A WONDER-BOOK
you see them; for, though they have but a single eye among the three, it is as sharp-sighted as half a dozen common eyes.’
‘But what must I do,’ asked Perseus, ‘when we meet them?’
Quicksilver explained to Perseus how the Three Gray Women managed with their one eye. They were in the habit, it seems, of changing it from one to another, as if it had been a pair of spectacles, or–which would have suited them better–a quizzing-glass. When one of the three had kept the eye a certain time, she took it out of the socket and passed it to one of her sisters, whose turn it might happen to be, and who immediately clapped it into her own head, and enjoyed a peep at the visible world. Thus it will easily be understood that only one of the Three Gray Women could see, while the other two were in utter darkness; and, moreover, at the instant when the eye was passing from hand to hand, neither of the poor old ladies was able to see a wink. I have heard of a great many strange things in my day, and have witnessed not a few; but none, it seems to me, that can compare with the oddity of these Three Gray Women, all peeping through a single eye.
So thought Perseus, likewise, and was so astonished that he almost fancied his companion was joking with him, and that there were no such old women in the world.
‘You will soon find whether I tell the truth or no,’ observed Quicksilver. ‘Hark! hush! hist! hist! There they come, now!’
Perseus looked earnestly through the dusk of the evening, and there, sure enough, at no great distance off,
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