Part 30

“What are you looking cross-eyed for?” the Health Master shot at her.

“I’m not! Oh, it’s this veil, I suppose.” She lifted the heavy polka-dotted screen and tucked it over her hat. “There, that’s more comfortable!”

“Is it!” said the physician with an emphasis of sardonicism. “You surprise me by admitting that much. How long have you been wearing that instrument of torture?”

“Oh, two hours. Perhaps three. But, Dr. Strong, it doesn’t hurt my eyes at all.”

“Nor your head?”

“I have got a little headache,” she confessed. “To think that a supposedly intelligent woman who has reached the age of—of—”

“Thirty-eight,” said she, laughing. “I’m not ashamed of it.”

“—Thirty-eight, without having to wear glasses, should deliberately abuse her hard-working vision by distorting it! See here,” he interrupted himself, “it’s quite evident that I haven’t been living up to the terms of my employment. One of these evenings we’re going to have in this household a short but sharp lecture and symposium on eyes. I’ll give the lecture; and I suspect that this family will furnish the symposium—of horrible examples. Where’s Julia? As she’s the family Committee on School Conditions, I expect to get some material from her, too. Meantime, Mrs. Clyde, no kindergarten for Betty kin, if you please. Or, in any case, not that kindergarten.”

No further ocular demonstrations were made by Dr. Strong for several days. Then, one evening, he came into the library where the whole family was sitting. Grandma Sharpless, in the old-fashioned rocker, next a stand from which an old-fashioned student-lamp dispensed its benign rays, was holding up, with some degree of effort, a rather heavy book to the line of her vision. Opposite her a soft easychair contained Robin, other-wise Bobs, involuted like a currant-worm after a dose of Paris green, and imaginatively treading, with the feet of enchantment, virgin expanses of forest in the wake of Mr. Stewart White.

Julia, alias “Junkum,” his twin, was struggling against the demon of ill chance as embodied in a game of solitaire, far over in a dim corner. Geography enchained the mind of eight-year-old Charles, also his eyes, and apparently his nose, which was stuck far down into the mapped page. Near him his father, with chin doubled down over a stiff collar, was internally begging leave to differ with the editorial opinions of his favorite paper; while Mrs. Clyde, under the direct glare of a side-wall electric cluster, unshaded, was perusing a glazed-paper magazine, which threw upon her face a strong reflected light. Before the fire Bettykin was retailing to her most intelligent doll the allegory of the Magic Lens.

Enter, upon this scene of domestic peace, the spirit of devastation in the person of the Health Master.

“The horrible examples being now on exhibit,” he remarked from the doorway, “our symposium on eyes will begin.”

“He says we’re a hor’ble example, Susan Nipper,” said Bettina confidentially, to her doll.

“No, I apologize, Bettykin,” returned the doctor. “You’re the only two sensible people in the room.”

Julia promptly rose, lifted the stand with her cards on it, carried it to the center of the library, and planted it so that the central light fell across it from a little behind her.

“One recruit to the side of common sense,” observed the physician. “Next!”

“What’s wrong with me?” demanded Mr. Clyde, looking up. “Newspaper print?”

“A little. What am I going to do? I can’t sit around after dinner with no collar on.”

“Sit up straight, then; stick your neck up out of your collar and give it play. Emulate the attentive turtle! And you, Bobs, stop imitating an anchovy. Uncurl! Uncurl!!”

With a sigh, Robin straightened himself out. “I was so comfortable,” he complained.

“No, you weren’t. You were only absorbed. The veins on your temples are fairly bulging. You might as well try to read standing on your head. Get a straight-backed chair, and you’re all right. I’m glad to see that you follow Grandma Sharpless’s good example in reading by a student-lamp.”

“That’s my own lamp,” said Mrs. Sharpless. “Seventy years has at least taught me how to read.”

“How, but not what,” answered the Health Master. “That’s a bad book you’re reading.”

Grandma Sharpless achieved the proud athletic feat of bounding from her chair without the perceptible movement of a muscle.

“Young man!” she exclaimed in a shaking voice, “do you know what book that is?”

“I don’t care what book—”

“It is the Bible.”

“Is it? Well, Heaven inspired the writer, but not the printer. Text such as that ought to be prohibited by law. Isn’t there a passage in that Bible, ‘Having eyes, ye see not’?”