“Interlopers. No, Cherub, an interloper is no relation to an antelope. It was four days ago that we left that principal and went out and whistled for the Fool-killer. Yesterday, the principal came down with a rose-pink eye of his own; the Health Officer met him and ordered him into quarantine, and the terrible and ferocious Rollertowl is now writhing in its death-agonies on the ash-heap.”
“What about other diseases?” asked Mrs. Clyde after a pause.
“Nothing from me. The eye will report them itself quick enough. And as soon as your eye tells you that anything is the matter with it, you tell the oculist, and you’ll probably get along all right, as far as diseases go. It is not diseases that I have to worry about, as your Chinese-plan physician, so much as it is to see that you give your vision a fair chance. Let’s see. Charley, you’re the Committee on Air, aren’t you? Could you take on a little more work?”
“Try me,” said the boy promptly.
“All right; we’ll make you the Committee on Air and Light, hereafter, with power of protest and report whenever you see your mother going out in a polka-dotted, cross-eyed veil, or your grandmother reading a Bible that needs burning worse than any heretic ever did, or any of the others working or playing without sufficient illumination. Here endeth this lecture, with a final word. This is it:—
“The eye is the most nervous of all the body’s organs. Except in early childhood, when it has the recklessness and overconfidence of unbounded strength, it complains promptly and sharply of ill-usage. Now, there are a few hundred rules about when and how to use the eyes and when and how not to use them. I’m not going to burden you with those. All I’m going to advise you is that when your eyes burn, smart, itch, or feel strained, there’s some reason for it, and you should obey the warning and stop urging them to work against their protest. In fact, I might sum it all up in a motto which I think I’ll hang here in the library—a terse old English slang phrase.”
“What is it?” asked Mr. Clyde.
“‘Mind your eye,’” replied the Health Master.
VI.
THE RE-MADE LADY
“Of all unfortunate times!” lamented Mrs. Clyde, her piquant face twisted to an expression of comic despair. “Why couldn’t he have given us a little more notice?”