I have never been able to see any difference myself between the last minute of the thirty-first of December and the first minute of the first of January. On a cold rainy night especially, they seem very much alike. But, of course, there must be a difference, or the bells wouldn’t ring as they do.”
“Oh, they ring because it’s the new year, Mr. Owl,” said Tommy Smith.
“Yes, that’s it,” said the owl; “but I should never have found it out without them.”
Tommy Smith began to think that the owl couldn’t be so very wise after all, or surely he would have known the difference between the old year and the new year. He was going to explain it to him thoroughly, but he was getting rather sleepy by this time, and it is difficult to explain things when one is sleepy.
So he didn’t, and the owl went on with, “Oh yes, we love churches, we owls do. We have our nests there, you know, and we could not find a safer place to make them in. Anywhere else we might be disturbed and rudely treated, for people are not nearly so polite to us as they ought to be. But we are always safe in a church, for no one would be so wicked as to annoy us there. Besides, a church is a wonderful place to hide in. People pass by it, and come into it, and sit down and go out again, without having any idea that we are there, and have been there all the time. They never think of that.”
“What part of the church do you build your nest in, Mr. Owl?” said Tommy Smith.
“Oh, that is in the belfry too,” said the owl. “The belfry is my part of the church. I think it must have been built for me, it suits me so well. I am called the belfry-owl sometimes, and that is a very good name for me too. But now don’t ask me any more questions, because you are getting sleepy, and I have something to tell you before you go to sleep.”