we wait for a
lover--a lover in whose embrace we may not yet be, but who is, as it
were, downstairs washing his hands, he has arrived, he is here--and so
we can endure the suspense of waiting for him with a grin. April may
fill the dykes fuller than February, whose skies are supposed to weep
all day long, but generally only succeed in dribbling, but April
belongs to Spring--even though our face and hands and feet are still in
Mid-Winter.

February always reminds me of the suburbs--appalling but you've got to
go through them to get to London. Were I a rich man, I would follow
Spring round the World. In that way I should be able to smile through
life like those people who, in snapshots from the Riviera, seem
composed principally of wide grins and thin legs, and whose joie de
vivre is usually published in English illustrated journals in seasons
when the English weather makes you feel that Life is just a Big Damn in
a mackintosh. To follow Spring round the world would be like following
a mistress whose charms never palled, whose welcome was never too warm
to be sultry, whose friendship was never too cold to freeze further
promise of intimacy. What a delightful chase! and what a
sweet-tempered man I should be! For, say what you will, the weather
has a lot to do with that spotless robe of white which is supposed to
envelop saints. If you can't be pure and good and generous and
altogether delightful in the Spring, you might as well write yourself
off for evermore among the ignoble army of the eternally disgruntled.
And if you _can_ be all these things in weather that is typically
English and typically February, then a hat would surely hide your halo.

And this is about all the good that February does, so far as I can see.
True, once in four years it also allows old maids to propose. But the
three years when they had to wait to be asked have usually taken all
their courage out of them. Besides, the married people and others who
are otherwise hooked and secure have turned even that benefit into a
joke--and no woman likes to place all her heart-yearnings at the mercy
of a laugh. So that, what Leap-Year once allowed, people have turned
into a jeer. But then, that is all part and parcel of February.
Somebody once tried their best to make it as attractive as possible,
even if it could only be so once every four years. But everybody else
has since done their best to rob it of its one little bit of anaemic
joy. Perhaps