The dog Balthasar, in attendance, lay on
the ball as often as he could, and the page-boy fielded, till his face
was like the harvest moon. And because the time was getting shorter,
each day was longer and more golden than the last. On Friday night he
took a liver pill, his side hurt him rather, and though it was not the
liver side, there is no remedy like that. Anyone telling him that he had
found a new excitement in life and that excitement was not good for him,
would have been met by one of those steady and rather defiant looks
of his deep-set iron-grey eyes, which seemed to say: 'I know my own
business best.' He always had and always would.
On Sunday morning, when Holly had gone with her governess to church, he
visited the strawberry beds. There, accompanied by the dog Balthasar, he
examined the plants narrowly and succeeded in finding at least two dozen
berries which were really ripe. Stooping was not good for him, and
he became very dizzy and red in the forehead. Having placed the
strawberries in a dish on the dining-table, he washed his hands and
bathed his forehead with eau de Cologne. There, before the mirror, it
occurred to him that he was thinner.
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