The sun burnt upon his bare feet and his head and his hands.
This coming of summer meant so much more to him than merely the immediate joy of it--it meant Rafiel and Cow Farm and the Cove and green pools with crabs in them, and shrimping and paddling and riding home in the evening on haycarts, and drinking milk out of tin cans, and cows and small pigs, and peeling sticks and apples, and collecting shells, and fishermen's nets, and sandwiches, and saffron buns mixed with sand, and hot ginger beer, and one's ears peeling with the sun, and church on Sunday with the Rafiel sheep cropping the grass just outside the church door, and Dick Marriott, the fisherman, and slipping along over the green water, trailing one's fingers in the water, in his boat, and fishy smells by the sea-wall, and red masses of dog-fish on the pier, and the still cool feel of the farmhouse sheets just after getting into bed--all these things and a thousand more the coming of summer meant to Jeremy.
But this morning he did not feel his customary joy.

Closing his window and dressing slowly, he wondered what was the matter.

What could it be?
It was not his eye--certainly it was a funny colour this morning and it hurt when you touched it, but he was proud of that.

No, it was not his eye.

And it was not the dog, who came into his room, after scratching on the door, and made his usual morning pretence of having come for any other purpose than to see his friend and master, first looking under the bed, then going up to the window pretending to gaze out of it (which he could not do), barking, then rolling on a square of sunlit carpet, and, after that, lying on his back, his legs out stiff, his ridiculous "Imperial" pointed and ironical, then suddenly turning, with a twist on his legs, rushing at last up to Jeremy, barking at him, laughing at him, licking him, and even biting his stockings--last of all seizing a bedroom slipper and rushing wildly into the schoolroom with it.
No, there was nothing the matter with Hamlet.