I. "Why?"

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,