"What could you take so important as all that, without being spotted?"
And he said:
"Swear not to tell anybody living."
And I swore.
Then he said:
"His glasses!"
It was a great thought, worthy of Tudor, and, of course, without his
glasses the Doctor would be hopelessly done. He cannot read a line
without them, and when he takes a Greek class, strange to say, he wears
two pairs--his ordinary double-glasses, against the naked eye, and a
pair of common spectacles, of very large size, on his nose outside. In
this elaborate way he reads Greek.
Well, I praised Tudor, but reminded him it was stealing.
And he said:
"I know: that's where the justice comes in. He stole my glazier's
diamond. Now I'm going to steal his glasses."
"Shall you ever give them back?" I asked.
And he said:
"I may, or I may not. The first thing is to get them."
"He takes them off to stretch his eyes sometimes," I reminded Tudor.
"Yes, and for tea," said Tudor. "If he goes in to Mrs. Dunston's room
for a hasty cup of tea, he generally leaves the glasses in the study on
his desk till he comes back to work."
Well, Tudor got them. In a week from the day he decided to take them,
he had an opportunity. Every day that week he had contrived to be around
when tea-time came on, and once Dr. Dunston found him hanging about the
passage, and told him to be gone. But he was crowned with success, and
that same night in the playground, by the light of my electric torch,
Tudor showed me the solemn sight of the double-eyeglasses of the Doctor
actually in his hand!
Well, he was fearfully excited about it, and concealed the glasses for a
few hours in his playbox. Then, fearing there might be a hue and cry,
and everything stirred to its foundations, he took the glasses out just
before supper, and concealed them in a crevice on the top of the
playground wall, only known to me and him.
That night he did not sleep for hours, and more did I. I pictured the
Doctor's terrible anger at having to stop reading the news of the War,
and Tudor told me next morning that he had put the Doctor out of action
for all school purposes, as well as private reading, and we might hope
for at least three days without him, as it would take fully that time to
manufacture such glasses as he wore.
But a bitter disappointment was in store for Tudor, and when the usual
moment came for prayers in the chapel before breakfast, lo and behold,
Dr. Dunston sailed in with a pair of glasses perched on his nose in the
customary place! We could hardly believe our eyes; then we quickly
perceived that Dunston evidently kept a reserve pair of glasses for fear
of accidents. And the accident had happened, and he had fallen back
upon the reserve pair, no doubt in triumph.
Well, Tudor said it was gall and wormwood to be done like that, and even
thought of stealing the second pair of glasses; but then a strange and
sudden thing overtook Tudor, and the very next Sunday a man came to
preach at the chapel service for a good cause; and the good cause was a
Medical Drug Fund for natives in the wilds of Africa. These natives
become Christians under steady pressure, and after that always seem to
be in need of drugs, especially quinine; and Tudor, who, owing to his
lungs and one thing and another, had a good experience of drugs, was
deeply interested, and gave sixpence to the Medical Drug Fund, and
showed a strong inclination to become a collector for the Medical Drug
Missionary. I had often read of sermons altering a person's ideas, and
making him or her inclined to be different from that moment onwards, but
I never saw it actually happen in real life before. Yet, in the case of
Tudor, that Medical Drug sermon, and the stirring anecdotes of the
savage tribes, tamed into well-behaved invalids by the Missionary, had a
wonderful effect upon him, and it took the strange form of making him
rather down-hearted about Dr. Dunston's glasses. Nothing had been said
when they disappeared, and no fuss was made at all; and I advised him
just to take them back quietly, when a chance presented itself, and slip
them under some papers on the Doctor's desk, and leave the rest to time.