“There may be flashes of humour here and there—”
She did not wait for me to finish.
“Because if it’s meant to be funny,” she said, “I don’t think it is at all funny. And if it is intended to be serious, there’s one thing very clear, and that is that you are not a mother.”
With the unerring instinct of the born critic she had divined my one weak point. Other objections raised against me I could have met. But that one stinging reproach was unanswerable. It has made me, as I have explained, chary of tendering advice on matters outside my own department of life. Otherwise, every year, about Valentine’s day, there is much that I should like to say to my good friends the birds. I want to put it to them seriously. Is not the month of February just a little too early? Of course, their answer would be the same as in the case of my motherly friend.
“Oh, what do you know about it? you are not a bird.”
I know I am not a bird, but that is the very reason why they should listen to me. I bring a fresh mind to bear upon the subject. I am not tied down by bird convention. February, my dear friends—in these northern climes of ours at all events—is much too early. You have to build in a high wind, and nothing, believe me, tries a lady’s temper more than being blown about. Nature is nature, and womenfolk, my dear sirs, are the same all the world over, whether they be birds or whether they be human. I am an older person than most of you, and I speak with the weight of experience.
If I were going to build a house with my wife, I should not choose a season of the year when the bricks and planks and things were liable to be torn out of her hand, her skirts blown over her head, and she left clinging for dear life to a scaffolding pole. I know the feminine biped and, you take it from me, that is not her notion of a honeymoon. In April or May, the sun shining, the air balmy—when, after carrying up to her a load or two of bricks, and a hod or two of mortar, we could knock off work for a few minutes without fear of the whole house being swept away into the next street—could sit side by side on the top of a wall, our legs dangling down, and peck and morsel together; after which I could whistle a bit to her—then housebuilding might be a pleasure.
The swallows are wisest; June is their idea, and a very good idea, too. In a mountain village in the Tyrol, early one summer, I had the opportunity of watching very closely the building of a swallow’s nest. After coffee, the first morning, I stepped out from the great, cool, dark passage of the wirtschaft into the blazing sunlight, and, for no particular reason, pulled-to the massive door behind me. While filling my pipe, a swallow almost brushed by me, then wheeled round again, and took up a position on the fence only a few yards from me. He was carrying what to him was an exceptionally large and heavy brick. He put it down beside him on the fence, and called out something which I could not understand. I did not move. He got quite excited and said some more. It was undoubtable he was addressing me—nobody else was by. I judged from his tone that he was getting cross with me. At this point my travelling companion, his toilet unfinished, put his head out of the window just above me.
“Such an odd thing,” he called down to me. “I never noticed it last night. A pair of swallows are building a nest here in the hall. You’ve got to be careful you don’t mistake it for a hat-peg. The old lady says they have built there regularly for the last three years.”
Then it came to me what it was the gentleman had been saying to me: “I say, sir, you with the bit of wood in your mouth, you have been and shut the door and I can’t get in.”