One rueful rascal with no civic conscience, and an overweening appreciation of his sex, gives it as his opinion that this is an ill-reasoned theory. He declares the sound to be a screeching crescendo that has its origin in an implacable quarrel between the wind and the pines. The wind is a suffragette, a woman of determined grievance, who would be better of bit and bridle and possibly of gag. She makes the pine a butt for her insult and ridicule and a target against which she lashes the hail and drives her shrewish snow. When not grappling his throat with her plaguing, pestilent fingers, it is only because she is recoiling to strike again. She calls this "a spell o' weather."
It is a bitter monologue this leather-fleshed, lathy-framed fellow gives me, and I takes it as a body blow, but I answer not a word, for I have heard it said, or perhaps I have read it, that the meek will own the earth; besides—you can try it yourself—nothing so puzzles the understanding of mortal man as a woman who refuses to go on defence. Her silence fills him with a gnawing uneasiness similar to that one feels when he has swallowed a tack.
And yet I would like to tell him he has overstated his case; to point out that the trees are cross-grained to the wind; that their green spectacles prevent their seeing things in proper perspective, and that they are deep-rooted in obsolete prejudices. Sir Pine cannot escape being an intractable old person, seeing that woman's suffrage was not the rule seventy-five years ago, or more, when he was born. Yes! I should have liked to say this, but it is almost as equal satisfaction to score a verbal chicane.
I think, perhaps, the men felt my silence more than I intended, for they argue the anti-suffragist out of countenance, although I have no doubt they secretly and sincerely agree with him. To change the subject, one of them brings me a caged squirrel he is taking to his residency. Punch is a well-groomed squirrel and has an immoderate tongue. His owner says that in the mountains these red squirrels collect and dry mushrooms. They group them on a rock, or fix them in the forks of young trees, ultimately banking them in hollow logs. He is trying to tame Punch, but then we have all heard of the American who tried to tame an oyster.
Punchinello is as active as pop-corn in a pan. He is a squirrel with a job, and not nearly so light-minded as he looks. His job is to go round and round on a wheel but never to make progress, for the wheel is so swung that it revolves with him. I am appalled by the absolute inutility of it. What a life! What a life! Wearing out a wheel and himself at one and the same time. "Let him go when you get to the woods," say I, "it will be kinder. You have heard of those Eastern folk, who, when they wish to praise Allah, buy birds and set them free."
"No! I have not heard," he replies; "tell me about them."
"There is no more to the story, that is all."
"But I don't see the application when a fellow does not want to render praises. I invested part of my savings at the races and the tenor of my success was markedly uneven. I bought town lots, hoping to sell before the second payment—'Stung'—Yes! it's as good a word as any. The father of my best girl has cursed me to the tenth generation."
"For what?"
"Oh! for a newspaper item which concerned me. I will allow it would have been just as well had it not appeared, but there it was! There it was! No! I cannot see any special reason why I should set the squirrel free. Besides" (and here he speaks softly and with a kindly persuasiveness, as if he had butter in his mouth), "this Punchinello is a sweet-toothed fellow, and the cook will feed him daintily; he has no store set by for the winter; no drey, no mate; he is not properly furred for exposure, and he would not know how to protect himself against the hawks and stoats. Surely, you would not have him go free? I tell you the thing would be cruelty itself, and I will not do it."