H. "People never talk about nightcaps in good society."
I. "Oh!"
I was very warm, and Halicarnassus said he was tired; so he went into a restaurant and ordered strawberries,—that luscious fruit, quivering on the border-land of ambrosia and nectar.
"Doubtless," says honest, quaint, delightful Isaac,—and he never spoke a truer word,—"doubtless God might have made a better berry than a strawberry, but doubtless God never did."
The bill of fare rated their excellence at fifteen cents.
"Not unreasonable," I pantomimed.
"Not if I pay for them," replied Halicarnassus.
Then we sat and amused ourselves after the usual brilliant fashion of people who are waiting in hotel parlors, railroad-stations, and restaurants. We surveyed the gilding and the carpet and the mirrors and the curtains. We hazarded profound conjectures touching the people assembled. We studied the bill of fare as if it contained the secret of our army's delay upon the Potomac, and had just concluded that the first crop of strawberries was exhausted, and they were waiting for the second crop to grow, when Hebe hove in sight with her nectared ambrosia in a pair of cracked, browny-white saucers, with browny-green silver spoons. I poured out what professed to be cream, but proved very low-spirited milk, in which a few disheartened strawberries appeared rari nantes. I looked at them in dismay. Then curiosity smote me, and I counted them. Just fifteen.
"Cent a piece," said Halicarnassus.
I was not thinking of the cent, but I had promised myself a feast; and what is a feast, susceptible of enumeration? Cleopatra was right. "That love"—and the same is true of strawberries—"is beggarly which can be reckoned." Infinity alone is glory.