Dinner was a half hour late when we finally went out, Jimmy leading off with Aunt Selina, and I, as hostess, trailing behind the procession with Mr. Harbison. Dallas took in the two Mercer girls, for we were one man short, and Max took Anne. Leila Mercer was so excited that she wriggled, and as for me, the candles and the orchids--everything--danced around in a circle, and I just seemed to catch the back of my chair as it flew past. Jim had ordered away the wines and brought out some weak and cheap Chianti. Dallas looked gloomy at the change, but Jim explained in an undertone that Aunt Selina didn’t approve of expensive vintages. Naturally, the meal was glum enough. Aunt Selina had had her dinner on the train, so she spent her time in asking me questions the length of the table, and in getting acquainted with me. She had brought a bottle of some sort of medicine downstairs with her, and she took a claret-glassful, while she talked. The stuff was called Pomona; shall I ever forget it? It was Mr. Harbison who first noticed Takahiro. Jimmy’s Jap had been the only thing in the menage that Bella declared she had hated to leave. But he was doing the strangest things: his little black eyes shifted nervously, and he looked queer. “What’s wrong with him?” Mr. Harbison asked me finally, when he saw that I noticed. “Is he ill?” Then Aunt Selina’s voice from the other end of the table: “Bella,” she called, in a high shrill tone, “do you let James eat cucumbers?” “I think he must be,” I said hurriedly aside to Mr. Harbison. “See how his hands shake!” But Selina would not be ignored. “Cucumbers and strawberries,” she repeated impressively. “I was saying, Bella, that cucumbers have always given James the most fearful indigestion. And yet I see you serve them at your table. Do you remember what I wrote you to give him when he has his dreadful spells?” I was quite speechless; every one was looking, and no one could help. It was clear Jim was racking his brain, and we sat staring desperately at each other across the candles. Everything I had ever known faded from me, eight pairs of eyes bored into me, Mr. Harbison’s politely amused. “I don’t remember,” I said at last. “Really, I don’t believe--” Aunt Selina smiled in a superior way. “Now, don’t you recall it?” she insisted. “I said: ‘Baking soda in water taken internally for cucumbers; baking soda and water externally, rubbed on, when he gets that dreadful, itching strawberry rash.’” I believe the dinner went on. Somebody asked Aunt Selina how much over-charge she had paid in foreign hotels, and after that she was as harmless as a dove. Then half way through the dinner we heard a crash in Takahiro’s pantry, and when he did not appear again, Jim got up and went out to investigate. He was gone quite a little while, and when he came back he looked worried. “Sick,” he replied to our inquiring glances. “One of the maids will come in. They have sent for a doctor.”