ctared 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.

I never made a more unsatisfactory investment in my life than the one I
made in that restaurant. I felt as if I had been swindled, and I said so
to