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 apiece," 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. "Perhaps the quality will atone for the quantity," said Halicarnassus, scooping up at least half of his at one "arm-sweep." "How do they taste?" I asked. "Rather coppery," he answered. "It is the spoons!" I exclaimed, in a fright. "They are German silver! You will be poisoned!"--and knocked his out of his hand with such instinctive, sudden violence that it flew to the other side of the room, where an old gentleman sat over his newspaper and dinner. He started, dropped his newspaper, and looked around in a maze. Halicarnassus behaved beautifully,--I will give him the credit of it. He went on with my spoon and his strawberries as unconcernedly as if nothing had happened. I was conscious that I blushed, but my face was in the shade, and nobody else knew it; and to this day I have no doubt the old gentleman would have marvelled what sent that mysterious spoon rattling against his table and whizzing between his boots, had not Halicarnassus, when the uproar was over, conceived it his duty to go and pick up the spoon and apologize for the accident, lest the gentleman should fancy it an intentional rudeness. Partly to reward him for his good behavior, partly because I never did think it worth while to make two bites of a cherry, and partly because I did not fancy being poisoned, I gave my fifteen berries to him. He devoured them with evident relish. "Does my spoon taste as badly as yours?" I asked. "My spoon?" inquired he, innocently. "Yes. You said before that they tasted coppery." "I don't think," replied this unprincipled man,--"I don't think it was the flavor of the spoon so much as of the coin which each berry represented." I could have boxed his ears.