Judging you merely by appearances, I think you'd better talk to the Foolish Owl yonder."
But I admire the owl for the reason that she is positively foolish.
All that he saw was a barren waste of rock heaps, a hairy man with an
owl's head and another with a bear's head.
And then the evenings, when the workmen had all gone and the house was left to emptiness and echoes, and the old housekeeper had gathered up her rheumatic limbs into her bed, and my little room in quite another part of the house had been set ready, how reluctantly I used to leave the friendly frogs and owls, and with my heart somewhere down in my shoes lock the door to the garden behind me, and pass through the long series of echoing south rooms full of shadows and ladders and ghostly pails of painters' mess, and humming a tune to make myself believe I liked it, go rather slowly across the brick-floored hall, up the creaking stairs, down the long whitewashed passage, and with a final rush of panic whisk into my room and double lock and bolt the door!
And what can life in town offer in the way of pleasure to equal the delight of any one of the calm evenings I have had this month sitting alone at the foot of the verandah steps, with the perfume of young larches all about, and the May moon hanging low over the beeches, and the beautiful silence made only more profound in its peace by the croaking of distant frogs and hooting of owls? A cockchafer darting by close to my ear with a loud hum sends a shiver through me, partly of pleasure at the reminder of past summers, and partly of fear lest he should get caught in my hair.
"I am sorry to contradict my famous friend and colleague," said the
Owl, "but as far as I'm concerned, I think that when the dead weep, it means they do not want to die."
And now the sun went quite down; the gloomy night came; the
owl flew into a bush; and a moment after the old fairy came forth pale and meagre, with staring eyes, and a nose and chin that almost met one another.
The note of this once wild Indian pheasant is certainly the most remarkable of any bird's, and if they could be naturalized without being domesticated, it would soon become the most famous sound in our woods, surpassing the clangor of the goose and the hooting of the owl; and then imagine the cackling of the hens to fill the pauses when their lords' clarions rested!
When other birds are still, the screech owls take up the strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu.
The Owls inhabited a decayed and deserted summer-house.
For years the Owls lived undisturbed on the property which they had acquired by the oldest of all existing rights--the right of taking.
They came to pick up an easy living among the dogs and
owls, which were quite defenceless against them; took possession of their comfortable houses and ate the eggs and puppies.