‘Look!’ he said, ‘look!’ and pointed.

A hundred yards away stood a boot about as big as the bath you see Marat in at Madame Tussaud’s.

‘S’welp me,’ said Gustus, ‘we’re asleep, both of us, and a-dreaming as things grow while we look at them.’

‘But we’re not dreaming,’ Edward objected. ‘You let me pinch you and you’ll see.’

‘No fun in that,’ said Gustus. ‘Tell you what—it’s the spy-glass—that’s what it is. Ever see any conjuring? I see a chap at the Mile End Empire what made things turn into things like winking. It’s the spy-glass, that’s what it is.’

‘It can’t be,’ said the little boy who lived in a villa.

‘But it is,’ said the little boy who lived in a slum. ‘Teacher says there ain’t no bounds to the wonders of science. Blest if this ain’t one of ’em.’

‘Let me look,’ said Edward.

‘All right; only you mark me. Whatever you sets eyes on’ll grow and grow—like the flower-tree the conjurer had under the wipe. Don’t you look at me, that’s all. Hold on; I’ll put something up for you to look at—a mark like—something as doesn’t matter.’

[p36]He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a boot-lace.

[p

36

]

‘I hold this up,’ he said, ‘and you look.’

Next moment he had dropped the boot-lace, which, swollen as it was with the magic of the glass, lay like a snake on the stone at his feet.

So the glass was a magic glass, as, of course, you know already.

‘My!’ said Gustus, ‘wouldn’t I like to look at my victuals through that there!’

Thus we find Edward, of the villa—and through him Gustus, of the slum—in possession of a unique instrument of magic. What could they do with it?

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