Il n'a rien dit, mais il me plaît.
“Thank goodness,” cried the cheerful voice of Lucilla. “Thank goodness
for a snatch of song.” Plump and soft, her brown hair slightly loosened,
her fair skin flushed a little by the warmth of the afternoon, she came,
with that “languid grace” which has been noted, up the terrace steps,
her arms full of fresh-cut roses, so that she moved in the centre of a
nebula of perfume. “Only I wish now it had been a blackbird or a thrush.
I've spent half an hour wandering in the garden, and not a bird sang
once. The silence was quite dispiriting. A garden without birds is a
more ridiculous failure than a garden without flowers. I think I shall
give this villa up.” She shed her roses into a chair, and let herself,
languidly, gracefully, sink into another.
“Birds never do sing in the autumn--do they?” questioned Ruth.
“That's no excuse,” complained Lucilla. “Why don't they? Isn't it what
they're made for?”
“Robins do,” said Ponty, “they're singing their blessed little hearts
out at this very moment.”
“Where?” demanded Lucilla eagerly, starting up. “I'll go and hear them.”
“In England,” answered her brother; “from every bush and hedgerow.”
“G-r-r-r-h!” Lucilla ejaculated, deep in her throat, turning upon him
a face that was meant to convey at once a sense of outrage and a thirst
for vengeance, and showing her pretty teeth. “Humbug is such a cheap
substitute for wit. Why don't other birds sing? Why don't blackbirds,
thrushes?”
“Because,” Pontycroft obligingly explained, “birds are chock-full of
feminine human nature. They're the artists of the air, and--you know the
proverb--every artist is at heart a woman. June when they woo, December
when they wed, they sing--just as women undulate their hair--to beguile
the fancy of the male upon whom they have designs. But once he's safely
married and made sure of, the feminine spirit of economy asserts itself,
and they sing no longer. _A quoi bon?_ They save their breath to cool
their pottage.”
“What perfect nonsense,” said Lucilla, curling a scornful lip. “It's a
well-known fact that only the male birds sing.”
“Apropos of male and female,” Ponty asked, “has it never occurred to you
that some one ought to invent a third sex?”
“A third?” expostulated Ruth, wide-eyed. “Good heavens! Aren't there
already two too many?”
“One is too many, if you like,” Ponty distinguished, uncoiling his legs
and getting upon his feet, “but two are not enough. There should be a
third, for men to choose their sisters from. You women have always
been too good for us, and nowadays, with your higher education, you're
becoming far too clever. See how Lucilla caught me out on a point in
natural history.”
With which he retreated into the house.