"I thought they were his at first."
"Let us suppose they are. Will you kindly leave the stand and adjust them on this desk near the window exactly as the professor's spectacles lay on his desk that afternoon?"
Bertha took the spectacles without hesitation, walked over to the crier's desk and placed them on its edge, with their wires toward the window. Then she laid a book under the wires. This made the glasses tip a little downward. The sun was shining in fiercely.
"I believe there was a waste basket in the study?" continued Shagarach.
"Yes, sir."
"Like this one?" He held up an uncommonly capacious basket, over two feet high.
"The very same kind."
"And as full as this is?"
"Fuller. It was just bursting with papers."
"What kind of paper?"