Reginald | Page 8

westward would naturally begin with
a W."
"Need it wing westward?"
"The bird must go somewhere. You wouldn't have it hang around and
look foolish. Then I've brought in something about the heedless
hartebeest galloping over the deserted veldt."
"Of course you know it's practically extinct in those regions?"
"I can't help THAT, it gallops so nicely. I make it have all sorts of
unexpected yearnings -
'Mother, may I go and maffick, Tear around and hinder traffic?'
Of course you'll say there would be no traffic worth bothering about on
the bare and sun-scorched veldt, but there's no other word that rhymes
with maffick."
"Seraphic?"
Reginald considered. "It might do, but I've got a lot about angels later
on. You must have angels in a Peace poem; I know dreadfully little
about their habits."
"They can do unexpected things, like the hartebeest."
"Of course. Then I turn on London, the City of Dreadful Nocturnes,
resonant with hymns of joy and thanksgiving -
'And the sleeper, eye unlidding, Heard a voice for ever bidding Much

farewell to Dolly Gray; Turning weary on his truckle- Bed he heard the
honey-suckle Lauded in apiarian lay.'
Longfellow at his best wrote nothing like that."
"I agree with you."
"I wish you wouldn't. I've a sweet temper, but I can't stand being agreed
with. And I'm so worried about the aasvogel."
Reginald stared dismally at the biscuit-tin, which now presented an
unattractive array of rejected cracknels.
"I believe," he murmured, "if I could find a woman with an unsatisfied
craving for cracknels, I should marry her."
"What is the tragedy of the aasvogel?" asked the Other sympathetically.
"Oh, simply that there's no rhyme for it. I thought about it all the time I
was dressing--it's dreadfully bad for one to think whilst one's
dressing--and all lunch-time, and I'm still hung up over it. I feel like
those unfortunate automobilists who achieve an unenviable motoriety
by coming to a hopeless stop with their cars in the most crowded
thoroughfares. I'm afraid I shall have to drop the aasvogel, and it did
give such lovely local colour to the thing."
"Still you've got the heedless hartebeest."
"And quite a decorative bit of moral admonition--when you've worried
the meaning out -
'Cease, War, thy bubbling madness that the wine shares, And bid thy
legions turn their swords to mine shares.'
Mine shares seems to fit the case better than ploughshares. There's lots
more about the blessings of Peace, shall I go on reading it?"
"If I must make a choice, I think I would rather they went on with the
war."

REGINALD'S CHOIR TREAT

"Never," wrote Reginald to his most darling friend, "be a pioneer. It's
the Early Christian that gets the fattest lion."
Reginald, in his way, was a pioneer.
None of the rest of his family had anything approaching Titian hair or a
sense of humour, and they used primroses as a table decoration.
It follows that they never understood Reginald, who came down late to
breakfast, and nibbled toast, and said disrespectful things about the
universe. The family ate porridge, and believed in everything, even the
weather forecast.
Therefore the family was relieved when the vicar's daughter undertook
the reformation of Reginald. Her name was Amabel; it was the vicar's
one extravagance. Amabel was accounted a beauty and intellectually
gifted; she never played tennis, and was reputed to have read
Maeterlinck's Life of the Bee. If you abstain from tennis AND read
Maeterlinck in a small country village, you are of necessity intellectual.
Also she had been twice to Fecamp to pick up a good French accent
from the Americans staying there; consequently she had a knowledge
of the world which might be considered useful in dealings with a
worldling.
Hence the congratulations in the family when Amabel undertook the
reformation of its wayward member.
Amabel commenced operations by asking her unsuspecting pupil to tea
in the vicarage garden; she believed in the healthy influence of natural
surroundings, never having been in Sicily, where things are different.
And like every woman who has ever preached repentance to
unregenerate youth, she dwelt on the sin of an empty life, which always

seems so much more scandalous in the country, where people rise early
to see if a new strawberry has happened during the night.
Reginald recalled the lilies of the field, "which simply sat and looked
beautiful, and defied competition."
"But that is not an example for us to follow," gasped Amabel.
"Unfortunately, we can't afford to. You don't know what a world of
trouble I take in trying to rival the lilies in their artistic simplicity."
"You are really indecently vain of your appearance. A good life is
infinitely preferable to good looks."
"You agree with me that the two are incompatible. I always say beauty