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.
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?’