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?"