I sat up suddenly and spoke to Beatrice.

“Why on earth shouldn’t I have hay-fever?” I demanded.  “Have you any idea what hay-fever is?  I suppose you think I ought to be running about wildly, trying to eat hay—­or yapping and showing an unaccountable aversion from dried grass?  I take it that there are grades of hay-fever, as there are of everything else.  I have it at present in a mild form.  Instead of being thankful that it is no worse, you—­”

“My dear boy, hay-fever is a thing people have all their lives, and it comes on every summer.  You’ve never even pretended to have it before this year.”

“Yes, but you must start some time.  I’m a little backward, perhaps.  Just because there are a few infant prodigies about, don’t despise me.  In a year or two I shall be as regular as the rest of them.”  And I sneezed again.

Beatrice got up with an air of decision and left the room.  For a moment I thought she was angry and had gone for a policeman, but as the minutes went by and she didn’t return I began to fear that she might have left the house for good.  I was wondering how I should break the news to her husband when, to my relief, she came in again.

“You may be right,” she said, putting down a small package and unpinning her hat.  “Try this.  The chemist says it’s the best hay-fever cure there is.”

“It’s in a lot of languages,” I said as I took the wrapper off.  “I suppose German hay is the same as any other sort of hay?  Oh, here it is in English.  I say, this is a what-d’-you-call-it cure.”

“So the man said.”

“Homeopathic.  It’s made from the pollen that causes hay-fever.  Yes.  Ah, yes.”  I coughed slightly and looked at Beatrice out of the corner of my eye.  “I suppose,” I said carelessly, “if anybody took this who hadn’t got hay-fever, the results might be rather—­I mean that he might then find that he-in fact, er—­had got it.”

“Sure to,” said Beatrice.

“Yes.  That makes us a little thoughtful; we don’t want to over-do this thing.”  I went on reading the instructions.  “You know, it’s rather odd about my hay-fever—­it’s generally worse in town than in the country.”

“But then you started so late, dear.  You haven’t really got into the swing of it yet.”

“Yes, but still—­you know, I have my doubts about the gentleman who invented this.  We don’t see eye to eye in this matter.  Beatrice, you may be right—­perhaps I haven’t got hay-fever.”

“Oh, don’t give up.”

“But all the same I know I’ve got something.  It’s a funny thing about my being worse in town than in the country.  That looks rather as if—­By Jove, I know what it is—­I’ve got just the opposite of hay-fever.”

“What is the opposite of hay?”

“Why, bricks and things.”

I gave a last sneeze and began to wrap up the cure.

“Take this pollen stuff back,” I said to Beatrice, “and ask the man if he’s got anything homoeopathic made from paving-stones.  Because, you know, that’s what I really want.”