by A. A. Milne
“Pink geraniums?” I suggested.
“Yes. They’re very pretty, you know.”
“I know. But I could have wished for something more difficult. If we had something like—well, I don’t want to seem to harp on it, but say calceolarias, then quite a lot of people mightn’t recognize them, and I should be able to tell them what they were. I should be able to show them the calceolarias; you can’t show people the geraniums.”
“You can say, ‘What do you think of that for a geranium?’” said Celia. “Anyhow,” she added, “you’ve got to take me to the Flower Show now.”
“Of course I will. It is not only a pleasure, but a duty. As gardeners we must keep up with floricultural progress. Even though we start with pink geraniums now, we may have—er—calceolarias next year. Rotation of crops and—what not.”
Accordingly we made our way in the afternoon to the Show.
“I think we’re a little over-dressed,” I said as we paid our shillings. “We ought to look as if we’d just run up from our little window-box in the country and were going back by the last train. I should be in gaiters, really.”
“Our little window-box is not in the country,” objected Celia. “It’s what you might call a pied de terre in town. French joke,” she added kindly.
“Much more difficult than the ordinary sort.”
“Don’t forget it; we can always use it again on visitors. Now what shall we look at first?
“The flowers first; then the tea.”
I had bought a catalogue and was scanning it rapidly.
“We don’t want flowers,” I said. “Our window-box—our garden is already full. It may be that James, the head boxer, has overdone the pink geraniums this year, but there it is. We can sack him and promote Thomas, but the mischief is done. Luckily there are other things we want. What about a dove-cot? I should like to see doves cooing round our geraniums.”
“Aren’t dove-cots very big for a window-box?”
“We could get a small one—for small doves. Do you have to buy the doves too, or do they just come? I never know. Or there,” I broke off suddenly; “my dear, that’s just the thing.” And I pointed with my stick.
“We have seven clocks already,” said Celia.
“But a sun-dial! How romantic. Particularly as only two of the clocks go. Celia, if you’d let me have a sun-dial in my window-box, I would meet you by it alone sometimes.”
“It sounds lovely,” she said doubtfully.
“You do want to make this window-box a success, don’t you?” I asked as we wandered on. “Well, then, help me to buy something for it. I don’t suggest one of those,” and I pointed to a summer-house, “or even a weather-cock; but we must do something now we’re here. For instance, what about one of these patent extension ladders, in case the geraniums grow very tall and you want to climb up and smell them? Or would you rather have some mushroom spawn? I would get up early and pick the mushrooms for breakfast. What do you think?”
“I think it’s too hot for anything, and I must sit down. Is this seat an exhibit or is it meant for sitting on?”
“It’s an exhibit, but we might easily want to buy one some day, when our window-box gets bigger. Let’s try it.”
It was so hot that I think, if the man in charge of the Rustic Bench Section had tried to move us on, we should have bought the seat at once. But nobody bothered us. Indeed it was quite obvious that the news that we owned a large window-box had not yet got about.
“I shall leave you here,” I said, after I had smoked a cigarette and dipped into the catalogue again, “and make my purchase. It will be quite inexpensive; indeed, it is marked in the catalogue at one-and-six-pence, which means that they will probably offer me the nine-shilling size first. But I shall be firm. Good-bye.”
I went and bought one and returned to her with it. “No, not now,” I said, as she held out her hand eagerly. “Wait till we get home.”
It was cooler now, and we wandered through the tents, chatting patronizingly to the stall-keeper whenever we came to pink geraniums. At the orchids we were contemptuously sniffy. “Of course,” I said, “for those who like orchids—” and led the way back to the geraniums again. It was an interesting afternoon.
And to our great joy the window-box was in position when we got home again.
“Now!” I said dramatically, and I unwrapped my purchase and placed it in the middle of our new-made garden.
“Whatever—”
“A slug-trap,” I explained proudly.
“But how could slugs get up here?” asked Celia in surprise.
“How do slugs get anywhere? They climb up the walls, or they come up in the lift, or they get blown about by the wind—I don’t know. They can fly up if they like; but, however it be, when they do come, I mean to be ready for them.”
Still, though our slug-trap will no doubt come in usefully, it is not what we really want. What we gardeners really want is rain.
Sisterly Assistance
I was talking to a very stupid man the other day. He was the stupidest man I have come across for many years. It is a hard thing to say of any man, but he appeared to me to be entirely lacking in intellect.
It was Celia who introduced me to him. She had rung up her brother at the flat where he was staying, and, finding that he was out, she gave a message for him to the porter. It was simply that he was to ring her up as soon as he came in.
“Ring up who?” said the porter. At least I suppose he did, for Celia repeated her name (and mine) very slowly and distinctly.
“Mrs. who?” said the porter, “What?” or “I can’t hear,” or something equally foolish.
Celia then repeated our name again.
There followed a long conversation between the two of them, the audible part of it (that is Celia’s) consisting of my name given forth in a variety of intonations, in the manner of one who sings an anthem—hopefully, pathetically, dramatically, despairingly.
