It was a strange craze, certainly; but Harold, who invented his own games and played them without assistance, always stuck staunchly to a new fad, till he had worn it quite out. Just at present he was a muffin-man, and day and night he went through passages and up and down staircases, ringing a noiseless bell and offering phantom muffins to invisible wayfarers. It sounds a poor sort of sport; and yet—to pass along busy streets of your own building, for ever ringing an imaginary bell and offering airy muffins of your own make to a bustling thronging crowd of your own creation—there were points about the game, it cannot be denied, though it seemed scarce in harmony with this radiant wind-swept morning! ‘And Edward, where is he?’ I questioned again. ‘He’s coming along by the road,’ said Charlotte. ‘He’ll be crouching in the ditch when we get there, and he’s going to be a grizzly bear and spring out on us, only you mustn’t say I told you, ’cos it’s to be a surprise.’ [Illustration: “‘WHERE’S HAROLD?’ I ASKED PRESENTLY. ‘OH, HE’S JUST PLAYIN’ MUFFIN-MAN AS USUAL.’”] ‘All right,’ I said magnanimously. ‘Come on and let’s be surprised.’ But I could not help feeling that on this day of days even a grizzly felt misplaced and common. Sure enough an undeniable bear sprang out on us as we dropped into the road; then ensued shrieks, growlings, revolver-shots, and unrecorded heroisms, till Edward condescended at last to roll over and die, bulking large and grim, an unmitigated grizzly. It was an understood thing, that whoever took upon himself to be a bear must eventually die, sooner or later, even if he were the eldest born; else, life would have been all strife and carnage, and the Age of Acorns have displaced our hard-won civilisation. This little affair concluded with satisfaction to all parties concerned, we rambled along the road, picking up the defaulting Harold by the way, muffinless now and in his right and social mind. ‘What would you do?’ asked Charlotte presently—the book of the moment always dominating her thoughts until it was sucked dry and cast aside,—‘What would you do if you saw two lions in the road, one on each side, and you didn’t know if they was loose or if they was chained up?’ ‘Do?’ shouted Edward valiantly, ‘I should—I should—I should—’ His boastful accents died away into a mumble: ‘Dunno what I should do.’ ‘Shouldn’t do anything,’ I observed after consideration; and, really, it would be difficult to arrive at a wiser conclusion. ‘If it came to _doing_,’ remarked Harold reflectively, ‘the lions would do all the doing there was to do, wouldn’t they?’ ‘But if they was _good_ lions,’ rejoined Charlotte, ‘they would do as they would be done by.’ ‘Ah, but how are you to know a good lion from a bad one?’ said Edward. ‘The books don’t tell you at all, and the lions ain’t marked any different.’ ‘Why, there aren’t any good lions,’ said Harold hastily.