I think I never before saw a man lose his eye and recover it. Yet that was the optical antic played by my companion "inside." He was a horse buyer, and I attributed his leer to a cast of character one naturally connects with horse-trading, until all at once he was groping on the floor.
On bank holidays I have heard 'Arry say that to 'Arriet at 'Ammersmith, but as an exclamation, not an explanation. "My eye, he's lost something valuable, and is British in his expression," thought I innocently. So I inquired if I could help him in the search.
"My eye!" He glowered up at me, and the flicker of the match I held showed a one-eyed face--the eye that had stared at me askew a few minutes before was missing!
Finally the glass optic was recovered, and he explained that the dust, working in about it, irritated him, so that occasionally he slipped it out for cleaning with his handkerchief. During such a polishing it had slipped to the floor. "I never get caught," he added with a touch of pride, "here's number two, in case of accidents," and he fished a substitute from his pocket. That second eye, I noted by daylight later, was blue, while his own was brown. No doubt it is difficult to get eyes that match.
As we bumped along a valley bottom, shrouded in our tenacious cloud of dust, the driver, with whom I rode again, pointed out a couple of ultra-prosperous appearing ranches.
"Millionaires row," he chuckled. "They don't pay interest, but they're real wild and western when it comes to frills. Further up the line you'll see somethin' rich, perhaps."
The promised attraction was a young gentleman in a silk shirt and white flannels following a plow down a furrow, and in turn followed by an aristocratic-looking bulldog. "The dawg," explained my companion, "is blue blood Borston. His pedigree's a heap longer than mine and valued at more thousand dollars than I dare tell. His boss there has a daddy worth a million or so, and when he himself ain't farmin' he scoots around in a five-thousand-dollar ortermobile. But mostly he plays rancher an' makes hay an' beds down the hawses an' all the rest of it. It's a queer game. Crazy's what I call it. There's a whole nest of 'em hereabouts."
So we saw the un-idle rich laboring in the fields. In the nature of things the old-timers regard the species with amusement, figuring, now and then, how many cuttings of alfalfa it would take to pay for the Boston bull, and attempting to determine why anyone with an income should elect such an existence, with the wide world at their beck!