Up to this moment I had been rather attached to my name. True, it wants a little explaining to shopkeepers. There are certain consonants in it which require to be elided or swallowed or swivelled round the glottis, in order to give the name its proper due. But after five or six applications the shopkeeper grasps one’s meaning.
Well, as I say, I was attached to my name. But after listening to Celia for five minutes I realized that there had been some horrible mistake. People weren’t called that.
“Just wait a moment,” I said to her rather anxiously, and picked up the telephone book. To my great relief I found that Celia was right. There was a person of that name living at my address.
“You’re quite right,” I said. “Go on.”
“I wish I had married somebody called Jones,” said Celia, looking up at me rather reproachfully. “No, no, not Jones,” she added hastily down the telephone, and once more she repeated the unhappy name.
“It isn’t my fault,” I protested. “You did have a choice; I had none. Try spelling it. It spells all right.”
Celia tried spelling it.
“I’m going to spell it,” she announced very distinctly down the telephone. “Are you ready?…M…No, M. M for mother.”
That gave me an idea.
“Come away,” I said, seizing the telephone; “leave it to me. Now, then,” I called to the porter. “Never mind about the name. Just tell him to ring up his sister.” And I looked at Celia triumphantly.
“Ask him to ring up his mother,” said the porter. “Very well, sir.”
“No, not the mother. That was something else. Forget all about that mother. He’s to ring up his sister…sister…SISTER.”
“You’ll have to spell it,” said Celia.
“I’m going to spell it,” I shouted. “Are you ready?…S for—for sister.”
“Now you’re going to muddle him,” murmured Celia.
“S for sister; have you got that?…No, sister, idiot. I for idiot,” I added quickly. “S for sister—this is another sister, of course. T for two. Got that? No, two.
Two anything—two more sisters, if you like. E for—E for—” I turned helplessly to Celia: “quick, a word to begin with E! I’ve got him moving now. E for—quick, before his tympanum runs down.”
“Er—er—” Desperately she tried to think.
“E for er,” I shouted. “That’ll be another sister, I expect…Celia, I believe we ought to spell it with an ‘H.’ Can’t you think of a better word?”
“Enny,” said Celia, having quite lost her nerve by this time.
“E for enny,” I shouted. “Any anything. Any of the sisters I’ve been telling you about. R for—quick, Celia!”
“Rose,” she said hastily.
“R for Rose,” I shouted. “Rose the flower—or the sister if you like. There you are, that’s the whole word. Now then, I’ll just spell it to you over again…Celia, I want another word for E. That last was a bad one.”
“Edith?”
“Good.”
I took a deep breath and began.
“S for sister. I for Isabel—Isabel is the name of the sister. S for another sister—I’ll tell you her name directly. T for two sisters, these two that we’re talking about. E for Edith, that’s the second sister whose name I was going to tell you. R for Rose. Perhaps I ought to explain Rose. She was the sister whom these two sisters were sisters of. Got that?” I turned to Celia. “I’m going to get the sister idea into his head if I die for it.”
“Just a moment, sir,” said the dazed voice of the porter.
“What’s the matter? Didn’t I make it clear about Rose? She was the sister whom the—”
“Just hold the line a moment, sir,” implored the porter. “Here’s the gentleman himself coming in.”
I handed the telephone to Celia. “Here he is,” I said.
But I was quite sorry to go, for I was getting interested in those sisters. Rose, I think, will always be my favourite. Her life, though short, was full of incident, and there were many things about her which I could have told that porter. But perhaps he would not have appreciated them. It is a hard thing to say of any man, but he appeared to me to be entirely lacking in intellect.
The Obvious
Celia had been calling on a newly married friend of hers. They had been schoolgirls together; they had looked over the same algebra book (or whatever it was that Celia learnt at school—I have never been quite certain); they had done their calisthenics side by side; they had compared picture post cards of Lewis Waller. Ah, me! the fairy princes they had imagined together in those days…and here am I, and somewhere in the City (I believe he is a stockbroker) is Ermyntrude’s husband, and we play our golf on Saturday afternoons, and go to sleep after dinner, and—Well, anyhow, they were both married, and Celia had been calling on Ermyntrude.
“I hope you did all the right things,” I said. “Asked to see the wedding-ring, and admired the charming little house, and gave a few hints on the proper way to manage a husband.”
“Rather,” said Celia. “But it did seem funny, because she used to be older than me at school.”
“Isn’t she still?”
“Oh, no! I’m ever so much older now…Talking about wedding-rings,” she went on, as she twisted her own round and round, “she’s got all sorts of things written inside hers—the date and their initials and I don’t know what else.”
“There can’t be much else—unless perhaps she has a very large finger.”
“Well, I haven’t got anything in mine,” said Celia, mournfully. She took off the offending ring and gave it to me.
On the day when I first put the ring on her finger, Celia swore an oath that nothing but death, extreme poverty or brigands should ever remove it. I swore too. Unfortunately it fell off in the course of the afternoon, which seemed to break the spell somehow. So now it goes off and on just like any other ring. I took it from her and looked inside.
“There are all sorts of things here too,” I said. “Really, you don’t seem to have read your wedding-ring at all. Or, anyhow, you’ve been skipping.”
