Afterwards

"I know it isn't the right season for strawberries," said Mrs. Carstairs with a smile. "But these are some of our own, bottled by a famous method of Tochatti's. Do try them and give us your opinion."

Anstice complied; and found them excellent.

"They are delicious," he said, "and bring summer very close. Don't you like them?" he asked Cherry, who was demurely nibbling a macaroon.

"No thank you, my dear," replied Cherry gravely. "They give me a pain in my head."

"Oh, do they?" Anstice was nonplussed by this extraordinary assertion, the grounds for which were not borne out by such medical skill as he possessed; but chancing to look across the table at Iris Wayne he found her dimpling deliciously at his perplexity.

"You look puzzled, Dr. Anstice!" She laughed outright. "You see you don't understand how it happens that a pain in the head is connected with strawberries!"

"I don't," he said, "but if you will kindly explain----"

"May I, Cherry?" She looked at the child with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes, and Cherry nodded.

"If you like, my dear. But I think it's rather a silly story."

Notwithstanding this expression of opinion Iris entered forthwith into an explanation.

"You see, Dr. Anstice, Cherry came to stay with me last summer when the strawberries were ripe; and seeing the bed covered with netting--to keep off the birds"--she smiled--"she thought it very hard that the poor little things should not have their share."

"You had heaps and heaps for yourself," came a reproachful voice from the bottom of the table where Cherry sat in state.

"Certainly--until you came on the scene, Cherry Ripe! Well, Dr. Anstice, to cut a long story short, Cherry thought us so selfish and cruel to prevent the poor birds sharing our fruit that she slipped into the kitchen garden one very hot morning, and devoted a good hour to taking up the netting--with the result that the stooping down with the sun beating on her head gave her a touch of sunstroke."

"You forget I had eaten a few strawberries--just to encourage the birdies." Evidently Cherry liked accuracy in any statement, even when it militated against herself.

"Well, whether it was the sun or the strawberries, the fact remains Cherry was in bed for three days, and since then strawberries are tabu. Isn't it so, Mrs. Carstairs?"

"Yes, Iris." Chloe's voice was more weary than usual, as though the subject did not interest her; and suddenly Anstice remembered that during the previous summer she had been shut away from the beautiful world of sun and strawberries and roses red and white....