Page:Such Is Life.djvu/261

"Is he a married man?"

"Widower."

"Widower?" repeated Alf, almost in a whisper. "Did you know his wife""

"Personally, no; inductively, yes. She was one of those indefinably dangerous women who sing men to destruction—one of those tawnyhaired tigresses, with slumbrous dark eyes—name, Iolanthe."

"What?"

"Iolanthe de Vavasour," I replied good-humouredly. "More appropriate than Molly—isn't it?"

The boundary man, after picking up his pipe, which had fallen on the slumbering cat, fixed his Zitska eye on my face with a puzzled, shrinking, defiant look, whilst drawing his seat a little further away. Ah! years of solitary life, with the haunting consciousness of frightful disfigurement, had told on his mind. Moriarty was right. And I remembered that the moon was approaching the full.

"Alf was sitting under a hop-bush," I continued, "with his hand across his eyes.

"'What's the matter, Alf?' says I.

"'Is that you, Collins?' says he, trying to look up. 'You're just in time to do more for me than I would care about doing for you. I've met with an accident. I was lying on my back under the wagon this morning, tightening some nuts, when a bit of rust, or something, fell straight into my eye. Frightful pain; and it's affecting the other eye already; giving me a foretaste of hell. No doubt it's a good thing; but I don't want a monopoly of it; I wish I could pass it round.' This was Alf's style of philosophy. Our friend, Iolanthe, is largely, though perhaps indirectly, responsible for it."

"Yes—go on," said the boundary man nervously.

"Well, as I was telling you, it was after sunset, and there was no time to lose, so I whittled a bit of wood to a point, and essayed the task in which I claim a certain eminence, namely, the extraction of a mote from my brother's eye.

"'You're right, Alf,' says I; 'it's a flake of rust, about the size of a fish's scale, lodged on the coloured part, which we term the iris—or, strictly speaking, on that part of the cornea which covers the iris. But I can't shift it with this appliance. Must get something sharper.'

"So I took a pin out of my coat, and grubbed the mote as well as I could by the deficient light. I don't know what Alf thought of it at the time, but I considered it a lovely operation. When it was over, Alf signified to me that I wasn't wanted any longer, so I went about my business.

"Next morning, as I was going toward my horse-bell, I gave my patient a purely professional call, and found his eye worse than ever. I subjected him to another examination; and, this time having the advantage of full daylight, I discovered that the cause of his trouble was n't a flake of rust, after all; but a small, barbed speck of clean iron, embedded in the white of the eye. I discovered something else. Alf's eyes are as blue as