Sometimes, laughing, they called him “Little Glass with Care,” he was so easily troubled, so sensitive to harsh sounds or roughness of touch. His baby lip quivered so readily; his dark eyes became deep pools of silent misery. And in another sense he was like a glass, during his babyhood. His beautiful little face mirrored things not seen. He would turn away from toys, and lie gazing at the sunbeams or at as much as could be seen of the sky through the high windows; and sometimes he would stretch out his arms to nothingness, and, arching his little body, lift it almost off his mattress, as if in response to some yearning call of love. The first word he spoke was “Coming.” He would shout: “Coming! Coming!” when nobody had called. He turned, impatient, from kind bosoms ready to cuddle him; he slipped unresponsive from laps in which he might have nestled softly, and hurled himself where only hard boards received him, or a cold wall bruised his baby head. “‘Now we see as in a mirror enigmas,’” quoted the matron, whose minister habitually preached from the Revised Version. “What are you trying to remember, you queer little Bundle of Mystery? Who calls, when you say ‘Coming’? What waiting breast which is not here, makes you bump your poor little head against the wall?” But, by the time he was three years old, he had outlived even the matron’s tenderness. His little heart opened to none of them. His grave, sweet beauty grew repellent. His solemn eyes looked past their most persuasive danglings. Poor little “Returned Empty”! His body throve under their care. His spirit seemed to yearn for something they could not give. He was a lonely baby. Years went by. He outgrew the nursery, and passed into the school. Steadily he worked his way to the top of each class and stayed there. He took very little account of his school-fellows. The cruel could not hurt him; the friendly failed to reach him. “First Prize: Luke Sparrow.” He made his graceful, solemn bow, and took the book; but his dark eyes, undazzled by the grand, gold chain, looked past the portly Mayor, and failed to see the smile of approval on the head-master’s face; his ears were deaf to the plaudits of assembled patrons and friends. He returned to his place, hugging his book. Nobody asked to see it; he shewed it to nobody. He was a lonely little boy. He preferred study, involving solitude, to games which hurled him among companions of his own age. The chaplain took an interest in the queerly brilliant little mind, and gave the boy constant private coaching, with the result that he won a Grammar School scholarship, carrying advantages which he could not have enjoyed at the Foundlings’ Institution.