“There’s nothing,” said Celia in the same mournful voice. “I do think you might have put something.”
I went and sat on the arm of her chair, and held the ring up.
“You’re an ungrateful wife,” I said, “after all the trouble I took. Now look there,” and I pointed with a pencil, “what’s the first thing you see?”
“Twenty-two. That’s only the—”
“That was your age when you married me. I had it put in at enormous expense. If you had been eighteen, the man said, or—or nine, it would have come much cheaper. But no, I would have your exact age. You were twenty-two and that’s what I had engraved on it. Very well. Now what do you see next to it?”
“A crown.”
“Yes. And what does that mean? In the language of—er—crowns it means ‘You are my queen.’ I insisted on a crown. It would have been cheaper to have had a lion, which means—er—lions, but I was determined not to spare myself. For I thought,” I went on pathetically, “I quite thought you would like a crown.”
“Oh, I do,” cried Celia quickly, “if it really means that.” She took the ring in her hands and looked at it lovingly. “And what’s that there? Sort of a man’s head.”
I gazed at her sadly.
“You don’t recognize it? Has a year of marriage so greatly changed me? Celia, it is your Ronald! I sat for that, hour after hour, day after day, for your sake, Celia. It is not a perfect likeness; in the small space allotted to him the sculptor has hardly done me justice. And there,” I added, “is his initial ‘r.’ Oh, woman, the amount of thought I spent on that ring!”
She came a little closer and slipped the ring on my finger.
“Spend a little more,” she pleaded. “There’s plenty of room. Just have something nice written in it—something about you and me.”
“Like ‘Pisgah’?”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s ‘Mizpah,’ or ‘Ichabod,’ or ‘Habakkuk.’ I’m sure there’s a word you put on rings—I expect they’d know at the shop.”
“But I don’t want what they know at shops. It must be something quite private and special.”
“But the shop has got to know about it when I tell them. And I don’t like telling strange men in shops private and special things about ourselves. I love you, Celia, but—”
“That would be a lovely thing,” she said, clasping her hands eagerly.
“What?”
“’I love you, Celia.’”
I looked at her aghast.
“Do you want me to order that in cold blood from the shopman?”
“He wouldn’t mind. Besides, if he saw us together he’d probably know. You aren’t afraid of a goldsmith, are you?”
“I’m not afraid of any goldsmith living—or goldfish either, if it come to that. But I should prefer to be sentimental in some other language than plain English. I could order ‘Cars sposa,’ or—or ‘Spaghetti,’ or anything like that, without a tremor.”
“But of course you shall put just whatever you like. Only—only let it be original. Not Mizpahs.”
“Right,” I said.
For three days I wandered past gold and silversmiths with the ring in my pocket…and for three days Celia went about without a wedding-ring, and, for all I know, without even her marriage-lines in her muff. And on the fourth day I walked boldly in.
“I want,” I said, “a wedding-ring engraved,” and I felt in my pockets. “Not initials,” I said, and I felt in some more pockets, “but—but—” I tried the trousers pockets again. “Well, look here, I’ll be quite frank with you. I—er—want—” I fumbled in my ticket-pocket, “I want ‘I love you’ on it,” and I went through the waistcoat pockets a third time. “’I—er—love you.’”
“Me?” said the shopman, surprised.
“I love you,” I repeated mechanically. “I love you. I love you, I—Well, look here, perhaps I’d better go back and get the ring.”
On the next day
I was there again; but there was a different man behind the counter.
“I want this ring engraved,” I said.
“Certainly. What shall we put?”
I had felt the question coming. I had a sort of instinct that he would ask me that. But I couldn’t get the words out again.
“Well,” I hesitated, “I—er—well.”
“Ladies often like the date put in. When is it to be?”
“When is what to be?”
“The wedding,” he smiled.
“It has been,” I said. “It’s all over. You’re too late for it.”
I gave myself up to thought. At all costs I must be original. There must be something on Celia’s wedding-ring that had never been in any other’s…
There was only one thing I could think of.
The engraved ring arrived as we were at tea a few days later, and I had a sudden overwhelming fear that Celia would not be pleased. I saw that I must explain it to her. After all, there was a distinguished precedent.
“Come into the bath-room a moment,” I said, and I led the way.
She followed, wondering.
“What is that?” I asked, pointing to a blue thing on the floor.
“The bath-mat,” she said, surprised.
“And that is written on it?”
“Why—‘bath-mat,’ of course.”
“Of course,” I said…and I handed her the wedding-ring.
A Few Guests
The Arrival of Blackman’s Warbler
I am become an Authority on Birds. It happened in this way.
The other day we heard the Cuckoo in Hampshire. (The next morning the papers announced that the Cuckoo had been heard in Devonshire—possibly a different one, but in no way superior to ours except in the matter of its Press agent.) Well, everybody in the house said, “Did you hear the Cuckoo?” to everybody else, until I began to get rather tired of it; and, having told everybody several times that I had heard it, I tried to make the conversation more interesting. So, after my tenth “Yes,” I added quite casually:
“But I haven’t heard the Tufted Pipit yet. It’s funny why it should be so late this year.”
