“It was down at the film exchange. I was waiting for the crowd to thin out, as I had some special business with the manager, and sat down on a bench. Right next to me was a thin, intellectual looking man whom nobody could help but notice as entirely out of the ordinary. He was nervous, abstracted, impatient. He took out his watch to look at the time.
“I saw that he had opened the back case instead of the dial. I heard him say: ‘Remarkable! Extraordinary!’ Then he began poking in all his pockets. He made a vain search. He got up and looked all over the bench, and knelt down and searched under it.
“‘Can I help you, sir?’ I asked.
“‘Well, yes, I’ve lost my glasses,’ he informed me.
“‘Why,’ I told him, ‘you’ve got them on.’
“‘Aha! So I have,’ he admitted. ‘Ridiculous!’
“‘And you’re looking at the wrong side of your watch,’ I added.
“‘Dear me!’ he groaned. ‘Preposterous!’”
“Say, he’d make a good character in a funny film,” chuckled the mischief-loving Pep.
“Well,” continued Frank, “he came out of his absent-mindedness and gathered his scattered wits. Those dreamy eyes of his pierced me like a gimlet.