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The question further discomforted him. It was growing upon him that this thing was not going to be the success he had anticipated. It would be necessary to proceed warily.

“Of course, it’s not a twig,” he began.

“I see it isn’t.”

“No. You see, the nest is nearly all twigs as it is, and I thought–“

“Oh, you did think.”

“Yes, my dear. I thought–unless you are of opinion that it’s too showy–I thought we might work it in somewhere.”

Then she flared out.

“Oh, did you? You thought that a good idea. An A1 prize idiot I seem to have married, I do. You’ve been gone twenty minutes, and you bring me back an eight-cornered piece of broken glass, which you think we might ‘work into’ the nest. You’d like to see me sitting on it for a month, you would. You think it would make a nice bed for the children to lie on. You don’t think you could manage to find a packet of mixed pins if you went down again, I suppose. They’d look pretty ‘worked in’ somewhere, don’t you think?–Here, get out of my way. I’ll finish this nest by myself.” She always had been short with him.

She caught up the offending object–it was a fairly heavy lump of glass–and flung it out of the tree with all her force. I heard it crash through the cucumber frame. That makes the seventh pane of glass broken in that cucumber frame this week. The couple in the branch above are the worst. Their plan of building is the most extravagant, the most absurd I ever heard of. They hoist up ten times as much material as they can possibly use; you might think they were going to build a block, and let it out in flats to the other rooks. Then what they don’t want they fling down again. Suppose we built on such a principle? Suppose a human husband and wife were to start erecting their house in Piccadilly Circus, let us say; and suppose the man spent all the day steadily carrying bricks up the ladder while his wife laid them, never asking her how many she wanted, whether she didn’t think he had brought up sufficient, but just accumulating bricks in a senseless fashion, bringing up every brick he could find. And then suppose, when evening came, and looking round, they found they had some twenty cart-loads of bricks lying unused upon the scaffold, they were to commence flinging them down into Waterloo Place. They would get themselves into trouble; somebody would be sure to speak to them about it. Yet that is precisely what those birds do, and nobody says a word to them. They are supposed to have a President. He lives by himself in the yew tree outside the morning-room window. What I want to know is what he is supposed to be good for. This is the sort of thing I want him to look into. I would like him to be worming underneath one evening when those two birds are tidying up: perhaps he would do something then. I have done all I can. I have thrown stones at them, that, in the course of nature, have returned to earth again, breaking more glass. I have blazed at them with a revolver; but they have come to regard this proceeding as a mere expression of light-heartedness on my part, possibly confusing me with the Arab of the Desert, who, I am given to understand, expresses himself thus in moments of deep emotion. They merely retire to a safe distance to watch me; no doubt regarding me as a poor performer, inasmuch as I do not also dance and shout between each shot. I have no objection to their building there, if they only would build sensibly. I want somebody to speak to them to whom they will pay attention.

You can hear them in the evening, discussing the matter of this surplus stock.