CHAPTER XIX.
THE TUTOR--THE PARISH--A NEW CONTRIBUTOR TO THE ALMS-BOX Mr.Clerke was a small, slight, fair man.

He was short-sighted, which caused him to carry a round piece of glass about the size of a penny in his waistcoat pocket, and from time to time to stick this into his eye, where he held it in a very ingenious, but, as it seemed to me, dangerous fashion.
It took me quite a fortnight to get used to that eye-glass.

It was like a policeman's bull's-eye lantern.

I never knew when it might be turned on me.

Then the glass had no rim, the edges looked quite sharp, and the reckless way in which the tutor held it squeezed between his cheek and eyebrow was a thing to be at once feared and admired.
I was sitting over my Delectus one morning, unwillingly working at a page which had been set as a punishment for some offence, with my hands buried in my pockets, fumbling with halfpence and other treasures there concealed, when, seeing my tutor stick his glass into his eye as he went to the bookcase, I pulled out a halfpenny to try if I could hold it between cheek and brow, as he held his glass.