“Ah!” said Quong Ho, bending forward—they were in the train—“A ‘sport’ is a term of which I have long desired to know the significance. Will you have the gracious kindness to expound it?” “Lord! That’s rather a teaser,” said Godfrey. “I suppose a sport is a chap that can do everything and says nothing, and doesn’t care a damn for anything.” Quong Ho nodded sagely. “That is most illuminating. I regret that I have not my notebook with me. But I shall remember. Incidentally, you have summed up exactly the character of your honourable father and my most venerated patron.” “He’s a joy,” Godfrey whispered to Marcelle as they left the train. “I could listen to him all day long. He talks like the books my grandmother used to read when she was a kid. Mr. Ho,” said he, as they proceeded up the platform to the gates, “you have now a unique opportunity of studying the Western woman. Miss Baring is going shopping. You see in her eye the sign that she is going to have the time of her life.” “Madam,” said Quong Ho, taking off his hat, to the surprise not only of Godfrey but of the scurrying passengers, “that is also the superlative achievement of the ladies of my country.” They shopped, they lunched merrily in a select little restaurant off Shaftesbury Avenue, they shopped again. Godfrey stood aloof and gave advice; sketched the programme in broad outlines; Marcelle filled in the details and became responsible for the selection of the various articles; Quong Ho smiled politely and submitted the various parts of his body, to be measured. Only once did he venture to interfere, and that was when Marcelle was matching ties and socks in the Bond Street hosier’s. “I beg most humbly your pardon,” said he, picking out a tie other than the one selected, “but this shade is the more exact.” “Surely it’s the same,” exclaimed Marcelle, putting the ties together. “The gentleman is right, madam,” said the shopman. “But not one person out of ten thousand could tell the difference. I couldn’t, myself, if I hadn’t been trained at Lyons. I wonder, madam, whether you would allow me to try a little experiment?” He disappeared into a back room and returned with a pinkish mass of silk threads. “This is a colour test. There are twenty different shades. Can you sort them?” Godfrey, amused, took half the mass, and for several minutes he and Marcelle laboriously sorted the threads. Presently the shopman turned to Quong Ho. “Now you, sir.” Quong Ho, without hesitation, made havoc of the piles and swiftly arranged the twenty groups in an ascending scale of red. “There’s not another man in London who could have done that under an hour,” said the shopman admiringly. “When did you learn it?” asked Godfrey.