Saxonstowe wondered how soon he might call at the hospital again--at the end of a week he found himself kicking his heels once more in the room wherein Noah, his family, and his animals trooped gaily down the slopes of Mount Ararat. When Sprats came in she greeted him with an abrupt question. ‘Was it you who sent a small cart-load of toys here last week?’ she asked. ‘I certainly did send some toys for the children,’ he answered. ‘I thought it must be your handiwork,’ she said. ‘Thank you. You will now receive a beautifully written, politely worded letter of thanks, inscribed on thick, glossy paper by the secretary--do you mind?’ ‘Yes, I do mind!’ he exclaimed. ‘Please don’t tell the secretary--what has he or she to do with it?’ ‘Very well, I won’t,’ she said. ‘But I will give you a practical tip: when you feel impelled to buy toys for children in hospital, buy something breakable and cheap--it pleases the child just as much as an expensive plaything. There was one toy too many,’ she continued, laughing, ‘so I annexed that for myself--a mechanical spider. I play with it in my room sometimes. I am not above being amused by small things.’ After this Saxonstowe became a regular visitor--he was accepted by some of the patients as a friend and admitted to their confidences. They knew him as ‘the Lord,’ and announced that ‘the Lord’ had said this, or done that, in a fashion which made other visitors, not in the secret, wonder if the children were delirious and had dreams of divine communications. He sent these new friends books, and fruit, and flowers, and the house was gayer and brighter that summer than it had ever been since the brass plate was placed on its door. One afternoon Saxonstowe arrived with a weighty-looking parcel under his arm. Once within Sprats’s parlour he laid it down on the table and began to untie the string. She shook her head. ‘You have been spending money on one or other of my children again,’ she said. ‘I shall have to stop it.’ ‘No,’ he said, with a very shy smile. ‘This--is--for you.’ ‘For me?’ Her eyes opened with something like incredulous wonder. ‘What an event!’ she said; ‘I so seldom have anything given to me. What is it?--quick, let me see--it looks like an enormous box of chocolate.’ ‘It’s--it’s the book,’ he answered, shamefaced as a schoolboy producing his first verses. ‘There! that’s it,’ and he placed two formidable-looking volumes, very new and very redolent of the bookbinder’s establishment, in her hands. ‘That’s the very first copy,’ he added. ‘I wanted you to have it.’ Sprats sat down and turned the books over. He had written her name on the fly-leaf of the first volume, and his own underneath it. She glanced at the maps, the engravings, the diagrams, the scientific tables, and a sudden flush came across her face. She looked up at him.