ees as birdhouses. He confesses that he
took up with a certain brand of tobacco because its receptacle is
popular with wrens. Also he cultivated a taste for waffles--which at
first by a sad distortion of nature he lacked--for no other reason
except that syrup may be bought in pretty log-cabin tins particularly
suited for bluebirds. If you chance to breakfast with him, he urges
the syrup on you with pleasant and insistent hospitality. With
satisfaction he drains a can. By June he has a dozen of these empty
cabins on the shelf alongside his country boots. Time was when he was
lean of girth--as becomes an accountant, who is hinged dyspeptically
all day across his desk--but by this agreeable stowage he has now
grown to plumpness. When in the country Colum rises early in order to
stretch the pleasures of the day, and he walks about before breakfast
from tree to tree to view his feathered tenants. He has even acquired,
after much practice, the knack of chirping--a hissing conjunction of
the lips and teeth--which he is confident wins the friendly attention
of the birds.

Flint heard Colum impatiently, and interrupted before he was done.
"Pooh!" he said. "There's mud in the country, and not much of any
plumbing, and in the morning it's cold until you light a fire."

"Of course," said Colum. "But I love it. Perhaps you remember, Flint,
the old willow stump out near the road. I put a Barking Dog on top of
it, and now there's a family of wrens inside."

"Nonsense," said Flint. "There is too much climate in the
country--much more than in town. It's either too hot or too cold. And
it's lonely. As for you, Colum, you're sentimental about your
birdhouses. And you dislike your job. You like the country merely
because it is a symbol of a holiday. It is freedom from an irksome
task. It means a closing of your desk. But if you had to live in the
country, you would grumble in a month's time. Even a bullfrog--and he
is brought up to it, poor wretch--croaks at night."

Colum interrupted. "That's not true, Flint. I know I'd like it--to
live on a farm and keep chickens. Sometimes in winter, or more often
in spring, I can hardly wait for summer and my two weeks. I look out
of the window and I see a mirage--trees and hills." Colum sighed.
"It's quite wonderful, that view, but it unsettles me for my ledger."

"That's it," broke in Flint. "Your sentimentality spoils your
happiness. You let two weeks poison the other fifty. It's immoral."

C