A PAIR OF SPECTACLES

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 3, Issue 9, 2 March 1925, Page 57

A PAIR OF SPECTACLES

"TVTOW, I wonder," remarked my mother, "where I put my glasses?" There was no immediate response. We all knew that, if the remark had really been made —and some of us tried to pretend it had not been would be repeated. And it was repeated, in a slightly more definite form. "Has anybody seen my glasses?" I jumped up at once. Not that I believed I was sitting on them, but it has become a sort of rule in our house that, as soon as the loss of the glasses has been established, we all spring up to do our bit, interrupting temporarily whatever occupations we may have been engaged upon. "Where did you have them last?" I asked. "I don't know," replied my mother. "I thought I had them in my bag. Where can they be?" "We'll soon find them," said my sister, putting her head on a level with the mantelpiece, and drawing it along the whole length, so to speak. "What about the blue bowl?" I suggested. "I don't think I put them there," answered my mother. "Well, I'll just look," I said cheerfully. "You left them there once, you know." They were not in the blue bowl. Nor were they on the little octagonal table by her armchair, nor were they on the desk in the corner. "Ah! The bracket cried my young brother. He tried it and failed. "I suppose they're not in your lap, dear?" asked my sister. "No," said my mother. "Perhaps they're by the bookcase." But they were not. And soon we had exhausted all the possible places, and were reduced to looking on the floor, in the piano, and feeling down to the bottoms of vases. "I wonder if I left them upstairs?" said my mother. "Ah, I expect that's where they are I agreed, casting a regretful glance at the exciting novel I had been reading. "I'll run up and see." "Do, dear. And, Ethel, you go and look in the dining-room. I may have left them there." We left the room brightly. It is an unwritten law that we always look for mother's glasses with every appearance of good cheer. Suddenly my young brother turned back. "Shouldn't be surprised to find that she's got 'em on her nose," he chirped. He is always the one to say that. Then Ethel went into the diningroom, and I was about to ascend to my mother's bedroom when a key was inserted in the front door, and my father came in. "Mother's lost her glasses," I said distinctly. "We're trying to find them for her." •• "Oh," replied my father, and slipped into his study.

I went upstairs and looked in the bedroom, and then in all the other, rooms. I had reached the vague stage when a voice called up to me : "Mother says is her bag there, because if it is the glasses may be in it." "I'll look," I called back. I was about to do so when the voice called again: "Wait a minute. Mother's calling out something to me, and I can't hear." I waited while doors opened and closed and various familiar sounds occurred. Then rose up to me: "If you find the bag, and the glasses aren't in it, then get the little key, not the big one, out of the outside pocket and unlock the wardrobe, and look in the case on the third shelf from the top, or it might be in the second shelf behind the file of bills." "All right," I shouted back. "I'll look." . I went into the bedroom and searched it again. I searched it very thoroughly, because it was nice and quiet up there. My sister joined me, and we opened the wardrobe and looked in the case on the third shelf from the top and behind the file of bills in the second shelf. But again we had no luck. It became harder to keep cheerful. "Well," I proposed, "let's look on the other shelves." We did so. It took us five minutes, quite, to complete this search, because the shelves were packed, and I happened to undo some wool that my sister had to do up again, or it would get into knots. We were just giving up when I gave a cry. There were mother's glasses, at the back of the bottom shelf. Radiant with joy and happiness, we closed the wardrobe, put the big key back into the bag, and trooped downstairs again and into the draw-ing-room. "Where did you find them?" asked my mother, putting out her hand for the glasses my sister handed to her. "Oh, but these aren't my glasses. This is an extra pair of your father's." We stared at each other. A sudden depression descended upon us. We began to search again. "Perhaps they got caught in a curtain," I muttered. "That's possible," said my sister. "Let's shake them," said Tom. We began shaking the curtains. There was as much chance of finding the glasses there as of winning the Calcutta Sweepstake. But there wasn't anything else left to do. So we went on shaking. Just then there was a knock at the street door, which, being opened, revealed a boy with a packet. "From the optician's, ma'am," ;he said. It contained my mother's glasses. She had sent them to be mended. J. Jefferson Farjeon.