‘It’s a bit difficult,’ answered Sprats, ‘to know what Lucian does like. He plays lion to perfection. Have you ever been to the Zoo and seen a real first-class, A1 diamond-of-the-first-water sort of lion in his cage?--especially when he is filled with meat? Well, you’ll have noticed that he gazes with solemn eyes above your head--he never sees you at all--you aren’t worth it. If he should happen to look at you, he just wonders why the devil you stand there staring at him, and his eyes show a sort of cynical, idle contempt, and become solemn and ever-so-far-away again. Lucian plays lion in that way beautifully. He looks out of his cage with eyes that scorn the miserable wondering things gathered open-mouthed before him.’ ‘Does he live in a cage?’ asked Saxonstowe. ‘We all live in cages,’ answered Sprats. ‘You had better hang up a curtain in front of yours if you don’t wish the crowd to stare at you. And now come--I will show you my children.’ Saxonstowe followed her all over the house with exemplary obedience, secretly admiring her mastery of detail, her quickness of perception, and the motherly fashion in which she treated her charges. He had never been in a children’s hospital before, and he saw some sights that sent him back to Sprats’s parlour a somewhat sad man. ‘I dare say you get used to it,’ he said, ‘but the sight of all that pain must be depressing. And the poor little mites seem to bear it well--bravely, at any rate.’ Sprats looked at him with the speculative expression which always came into her face when she was endeavouring to get at some other person’s real self. ‘So you, too, are fond of children?’ she said, and responded cordially to his suggestion that he might perhaps be permitted to come again. He went away with a cheering consciousness that he had had a glimpse into a little world wherein good work was being done--it had seemed a far preferable world to that other world of fashion and small things which seethed all around it. On the following day Saxonstowe spent the better part of the morning in a toy-shop. He proved a good customer, but a most particular one. He had counted heads at the children’s hospital: there were twenty-seven in all, and he wanted twenty-seven toys for them. He insisted on a minute inspection of every one, even to the details of the dolls’ clothing and the attainments of the mechanical frogs, and the young lady who attended upon him decided that he was a nice gentleman and free-handed, but terribly exacting. His bill, however, yielded her a handsome commission, and when he gave her the address of the hospital she felt sure that she had spent two hours in conversation--on the merits of toys--with a young duke, and for the rest of the day she entertained her shopmates with reminiscences of the supposed ducal remarks, none of which, according to her, had been of a very profound nature.